Why was Flip so obsessed with ruining Nemo's quest for the Princess? Because he had designs on Nemo himself! He was a trickster, a 'queer' character, disrupting the presumed naturalness of the heterosexual bond. He decided that he didn't want Nemo to reach the Princess, so at climactic moments he would shout 'Wake up!' or display the words 'Wake up!' on his hat, and Nemo's quest for heterosexual fulfillment would be foiled for another day. The exiled son of the Sun and nephew of the Dawn, he wore worn hobo costumes and green clown makeup, and chomped on a cigar to demonstrate that he was a Lord of Misrule. In early strips, his goal was to reach Dreamland, where he would become the consort of the Princess.īut soon a boy named Flip came into the picture.
It is about a boy who visits a dreamworld every night, only to be awakened at a climactic moment, usually when he was about to be eaten or destroyed. Winsor McKay's Little Nemo (1905-1914) comes from the era when comic strips were works of art, intricately detailed and gorgeously realized.