Last Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, considered by many fans and historians to be the most beautiful newspaper comic strip ever created. There have been numerous reprint volumes over the years; in fact, a black-and-white collection with poorly blown-up panels still managed to make a McCay fan out of me twenty years ago. But now it's time to do it right: Peter Maresca created Sunday Press Books to take several years' worth of Little Nemo strips which fell into the public domain and reproduce them in actual size, as close to the original colors as he could get. At $120, it's not cheap, but I've got an advance copy, and...the phrase "My God, Dave, it's full of stars" springs to mind. The color and shading throughout are simply astounding.

What is "actual size," you ask? A NY Times article explains sets it at 21"x16", or "so huge you have to crawl over it to read it." Put it another way: the image accompanying this item has been reduced by 50 percent (click on it and see), and is itself just one-fifth or so of a larger panel which itself only represents one-third of the complete strip.