Hungry Tiger Talk

White Edition Wednesday - SCARECROW

2012-02-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday we discussed Tik-Tok of Oz so today we find ourselves paying a visit to The Scarecrow of Oz.

Dick Martin's cover (above) is quite handsome. The bold, solid reds are especially striking. The cover is of course based on John R. Neill's original cover design from 1915 (at left).

The front cover artwork seems to be almost exactly as Neill drew it back in 1915 - but Dick has modified the lettering somewhat - especially the funny little fillips on the two "r"s in Scarecrow.

Dick based the spine illustration on the drawing from page 212, which in turn Neill had borrowed from the cover of The Oz Toy Book (1915). The original edition of Scarecrow featured a picture of Ozma on the spine.

The back cover is based on one of the original color plates. Dick has simplified the image - and I think made an improvement by getting rid of the red outlines around Cap'n Bill's grasshopper eyes. In the original he's just kinda creepy!

The first change to the interior was the removal of the ownership page, though Dick has reused a portion of that image for the "Famous Oz Books" ad as he has on a few other titles. Dick seems to have drawn new hands and the fence, which is inspired by the drawing for the original end-paper frieze (see below).

Dick has radically rearranged the fore-matter. In the original edition we get the ownership page seen above (which has a blank verso). The next page is a half-title page featuring a cute drawing of the Woozy riding the Sawhorse which is completely omitted in the "white edition."

The next spread in the original edition is the frontispiece and the title-page, followed by the copyright page and dedication page. Then comes a picture of the Wizard being all windblown and the first page of Baum's "Author's Note," followed on the verso with the rest of Baum's note facing the List of Chapters.

In the "white editon" Dick has rearranged all that as follows: The "Famous Oz Books" ad listing either forty or fourteen on the verso. Page three is the dedication page. The next spread has moved the windblown Wizard to serve as a frontispiece facing the title page. Next we have the copyright page, but facing that we have the "Author's Note." The next spread features the conclusion of the "note" and the List of Chapters. Then we get a little treat! Dick has created a double page spread based on the original edition's endpapers.

The drawing in the "white edition"

Dick has modified it some. He has shrunk the image so that it isn't a bleed, he's trimmed off some of the fence at either end, and he has cut the flower motif found at the bottom of the original.

The drawing as the endpapers in the first edition (1915).

The next spread is the same in both editions - a lovely drawing of a mermaid-like creature - possibly an unused drawing from Baum's The Sea Fairies (1911) - and then first page of text.

We end today's blog with a picture of Dick Martin around the time he was designing the "white editions."

Photo courtesy of the International Wizard of Oz Club - Dick Martin Archive

New week we'll journey to the island of Pingaree with Rinkitink in Oz!

Newsies in Oz!

2012-01-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

Back in the very early 1980s three teenage boys went to Oz. . . . Well, they each started Oz newsletters, anyway.

Eric Gjovaag - David Maxine - Scott Cummings (circa early 1980s)

In those days the Oz Club's journal, The Baum Bugle, was being published very sporadically, yet the Oz Club was heading into its biggest decade. Oz fans were simply itching for contact with each other, to learn of local Oz news and activities.

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The Seattle area was especially rich with Oz interest and club members, and the local group had begun holding a regular mini-Oz convention called The Oogaboo Rendezvous.

The group was becoming so active that Eric Gjovaag was the first to address the need for a regional Oz newsletter. In January 1980 he produced the first issue of The Oogaboo Review. The newsletter was published quarterly.

In addition to local news, Eric filled the issue with book reviews, mini-essays, short fiction, profiles of local Oz folk, and of course announcements and reports on the Oogaboo Rendezvous.

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In 1981 my family had just recently moved to Minneapolis and there was a large Oz community waiting to be organized. I started hosting local Oz parties, showing my collection at local libraries, and Fred Meyer mentioned The Oogaboo Review to me. I was immediately smitten with the idea of starting my own newsletter and in the Spring of 1981 I produced the first issue of The Pumperdink Press.

Like Eric's Seattle newsletter, The Pumperdink Press included a good deal more than local Oz news. I shared new treasures from my collection, reviewed books and movies, and was pleased to include some really neat things, including Oz fiction by Philip José Farmer and previously unpublished artwork by W. W. Denslow, Dick Martin, and Eloise Jarvis McGraw. Each issue also contained an advice and gossip column written by Kabumpo, the Elegant Elephant.

The Pumperdink Press was published for three years. I tried to make each issue more elaborate than the last, absorbing new layout techniques, printing on colored paper, exploring dry-transfer lettering and decorative layout tape, and having photographs screened. By the third issue I had switched from photocopying to off-set printing. All these regional newsletters were typed on typewriters. Affordable home computers and laser printers were still several years away.

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At exactly the same time, Scott Cummings of upstate New York began The Munchkin Monthly. Yes, a monthly! Though in actuality it was only supposed to be published ten times per year, the daunting schedule forced the closure of the paper after only six issues. It was soon reborn as a quarterly called The Munchkin Times.

Scott was the youngest of the three of us - his youthful enthusiasm was evident in his taking the time to hand decorate many of the issues (note the Ozmite wings under the masthead), and Scott would send personal notes and valentines. I even have a Munchkin Times pendant Scott made with Shrinky Dinks!

