Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend

Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend was a newspaper comic strip written and drawn by Winsor McCay beginning in 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 newspaper. Rarebit Fiend was published in the Evening Telegram newspaper, which was published by the Herald at the time. The editor of the Herald required McCay to use a pseudonym for his work in the Telegram to keep it separate from his Herald strips, so McCay signed all of his Rarebit strips as "Silas", borrowing the name of a neighborhood garbage cart driver. McCay intended his Rarebit Fiend strip to be an amusing morality play, meant to comment on the dangers of overindulgence. It focuses on various people who have a passion for various foods - often, but not always, Welsh rarebit. Each strip features a different protagonist known as a Rarebit Fiend (who is rarely named in the comic strip, and who changes from strip to strip) in the... full article at wikipedia