Bits and Pieces: Seriality, Shortness and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend

Abstract

This article explores the transmedial seriality of Winsor McCay‘s newspaper comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904–24), tracking the narratives evolution from comic to trick film (Edwin S. Porter‘s The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, 1906) and animation (McCays own Bug Vaudeville, 1921). In contrast to large parts of the critical response to McCay‘s work, this article does not fore ground the subversive and disruptive dimension of the Rarebit narratives. Instead, it reads both the graphic and filmic narratives as integral parts of the larger serialised culture of modernity, and as attempts to chart this reality, in order to make it navigable.