SPRINGFIELD – When Marvel Comics, among other publishers, needs to restore the original look to art when packaging reprint volumes, the company turns to artist Michael Kelleher. Kelleher is now taking on a second personal effort to restore the art of comic strip giant Winsor McCay in a series of prints of his celebrated “Little Nemo in Slumberland.”

The Springfield resident has started a Kickstarter campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2053745390/the-little-nemo-masters-series-prints) to fund the project. While the restoration work has been completed, the fund-raising would be used to underwrite the production of the prints.

Originally a printer, Kelleher understands how the printing process can degrade the detail and subtleness of original art. For his projects for Marvel he works from the original films shot from the artwork. 

“When you look at film, you look at the quality of the image on film versus paper. It’s like night and day. There is so much detail in the film,” Kelleher explained to Reminder Publications.

The challenge is that a different printing process was used at the turn of the 20th Century and for the McCay project he had to obtain scans of the original McCay artwork dating back to 1906.

Up until Kelleher’s effort, though, reprints of McCay’s detailed comic strip pages were confined to reproducing from newspapers in which the strip appeared. His restoration brings back the sharpness of McCay’s black and white line art as well as the restoration of colors.

Stating that he had “an epiphany working for Marvel” he took everything he knew about art restoration to the McCay project.

“Little Nemo in Slumberland” is perhaps McCay’s best-known work, which he produced from 1906 to 1911. He was highly prolific in creating comic strips, advertising art and eventually political cartoons and his work was noted for its detail and draftsmanship. While he did not create the art of animation, McCay was fascinated by the medium and his third cartoon, “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914) became a huge hit as it was designed to be part of McCay’s vaudeville act.

“Little Nemo” involved a young boy who had dreams every night. His dreams took place not only in his own world, but that of “Slumberland.” The format of the dream world gave McCay huge artistic license to create both fantastic stories and images.

Kelleher first discovered McCay’s artwork when in high school and said that seeking out McCay material became an obsession for him.

Kelleher’s restoration process includes examining the printed newspapers pages to analyze the color. He uses a magnifying glass to examine the dot patterns – the printing process used to create a wide range of colors. By doing so, he can reproduce and sharpen the colors for his prints.

As Kelleher noted on his website, “When I found out that there was a small amount of ‘Little Neo in Slumberland’ original art left in the world, that became my focus. McCay is not only the grandfather of animation, he literally laid the groundwork for comic strip, and comic book, artists. His craftsman ship wasn’t just incredible for his day. It is simply incredible. If he drew those strips today, 110 years later, they would still be heralded as masterpieces. So that is where we’ve started ... a couple of Little Nemo strips. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to expand into restoring the work of other artists and characters, but we’ll need a lot of help with that. The up front costs of licensing some the work we want to restore is astronomical.”

Two years ago he funded a series of restored reproduction prints himself but didn’t receive the sales he thought the project would.

As Kelleher noted on the Kickstarter page, “it was our hope that there would be enough interest generated from our initial offering to fund additional prints, but our losses were too great to continue solely out of pocket. That is why we have come to Kickstarter looking for your support.”

Funders have their choice of options that all involve the restored art prints.

Kelleher said McCay is not the only artist that should have his work restored in this manner. He said he would like to do the same for the classic Tarzan comic strips, first created by Hal Foster and then Burne Hogarth.
    “It’s important to do this preservation of artwork,” he said.