“Little Nemo” by Frank Pé

https://youtu.be/Yl1qlUKJ8zg

Sadly, the Belgian creator Frank Pé died last weekend at the age of 69. He didn’t draw all that many comics, but the ones I’ve seen have all been wonderful. That includes a Spirou story and (most recently) a Marsupilami reimagining that I reviewed here.

He also created a tribute to a classic comic strip across two volumes that Magnetic Press translated for North American readers.

And, in its own way, it’s just as great as the other comics I mentioned.

Let’s talk about “Frank Pé’s Little Nemo After Winsor McKay” and what makes it so good.

Perchance to Dream (of Animals, Mostly)

I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know

I’ve never read Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo strip. Not seriously, anyway. I’ve seen a few, I’ve read a couple, but I’ve never studied them. I’d love to get one of those giant reprint books that take up the whole kitchen table to read a Sunday strip, but that hasn’t happened yet. Someday…

I know the gist of the series, though. Little boy dreams. Crazy things happen in his dreams. The storytelling is large and crazy, with intricate panel work. An art nouveau influence. (Sounds right up my alley, actually. Why haven’t I read it yet?!?)

Eric Shanower and Gabriel Rodriguez did a “Return to Slumberland” mini-series centered on Little Nemo a few years back that got some critical acclaim, but I haven’t read that one yet, either. It looks beautiful, though.

What To Expect When You Don’t Know What to Expect

This “Little Nemo” book is Frank Pé paying loving tribute to the turn-of-the-last-century comic strip. It started as a couple commissions and turned into a couple of limited edition art books before being combined into this book we have now.

On the surface, it’s a series of one or two page stories featuring Nemo (sometimes with his friend, Flip) getting caught up in wild adventures before waking up in the last panel to some comment (from himself or his mother, usually) that plays off the dream, itself. There are some variations in this book where Winsor McCay is the one dreaming, too.

People with more patience than I will probably also psychoanalyze the dreams to mean deeper things. Dream analyses, much like personality tests and astrology charts, are things I just can’t take seriously. You do you, and I’ll leave it to another reviewer to provide that context.

The reason a strip like “Little Nemo” is so attractive to a comic artist is that it leaves everything to the imagination. There are no rules in the dream land. You can get away with drawing anything you want. You can mess with logic and storytelling and the rules of physics and more. It’s a great set-up to show off the skills you have.

Frank Pé does just that. He’s best known for his animal drawings. (Think former Disney animator, Aaron Blaise, but for comics here.) “Little Nemo” gives him plenty of opportunities to draw everything from rhinos to giraffes to lions and polar bears and more. Some are anthropomorphic while others are more natural and animalistic. Whichever he chooses on a given page, it works. He can mix them up with Nemo to show comedy or action. He does each equally well. And the relative sizes of the animals and the open landscape of the dreamworld give Pé opportunities to play with scale in a panel or across a double page spread in fun ways.

Ultimately, it’s what this book is all about – the art. This book is an art piece. Yes, there are some minor plot points here and there and maybe even a message about reading and writing near the end, but this is a book that lives and dies on its art.

I’m fine with that, because “Little Nemo” is a great book. The art serves the stories, but shines in its own right. You will believe an elephant can be blown across the jungle floor or that a human can devolve into a Pooh Bear, or that a polar bear can so friendly. Throw in a few dinosaurs, a batch of mixed-up animals, and a familiar BD animal’s lengthy and springy yellow tail in a fun cameo. It’s a party on paper.

Pé draws everything with such an active presence on the page. Animals emote. They take up space and their sizes conflict with Nemo’s so well. They’re flying or running or swimming or waddling across the pages.

This is far from a talking heads book. Even when the conversation gets a little serious, Pé draws the characters doing interesting things and exploring their world in a way that keeps the pages moving. Every page is different, and each is a new adventure for an artist who is uniquely qualified to tell those stories.

He adds a nice touch with the title of each sequence, too. It’s not the same old font and size at the top of each page. He mixes things up in inventive and creative ways, proving once again that lettering and design are art forms that are part of comics and NOT the “invisible art”.

