He really needed to draw, but even more he needed the approbation. He got some from the customers, but more importantly, he took some extracurricular drawing lessons from a local instructor who thought highly of his work. The teacher's forte was perspective and McCay had to have been the star pupil judging from the good use to which he put the lessons later in life.

McCay left Michigan for Chicago in 1889 where he worked for a printer and roomed with Jules Guerin. In 1891 he moved to Cincinnati. There he settled into the only type of work he knew - he went to work as a staff artists for a local dime museum. He married, had two children, and took on extra work painting signs and, eventually, making drawings for a local newspaper. It was there that he first developed his skill with a pen - everything up to that point had been crafted with pencil and brush. He also supplemented his income by submitting drawings to the humor magazine, Life, beginning in 1899.

McCay also produced for Life a six-panel masterpiece that anticipates cinemascope, camera tracks and pans, and even special effects. This was 1903 and McCay was obviously ready for the big time. Few cartoonists had mastered the cartoon pacing and motion better than McCay at this time, and his one foray into the Sunday comic strip, Tale of the Jungle Imps was equally advanced. He was just a small-town, hard-working artist from Cincinnati. What could he do in New York?

An invitation to take a job at the New York Herald prompted McCay to find out. In....