Dream of the Rarebit Fiend Dream of the Rarebit Fiend Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is a newspaper comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay, begun September 10, 1904. It was McCay's second successful strip, after "Little Sammy Sneeze" secured him a position on the cartoon staff of the "New York Herald". "Rarebit Fiend" appeared in the "Evening Telegram", a newspaper published by the "Herald". For contractual reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name "Silas". The strip had no continuity or recurring characters, but a recurring theme: a character has a nightmare or other bizarre dream, usually after eating a Welsh rarebit—a cheese-on-toast
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend "Daydreams and Nightmares" (Fantagraphics, 1988/2006; editor Richard Marschall), a collection of miscellaneous work by McCay. Checker Books reprinted many of the "Rarebit Fiend" strips over eight volumes of the series "Winsor McCay: Early Works" and in 2006 reprinted 183 of the color Saturday strips in "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays". The Checker books reprinted all but about 300 of the known "Rarebit Fiend" strips. In July 2007, German art historian Ulrich Merkl self-published a , 464-page volume called "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend", reproducing 369 of the strips in full size. Previous reprintings of the strip reduced the