A Celebration of Winsor McCay

My favorite illustrator ever, Winsor McCay (1869-1934), worked for decades as a newspaper political cartoonist, illustrator, and animator.

I learned about McCay while browsing through books in the 1990s, I think it was, in a shop in Seattle’s Fish Market, and I just stumbled upon a collection of his work titled Daydreams and Nightmares, which has many (not all) of the items below.

What has always struck me about McCay, aside from his sheer skill as an illustrator, is his ability to express important values in a striking and beautiful way.

I found that most if not all of his values were my values, and indeed, the words are right in the images: things like thought, knowledge, truth, hard work, duty, wisdom, books. And many more, too: his political cartoons show that he was deeply opposed to war on principle, a view I tend to support; he hated drugs (and mind you, he was illustrating from the late 1800s to the 1930s); he was serious about Christianity, a theme that came up now and then in his work; there’s one that shows he was deeply disturbed about “The White Slaver,” with a caption reading, “The most sinister and degraded member of the race! The shame of civilization!”; he has illustrations on the importance of taking life seriously in the face of death; at least two about women’s rights; several visions of a fascinating (often incorrect) future; and one against “technocracy,” portrayed as a futuristic machine-monster, which seems newly relevant in the age of Big Tech. I saved one of the best for last, “The Children of Ignorance,” which I have used several times online throughout the years.