I've been reading "Give Our Regards to the Atom-Smashers: Writers on Comics." They should have subtitled it "Guys on Superhero Comics." Almost all these writers are male. No surprise, I guess. But I AM surprised that they mostly talk of mainstream comic books I ignored, both as a kid and today. If I wanted violent conflict involving oversized males, all I had to do was go to school and get beat up again. Superheroes were just those jerks grown up; nothing new. I read comic strips creating their own worlds (Krazy Kat, Pogo, King Aroo, Little Nemo, Barnaby) and independent/underground comix doing the same (Odd Bodkins, Crumb and Harvey Pekar, Women's Comix, Omaha, Elfquest). Yet nearly all these essayists, as kids, read the commercial hero-stuff.

Almost all. I like Lydia Millet, writing on "Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Winsor McCay. He saw and painted a vast world of dream-splendors, full of creatures (and feelings) that don't fit any nice neat plot. More like ukiyo-e than comics. And McCay's world is pretty much my world, too.

Millet thinks Slumberland is passive and anti-meaning--that's its subversion. I'm not so sure. Over time, Little Nemo becomes more active and less fearful--goes gradually from nightmares and frustration dreams, to trickster and fuck-up dreams, then delegates that role to Flip his shadow, and then when he's befriended/integrated Flip, to Imp--a racist caricature, but quite unlike the colonial racism of, say, "Tintin", for the Imp's a dream-figure, either a part of Nemo's personality or a spirit of chaos who manifests in this form to Nemo, who is after all a white middle-class boy born in the 19th century. Imp's appearance is grotesque but his character and actions are quite undistorted: he's a Toto, that is, a familiar who communicates through action, an intuitive who pulls back curtains to reveal humbugs behind wizards. Like Flip before him, he's an active side that Nemo consciously represses. And has to learn to accept.

So Nemo's active--his deeds just aren't heroic. First he must lose his fearfulness and crying for Mama, then his shyness with the Princess, his anima; then he must fight and befriend uncouth Flip the underdog/Jungian shadow, and then chaotic, instinctive, intuitive Imp. In the end, Nemo wins the girl and becomes a prince of the dream realm. Still, Millet is quite right that this happens subtly, slowly, haphazardly, with diversions and setbacks--not through any plan or triumph of the will (oops! I try not to quote Nazis, but...)

Millet rightly says McCay rejects and challenges cramped crabby Freudianism. But the sheer splendor of McCay's love-letter to the visual world distracts Millet from seeing how much he anticipates Jung! Nemo's instinctive and shadow sides aren't Ids to be repressed or channeled, but spirits to accept and befriend, chaos or not. Short-term chaos builds deeper strengths. Dreamwork as a repetitious, messy, often-failing, never-ending spiritual journey.

Without needing to punch anyone's face, either.

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