Dream of the Rarebit Fiend

Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was a newspaper comic strip written and drawn by Winsor McCay beginning 10 September 1904. It was McCay's second successful newspaper strip, after Little Sammy Sneeze secured him a position on the cartoon staff of the New York Herald. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was printed in the Evening Telegram, which was published by the Herald at the time. For contractual reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name "Silas".
The strip had no continuity or recurring characters. Instead, it had a recurring theme in which a character, usually after eating a Welsh rarebit (a cheese-on-toast dish) has a nightmare or other bizarre dream. The character wakes from the dream in the last panel, usually commenting that they should not have eaten the rarebit. The dreams often revealed the darker sides of their dreamers' psyches—their phobias, hypocrisies, discomforts, and sometimes dark fantasies. This was in great contrast to the colorful, childlike fantasy dreams in McCay's signature strip, Little Nemo, which began the following year in the Herald. The strip is mostly recognized as an adult-oriented precursor to Nemo.
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