The Checker Book Publishing Group, which has published a number of comic book reprint volumes from the 1980s and 1990s, is going considerably farther back in time for its eleven-volume Winsor McCay: Early Works series.  McCay, who was an animation pioneer as well a brilliant newspaper cartoonist, created the immortal Little Nemo in Slumberland newspaper comic (which Fantagraphics has reprinted) in 1905.  But few of McCay's other early works have been collected until Checker announced its series of volumes, which will contain such seldom seen strips such as Hungry Henrietta, Little Sammy Sneeze, Phoolish Phillip, Poor Jake and Mr. Goodenough.

With the aid of the New York and Cincinnati Public Libraries and a variety of other archives, Checker has been able to obtain a wealth of reproducible source material spanning McCay's early work as an illustrator through 1914.  The third volume in Checker's series is set for publication in April of 2004.  Winsor McCay: Early Works III is a 200-page, black-and-white trade paperback collecting all of McCay's 1907 Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strips from the New York Evening Telegram as well as that year's A Pilgrim's Progress strips from the New York Herald.  A variety of McCay's spot illustrations and editorial cartoons will round out the collection, which will carry a cover price of $19.95.  Checker plans to publish the fourth and fifth volumes in the series later in the year, and to complete the entire 11-volume project by late 2006.