They can blend into the art, be balanced at either side of the page, go for a more minimalist look, and a whole lot more.

Formatting

“Little Nemo” is an 80 page oversized (9″ x 12″, slightly larger than an Asterix book) hardcover with Magnetic Press’ trademark rounded corners. The pages are a heavy and glossy material that makes the art pop while preventing any bleed through from the art on the other side.

There are two text pieces at the top, the first from Frank Pé projecting a wild world in which he had done hundreds of Little Nemo pages, while writing a biography of Winsor McCay that winds him up to be an even quirkier character than he actually was.

The second and shorter essay comes from comics journalists and historians C. & B. Pissavy-Ybernault to help set the record straighter — as “straight” as any bio of McCay could be.

There’s a final one-page essay at the end of the book that we’ll talk about in the next section, because it’s worth going into a little more detail.

The main part of the book features Pé’s pseudo-“Little Nemo” strips filling up each page, occasionally interrupted by splash page images. Many of those came from comics festivals that Pé did art for related to Nemo. Others are, I suppose, original to this book.

Some look like finished poster artwork, while others look like zoomed-in reproductions where the scratchiness of the pen and ink lines can better be seen blown up so large. I love to see the little details like that.

I love the one, in particular, that has Nemo and Flip looking out into a city filled with skyscrapers standing atop elephant feet. It’s surreal and bizarre, but beautiful all at the same time. It’s a great example of Pé using scale to its full advantage in this book.

That image also wouldn’t work as well if the publisher had shrunk the book into the standard American size. Thank you, Magnetic Press, for taking such good care with this book.

The main strips reproduce well. The paper is well chosen and the colors never get dark or muddy. With Pé’s painted art style, that would be an easy trap to fall into.

The American Edit

In the original French edition of this book — which I believe was two albums originally — Pé included another Nemo character in the book. His name is “Impie” and you can guess why he didn’t make the American edition:

He was included because Pé wanted to pay tribute to the original series and include more of its characters. When the book moved to America where there’d be a bigger reaction to such a character being used no matter the history at play, Pé made the decision to remove the character entirely and redraw whatever needed to be redrawn to handle it.

And so the tier of panels you see above became this in Magnetic Press’ edition:

In other places, the character was erased and bits of the background behind him were redrawn so as not to leave an obvious gap.

I don’t know how many pages Impie appeared on in the original French edition. I was able to look at a small preview of the French material, and Impie didn’t appear anywhere near every page.

Oh, but if you look carefully enough, he does appear on one page, but his arm is covering his face and he’s not saying anything, so it’s hard to be too offended by that page. You can also see him in that elephant city pin-up above, but his back is turned so he’s fairly well hidden in plain sight there.

There’s an essay in the back of the book that explains all of this, and is quick to point out that this was Pé’s decision.

It was a decision of the creator and it didn’t really impact the book at all. Again, I’m a Little Nemo neophyte, but I read the entire book not realizing chunks of it had been redrawn and I didn’t miss a thing.

If you want a case where someone was able to change a character like Impie into something more positive, check out Darwyn Cooke’s “The Spirit,” which I know Act 4 publishing is set to reprint very soon. I loved that series.

Recommended?

“Little Nemo” is an excellent art book that I’m thrilled to give a spot on my bookshelf to. It’s an impressive tour de force unlike anything else on the market today. It might be a little light in the plot department, but I don’t think anyone picked this book up looking for that.

This book delivers on the promise it offers. That’s good enough for me. And at a cover price of $19.99 for two albums’ worth of material in an oversized hardcover edition, I think it’s a good deal, too.

One final note: A lot of my attraction to this book is similar to how I view the work of Francois Schuiten. Nothing against Benoit Peeters, but the reason I like the “Cities of the Fantastic” books is the art. There’s a much stronger story in those books, but it’s still the art that pulls me in the most. It’s imaginative, it’s large, it’s pure creativity on the page.

So it comes as no surprise to find out that Schuiten wrote an introduction to another version of this book in France. Of course he did.

Buy It Now

Amazon (Print Edition)

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