Spouse and Thompson

One of the comments on this week's Map of Oz Monday blog asked if anyone had noticed that Ruth Plumly Thompson's characters Roger and Pigasus were pictured in the decorative border. To be honest I had forgotten and failed to mention them. When I went to inspect my scan of the map I found a number of Thompson characters in the border design - all from Thompson's 1931 Pirates in Oz. Peter and Clocker, Samuel Salt, Roger, and Pigasus.

There is a mystery character though - a goose named Lonnie wearing a top hat! Anyone have any idea who Lonnie might be? The other oddity on the map border is that Tip appears in it twice!

It's kind of neat to see Walt Spouse's renditions of these Thompson characters. If the Wonderland of Oz strip had run for a decade or so, Spouse would have gotten to Thompson's Oz books. It's interesting that he only included characters from Pirates in Oz (then the most recent book). It would have been nice to see Kabumpo or Sir Hokus on the map, too.

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WInkie Con on EMERALD CITY RADIO!

This week on Emerald City Radio roving reporter Number Nine conducts an in-depth interview with me about my work as Programming Director of the Winkie Convention. The fifteen minute interview plays twice daily. So come give a listen as I tell the tale of how I first went to Winkies when I was fourteen and what I have in store for attendees this year!

It's easy to listen to Emerald City Radio on Live365. Just click here to go to Live365 and click "Sign Up" in the upper right hand corner and join for free for access to thousands of internet radio stations. Then "Log In" and make a search for Emerald City Radio. When the Emerald City Radio logo shows up in your search results, just click on the logo to start listening right away! Listening is free.

So come on and give Emerald City Radio a try. Our current playlist is over 12 hours long with such a wide variety of Oz songs and music that you're sure to hear some old friends and some new delights.

Emerald City Radio - all great, all powerful - all the time! 

Map of Oz Monday - The Wonderland Map

Today we look at one of the rarest but most intriguing of all Oz maps - the map given away to promote Walt Spouse's comic strip series The Wonderland of Oz in 1932.

1932 Wonderland of Oz Map

The map is quite beautiful - Walt Spouse has based it very closely on the 1914/1920 Wogglebug map, but he has added a decorated border using his character designs from the comic strip. There is a new legend at bottom center and a new and very ornate compass rose featuring traditional east/west directions.

The most obvious change Spouse has made is to color each of the lesser countries its own color: Oogaboo is blue, the Yips are pink, Jinxland and the Skeezers are orange. I don't think Spouse is suggesting those are favorite colors of the countries, he is simply using color to delineate borders like most real world maps do.

If you look closely you will see that Walt Spouse has added a good deal of detail to the map. He has extended a river to run through the Skeezer Country and actually drawn in Skeezer Lake. He drew in a little house icon for Mombi (an important location in the first book serialized in the comic strip).

Spouse has also drawn topographical lines around the Yip Country showing that the entire triangular area originally drawn by Baum is the Yip's mountainous plateau. This is what I always imagined when I first read The Lost Princess of Oz. The later Oz Club map turned the Yips into a little round mountain - contradicting previous Oz maps.

Walt Spouse put a lot of effort into this new map of Oz. He carefully followed the 1914/1920 Baum map, but with equal care he refined it as if he was working from updated surveyor's reports. Look at the comparison of the Winkie River system below. The general shape matches Baum's map, yet there are subtle undulations and new tributaries shown.

Baum's 1914 map (at left) - Wonderland map (at right)

It's a great map. I don't own an original copy of this map, but I'd dearly love to have one. If anyone reading this has a copy of the map they'd like to sell, by all mean drop me a comment and let's talk! 

That's it for this week. Next week we'll be looking at another intriguing map!

Slightly Swamped

Greetings dear readers -

It has been a very busy week on several different fronts. But don't despair - Map of Oz Monday will be up soon.

WInkie Con Approaches!

It's time to send in your registration for the 2012 Winkie Convention! The deadline to guarantee your accommodations on-grounds at Asilomar is May 20, 2012 - after that date we will need to handle each request for on-grounds lodging on a case-by-case basis. So here's a PDF of the information sheet and registration form. Make your decision to join us and send in your registration today! Oz about it! You may also e-mail our registrar, Peter Hanff, to reserve your room. His e-mail address can be found on the registration form.

Download REGISTRATION FORMS here:
http://hungrytigerpress.com/winkie_con_registration_2012.pdf

 

Winkie Con 2012

 The 48th Annual Wizard of Oz Convention

Celebrating the World of Oz and L. Frank Baum

Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California

Chaired by David Maxine & Judy Bieber

Come west for the 48th Annual WINKIE CON where you can join Polychrome the Rainbow's daughter, and Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant as they journey over the rainbow to the best Oz convention ever! Registration is now open for the 2012 Winkie Convention to be held July 27-29, 2012, in Pacific Grove, California. We are proud to be the longest-running Wizard of Oz Convention in the world! You may download registration materials by clicking here.

Hold tight to your Magic Umbrella! Fly next July to the lovely Pacific coast of California where the annual Winkie Convention celebrates Oz and its creator, L. Frank Baum, at the Asilomar Conference Grounds, nestled among the redwoods and pines. 

