Little Nemo

I was exposed to the legacy of Little Nemo long before I knew who Winsor McCay was, or even that it had been a comic strip. The 1989 film was one of the first films I ever saw and it left a large impact on me as a child. I later discovered the strip itself, at an age where its artistic value could be more appreciated, and found myself fascinated by McCay's sense of scale and perspective almost as much as the sheer whimsy and cleverness of the content of the strips.
I was so familiar with scenes like Nemo's bed growing long, rubbery legs, or flying off into the night sky, that seeing them in the original strips felt all the more magical to me. I think the most interesting thing about the comic was that McCay set a "final" goal for Nemo to achieve (Meeting with the Princess of Slumberland and becoming her playmate), but was able to find ever-more creative ways of avoiding it, knowing that it would mean the end of the strip, usually having Nemo come ever so close, only to get pulled away at the last moment by waking up too early for one reason or another. The "dream" setting also allowed him to experiment heavily with the environment, characters, and even the fourth wall without being bound by logic or rules.
His willingness to experiment so heavily was probably also what led him to attempt some of the earliest animation work, and it can't be stressed nearly enough the impact that McCay has had on illustrators, cartoonists, and animators alike.