I submitted this image to a recent Remake/Remodel challenge at the Whitechapel forums. The hand holding the CD case is a creative commons image that I found here –

The original image, outside the CD case looks like this –

 The Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip has had a weird influence on me.

On the one hand it’s a masterpiece of comic art. Each page is beautifully composed and drawn. Each panel is filled with detail and nifty ideas. Describe any episode and it sounds like the epitome of weirdness.

Which brings me to the other hand – I can’t read more than one or two strips at a time. The strip was created when the vocabulary and pacing of comics was still being developed and, while it’s easy to see the action based on looking at the page, trying to read the captions and word balloons is kind of painful. They’re badly placed and just physically hard to read. The characters aren’t engaging. The punchline of each strip is Nemo waking up.

So I find myself picking up my Nemo collection, reading a strip and putting it down again in frustration that there’s … not … something more? It seems silly to complain that something is just a pretty piece of art but I read comics for stories and I never feel like I get a story.

So, every so often, in my copious spare time, I think about doing a version of Nemo that would have the weird dreamstuff that is so attractive and feature a story that engages me at the same time. The image about isn’t related to any of the ideas I’ve had so far. None of them are distilled enough yet to be represented by a single image. I just knew I wanted to contribute to the challenge so I let my subconscious go to work and that’s what I came up with.

A pretty image with no story behind it. Sigh.