Dream of The Rarebit Fiend - Legacy

Legacy

Rarebit Fiend set up a formula which McCay would more famously put to use in Little Nemo. A large number of the Nemo strips used ideas recycled from Rarebit Fiend, such as the 31 October, 1907, Walking Bed episode, which was used in the 26 July, 1908, episode of Little Nemo.

Comics scholar Jeet Heer called Rarebit Fiend "perhaps the most bizarre newspaper feature in American history". According to Merkl, it has presaged ideas and scenes in the media. There are scenes in Rarebit Fiend in which a man kicks a dog, slaps a woman, beats a blind man, and throws another woman out a window, as in Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or (1930); giant characters let loose in the big city, climbing and damaging buildings and subway trains, as in King Kong (1933); elevators flying from buildings and other scenes as in the 2005 Tim Burton take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory although Tim Burton did not invent the scene as it featured in scenes in Dumbo (1941), Mary Poppins (1964), and others. The strip for 9 March 1907, in which a child's bedroom becomes a lion-infested jungle, anticipated the 1950 Ray Bradbury story "The Veldt", and the strip from 26 September 1908, depicting a stretchable face, anticipated Salvador Dalí's surrealist painting "Soft self portrait with fried bacon" (1941), and the cosmetic surgeries in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

The strip was most likely an influence on episodes of Frank King's early comic strip Bobby Make-Believe. Many scholars believe that Carl Barks, a professed fan of Little Nemo, was likely exposed to Rarebit Fiend, which appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, which Barks read growing up. Several episodes of Barks' Donald Duck stories appear to have taken their subjects from Rarebit Fiend. Many scenes from animated films by Tex Avery from between 1943 and 1954 are said to show clearly a Rarebit Fiend influence. Science fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul painted a number of pulp magazine covers influenced by Rarebit Fiend.

Art Spiegelman paid parodic homage to Rarebit Fiend in his 1974 strip "Real Dream". In 1991, Rick Veitch began producing short comics based on his dreams. Beginning in 1994, he put out 21 issues of Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Fiends from his own King Hell Press.