Little Sammy Sneeze
by Winsor McCay
Introductions by John Canemaker, Jeet Heer & Dan Nadel
From Sunday Press, the publisher of the AMAZING Litttle Nemo in Slumberland - So Many Splendid Sundays, comes this fine follow-up volume, Little Sammy Sneeze, which features the complete runs of the two strips starring young children that Winsor McCay created prior to his masterpiece. This book features all of the Little Sammy Sneeze color pages (1904-05) plus Hungry Henrietta, McCay's other comic, which appeared on the back of Sammy in the Sunday New York Herald. The unique style of this book presents two other "flipside" comics of 1904: The Woozlebeasts and The Upside Downs, along with the complete 27-chapter saga of Hungry Henrietta. All digitally restored in the full original size and colors.
96 pages hardbound. 11 x 16 inches!
FREE BONUS: The official Sammy Sneeze Tissue Box Cover!
retail price - $55.00
copacetic
price
- $55.00
Here's a peek at the book laid open, providing a reading area of a whopping 11" x 32"!
Excerpted from the introduction to Little Sammy Sneeze
On July 24, 1904, Little Sammy Sneeze, Winsor McCay‘s first sustained
and popular effort in comic strips, began a two-year run in the New
York Herald.
Today, McCay (1867-1934) is universally acknowledged as the first master of both the comic strip and the animated cartoon. Although invented by others, both genres were developed into enduring popular art of the highest imagination through McCay's innovative genius.
Each week
in McCay’s Sneeze strip, usually within six inflexible panels, a most
ordinary little boy anticipates a violent sneeze in a variety of
settings. When the sneeze occurs in the fifth panel, it wreaks havoc on
the surroundings and people near the blast. In the final panel
Sammy is usually forcibly rejected — most often kicked out. He is
punished despite the disclaimer surrounding the title that “He Just
Simply Couldn’t Stop It” and “He Never Knew When It Was Coming.”
Sammy Sneeze, Hungry Henrietta, and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend
were important precursors of and contributors to McCay's ultimate
strip. All stretched the artist's imagination and challenged his
technical facility in depicting the dream state in general and the
inner emotional life of children in particular. --John Canemaker
Excerpted from the introduction to Hungry Henrietta
To be a child is to be almost powerless, a pawn not only to the big
people around you but also to your own hard-to-control emotional and
biological urges. Part of Winsor McCay‚s greatness as a cartoonist was
his deep imaginative sympathy for the emotional life of little kids,
his ability to recreate in comic strip form childhood fears and
traumas. McCay‚s pen and ink children are always losing control: Sammy
can‚t help but sneeze, Nemo always ends up in Slumberland whether he
wills it or not, and Hungry Henrietta has an enormous and unappeasable
appetite. Of these three kid strips, Hungry Henrietta is the most down
to earth, the most understated, and the most rooted in observed reality.
Because of the way the main character ages [7 years in as many months],
Hungry Henrietta can be read as a truncated and fast-moving biography.
It shows us the roots of Henrietta’s character and how the little
quirks of infancy turn into emotional problems. This attention to
childhood psychology makes it among the most interesting of comic
strips. There is really no other strip like Hungry Henrietta: it stands
as a testament to the fact that McCay was more than a great fantasist.
When he wanted to be, he could also be a great realist. -- Jeet Heer
Publisher's Notes
Some may have dismissed Little Sammy Sneeze as a curious oddity,
a historical footnote to McCay's subsequent masterpiece, Little Nemo in
Slumberland . But after looking more closely at this unique comic
strip, one realizes its significance, not only as an essential part of
the creator's impressive body of work, but also as a developmental
milestone in the evolution of comic art.
There is more here than the simple repetitive gag of the destructive
sneeze. Each strip offers a vignette of the American middle-class life
a century ago, with greater variety and insight than most offerings of
the day. The cinematic elements of Sammy Sneeze create a novel link
between the two art forms and display McCay's emerging interest in
storytelling and animation. The essays in this book, from
world-renowned historians, develop these and other concepts for a fresh
look at Little Sammy Sneeze . Yet the true revelations for the reader
will come from the strips themselves.
For this volume, we have done something unique, something that further
replicates the original comics-reading experience. On the back of each
color Sammy Sneeze page is the comic strip that appeared on the reverse
side in the New York Herald Sunday newspaper. In 1904-1905 this, and
most other comic sections, were printed in full color on one side and
monochrome or two-color on the reverse. Folding the large sheet created
a four-page comic section with full color on the front and back pages,
and two colors on the inside. Sammy was usually found on the back page
with another color comic below it. In most of this book, including all
of the Hungry Henrietta pages, the strip on back of Sammy is the comic
that appeared on that date. In many cases you can actually see the
"bleed-through" from one strip to the other embedded in the page. In a
few cases, pages from other dates of the same year were substituted to
give more continuous runs of great features like Upside Downs and
Woozlebeasts, which were often, but not always, on the back
of Sammy.
Little Sammy Sneeze was also one of the first international stars
of the comics - reprinted in book form in1905 in both American and
French versions. The strip originally appeared as a monochromatic
half-page comic, then ran for almost a year as a full color feature,
then returned to monochrome and was reduced to one-third full size,
often appearing on the back of Little Nemo in Slumberland .
Sammy ended quietly in 1906, eclipsed by its brilliant successor.
But just like the innocent actions of its protagonist, this book
demonstrates that Little Sammy Sneeze tosses an unexpected wallop
at the world of comic strip art.
The comic strips presented on the following pages have been digitally
restored to give the appearance of a comic as it might have appeared in
a "new" newspaper of 1904. Many of the normal imperfections in printing
such as smudges and off-register colors remain, while those created by
the passing of time - stains, tears, excessive yellowing - have been
corrected. And for allergy sufferers, this new printing also eliminates
the common curse of old newsprint, the musty smell, therefore reducing
the reader's chance of suffering Sammy's fate: the unwanted sneeze. So
now you may safely enjoy Little Sammy Sneeze , his sister strip Hungry
Henrietta , and other delights of the period, offered in their original
size and colors for the first time in over 100 years. -- Peter Maresca
retail price - $55.00
copacetic
price
- $55.00
prices and
availability
current as of 2 September 2008