Study for 'Welcome in the Year 1917'

McCay's ink drawing presents the New Year-baby conceit in full Gilded Age regalia: a cherubic figure sashed '1917' bursts from radiant light above an ornate automobile whose grille bears the American eagle and shield. A second infant peers from the seat below, suggesting the outgoing year yielding to the new. The inscription reads *'Not what was wanted — Compliments of Winsor McCay.'* That self-deprecating note likely reflects the political anxieties of 1916—America on the edge of entering the World War. McCay, already famous for *Little Nemo in Slumberland* (1905), helped establish the Sunday page as a space where draftsmanship and sequential imagination fed directly into what would eventually be packaged and sold as comic books.