To make the acquaintance of Winsor McCay, you'll need to find a well-padded, high-backed armchair, an oversized pillow, and a comfy blanket. Once you're settled in, lift (or ask a friend to lift) Sunday Press Books' massive, 16-by-21-inch volume, Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Spendid Sundays! onto your lap. Open, and dive in. Here you'll find the best of McCay's most famous strip, restored for the first time to the original newspaper size.

From page one it's clear that you're not merely in the presence of something special — you are inside of it. In this format, Nemo's surreal, mind-bending adventures in Slumberland spread out before and around you: propped open, the book walls out the real world. McCay combines incredibly detailed illustrations with manipulations of frame — his trademark elongations, contractions, and sweeping cinematic arrangements. This edition's generous proportions allow these techniques to put on a breathtaking show. Enormous and delicate mushroom trees teeter a bit more precariously; their falls seem longer, their collapses heavier. A great gilded hall, turning sideways and upside down like a funhouse, becomes truly head-spinning. The hulk of a giant elephant towers far above, and you nearly have to tilt back your head and look up the page.

Unlike many other Nemo reproductions (which feel puny by comparison) Sunday Press has taken care to avoid the wrong kind of color correction, delivering historically truer hues on a beautiful matte stock. The result is the best reproduction yet of what Nemo really looked like in the New York Herald, on a turn-of-the-century Sunday morning breakfast table.

There seems to have been nearly universal critical acclaim for this large-format edition. Along with the resurgence of interest in Nemo, however, there's been a upswing of curiosity about the life and work of his creator. McCay has always been a cult idol among cartoonists and writers — with a current crop of fans that includes Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, Garry Trudeau, and Chris Ware. To satisfy those with more biographical tastes, enter John Canemaker's Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. Canemaker, an animator, animation historian, and recent Oscar-winner, provides a vividly illustrated, highly knowledgeable exploration of the whole of McCay's work. He begins with the early political cartoons and considers other well-known strips such as "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" before delving into McCay's animation and even his vaudevillian "lightning sketch" performances. Along with offering sharp, critical analyses of these various art works, Canemaker also shares keen insights into McCay's influences and motivations, as well as an enjoyable biographical tour of his life.

Now, one might chalk up all this current fascination with McCay to the recent centennial of Little Nemo (which first appeared in 1905). Or could it be that these days people are simply aching for escape, and perhaps finding it, momentarily, in a little boy's dreams?

-Stephen Dougherty