Little Neuro

About twenty years ago in a sketchbook I drew some parodies of Winsor McKay's classic fabulist comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. I called it Little Neuro and had the poor beleagured little guy facing off against a host of everyday nightmares (if that isn't an oxymoron). The idea kinda went nowhere, but I liked the name. So I used him again in a spread for the Post Mag in their issue comemorating the first anniversary of 9-11, where the editor wanted something dark but funny but probably not too dark, yet personal. And it's a true cartoon, for a long time after that day my dreams changed, as did many people's dreams. And usually the dreams involved something commonplace, something everday, suddenly turning awful, so Little Neuro seemed to fit in well.



But I wanted to use Little Neuro some more, in maybe a more benignly comic setting. In Petey's first appearance in the Post in'04 he's complaining about his old Captain Busybody comic books oxidizing into multicolored dust, which Alice finds pretty, so I already knew he was a comics fan. But, knowing Petey, he wouldn't be so much of a superhero fan, as they do all those action things and heroics. He'd likely be more a fan of someone like Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, who's so weighed down with guilt and awkward self-consciousness he can barely stand up. And that sounds like a job for Little Neuro.