The theme for 2012 is Sky Island, the book L. Frank Baum thought his personal best. This borderland of Oz book, starring Trot, Cap’n Bill, Button Bright, and Polychrome the Rainbow’s daughter, is the favorite of many Oz fans, too. The tribes of Sky Island, the Blues and the Pinks, will lend their colors to the rainbow of events awaiting you.

We’ll also celebrate Oz-author Ruth Plumly Thompson’s 121st birthday—July 27—and the royal Pumperdink purple of her beloved books: Kabumpo in Oz, which turns ninety, and The Purple Prince of Oz, which turns eighty. It’s sure to be the most colorful Winkie Con ever!

Double Dorothy!

We’re delighted to announce we have two real-life “Dorothys” joining us this year as our special guests.  

Susan Morse was twelve years old when she provided the singing voice for Dorothy in the 1964 Rankin-Bass animated feature Return to Oz where she sang "Moon Beams" and "Oz Just Can't Continue Without Me."  Susan’s fascinating acting and singing career includes the role of Brigitta in the first National Tour of The Sound of Music and appearing in the original Roxy cast of The Rocky Horror Show.

And the Winkie Con is being honored with a visit from the wonderful Caren Marsh-Doll who was Judy Garland’s stand-in during the filming of the MGM classic The Wizard of Oz. Come hear Caren’s memories of being on set, hanging out with Judy at the commissary, and going through MGM’s wig, make-up, and wardrobe departments. Her other credits include appearing as an extra in Gone with the Wind and dancing and acting in a plethora of films such as Rosalie, Best Foot Forward, and The Adventures of Don Juan with Errol Flynn.

Other convention features include a presentation by Oz-cartoonist Eric Shanower, a talk on Ruth Plumly Thompson's Land of Oz by Jared Davis, Peter Hanff will tell us about the Book Club of California's stunning Oz publication this year, John Bell will lead a discussion on Oz blogs, and we'll debut a new Oz game show called It's the Baum! 

Of course we will have our traditional Winkie Costume Contest, Treasure Hunt, and Winkie Quizzes—not to mention the fabulous Winkie Auction of rare Oz and Baum material. All attendees receive the Winkie Con Program Book, over 130 pages of Oz essays, artwork, interviews, and everything you need to help you have a great Winkie Con. We’re sure to have a few surprises, too!

The Winkie Research Table is back! Submit your Fiction, Non-fiction, and Works of Art to the 2012 Winkie Research Table. The Fred Otto Award for Oz Fiction gives a $100 First Prize and a $50 Second Prize for Oz Fiction. Submission guidelines for Oz fiction are here.

A Few Words About Our Convention Site

We meet each year at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in beautiful Pacific Grove, California. It is located a few minutes from Monterey, about five hours north of Los Angeles, and two-and-a-half hours south of San Francisco. The Asilomar grounds are heavily wooded, beautiful and atmospheric, situated directly on the Pacific coast. Please note that our base convention rates are per person in a shared room with two beds. We do have a few single rooms available. The rates cover all programming costs, your lodging at Asilomar, and dinner Friday, three meals on Saturday, breakfast and lunch on Sunday, and all taxes and gratuities. All this is included in one price! The food is better than ever, the rooms are great, and many have fireplaces.

The Winkie Convention has a Facebook page. If you’re on Facebook, come check us out at www.facebook.winkies.org

We also issue a monthly WINKIE CON e-mail newsletter, featuring news, updates,

and cool stuff about the convention. You may subscribe by using the URL below:
http://winkies.oogaboo.org/news.html

Map of Oz Monday - Surprise! Surprise!

Well, my friends, in last week's post on the Coloring Contest Map I mentioned that I had never seen a copy of the map that included the "printed instructions" that the publicity articles in The Ozmapolitan describe. Yesterday a reader sent me a scan of the "real" Coloring Contest Map.

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There are several points of interest. In addition to the Oz book prizes for best overall map (showing corrections, additions, coloring, etc.), there are also ten "Consolation Prizes" consisting of boxes of colored Oz stationery for maps that are only colored in neatly. I wonder what this Oz stationery was? Do any sets survive in their boxes?

Another surprise was that the compass-rose is back to its 1914 east-is-left position! This is quite unexpected, considering the 1920 "Giveaway Map" flipped Baum's compass to the traditional directions. The Map of the Surrounding Countries was probably printed on the other side of this map.

This also raises the question of when the maps I showed last week were actually issued. I have seen those maps described as the "Coloring Contest Map" many times - yet now that we know what the "Coloring Contest Map" really looks like, clearly the plain black-and-white map (with no printed directions) is something else. Probably they are the maps issued after the "Coloring Contest" was finished. Yet the 1928 issue of The Ozmapolitan makes no mention of the new maps being prepared. And why after all the fuss of the coloring contest didn't the publishers update the maps in any way other than flipping the compass back to the east-is-right compass?

So that's my little correction for this week.

Tony deZuniga 1932 - 2012

Just heard a bit ago that Tony deZuniga died today from complications of a stroke he suffered last month. Tony was a Filipino comics artist who is probably best known to Oz fans for inking the Marvel/DC treasury size comic book MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz. Tony worked extensively for DC Comics and was the co-creator of both Jonah Hex and Black Orchid.