I don't know if Scott did this for everyone, but some of my envelopes came very elaborately decorated.

If memory serves me right, all three newsletters ceased publication sometime in 1985. I completed three volumes (twelve issues) of The Pumperdink Press. The final four issues were spread over almost two years. My first full-time theatre job was sapping all my creative energy. Eric Gjovaag eventually turned the reins of The Oogaboo Review over to his Assistant Editor, Glenn Ingersoll, after volume five, and Glenn produced another couple issues. The last partial issue I have of The Munchkin Times dates from August 1985 and I think that was the final one.

What I find most interesting is that we Oz boys were about the same age, each of us built our little Oz journals at about the same time, and each journal ended as our lives became too "grown up" for us to manage the headaches of editorship. Yet we each also went on to fairly high-profile lives in the Oz community. Eric Gjovaag developed the earliest (and best) major website devoted to L. Frank Baum and Oz; I went on to found Hungry Tiger Press and edit Oz-story Magazine (not to mention this time-sap of a blog); and Scott Cummings is currently the editor of The Baum Bugle - one of the best Bugle editors that journal has had.

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I can't finish this blog without mentioning one other Ozzy newsletter, The Quadling Quarterly. It was founded by a young kid named John Plummer from Tennessee. He prepared three or four issues and disappeared. Maybe he'll read this blog and say hello! [Note: Just reconnected with John Plummer on Facebook!]

The 1970s and early 1980s produced a very large and very engaged group of young Oz fans. I wish I saw more of that happening today. Kids, teenagers, and families seem to be disappearing from organized Oz life. I know kids still love Oz, but although I've seen a special few, I haven't seen a whole new generation of Ozzies chomping at the bit since the early 1990s - certainly not in the Oz Club anyway - but here's hoping!

Eric Gjovaag - David Maxine - Scott Cummings - (these days)

Just for the Record

2012-01-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

Eloise Jarvis McGraw - early 1960s

My fondness for Ozzy and Oz-related recordings should come as no surprise to my readers - I have Ozzy recordings on everything from wax cylinders to eight tracks, from midis to mp3s.

My readers should also be aware of my interest in Royal Historian of Oz Eloise Jarvis McGraw. I was very excited a couple months ago to find two Oz-related LPs (I had never known existed) that fit neatly into both Ozzy interests.

Three of Eloise's non-Oz children's books were nominated for the prestigious Newbery Award - Moccasin Trail (1952), The Golden Goblet (1961), and The Moorchild (1996). It seems that in the mid-1970s the Newbery Awards produced a series of children's records of Newbery winners and Newbery Honor books.

The recording of The Golden Goblet was released in 1973 and the recording of Moccasin Trail came out in 1976.

The recordings are limited to one LP record each, and they are dramatizations with music, sound effects, and multiple actors, rather than a "reading" of the text. They are very well produced (as one would expect from the Newbery Awards).

These recordings were clearly made for school room and library use rather than for sale to the general public. The back of each record jacket features a synopsis, list of characters, background information on Ancient Egypt, Oregon, the Westward Movement, etc., as well as vocabulary words and "follow-up" activities.

I find no evidence that this sort of recording of The Moorchild was ever produced, though there is an unabridged version of The Moorchild produced by Recorded Books read by Virginia Leishman. In any case I'm quite pleased to have found copies of these two most unusual Oz-related recordings.

Sis Sez Sunday - 75

2012-01-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

Nice to see Sis's grandma has so much spunk!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 60, in April 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

What's In a Name?

2012-01-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

Many authors return to ideas again and again in their writings. The Royal Historians of Oz are no exception to the rule.

In the first chapter of The Hidden Valley of Oz by Rachel R. Cosgrove (Payes), we meet the main character, a little boy who’s busy building a kite. The boy is called Jam. On page two we learn that

Jam was really only his nickname. His full name was Jonathan Andrew Manley, so his initials spelled “Jam.”

Creating a nickname from a person’s initials isn’t unknown, but it’s fairly rare in real life. However, it isn’t all that rare in Rachel Cosgrove Payes’s fiction. Consider this passage on page twelve of Rachel’s romance novel Long Journey Home (1962), from the middle of a scene between the main character Ellen Leona Ford and her Uncle Simon.

Even that foolish nickname Elf was so unsuited
to her, she thought. Uncle Simon had started it
years ago, because the initials of her full name
spelled “elf,” but there was nothing magic
about Ellen and she would be the first to
admit it.

Two instances might be coincidence, but a name created from the initials of her main character turns up yet again in Rachel's books. In chapter eight of her gothic novel The Black Swan (1975) the main character Lady Margarita Elena Godoy loses her memory when her head is injured in a fall. She can’t remember any of her past. In the pocket of her dress she finds a patchbox given to her by her lover, although she can’t remember where it came from.

It was a beautiful little enameled box, with silver sides, exquisitely engraved. Turning it around in her fingers, she saw that there were initials on the box, initials formed of delicate white roses: M E G.

Then on page forty-nine, when a woman asks Lady Margarita her name, we read that

Recognizing peril in the woman’s words, she swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump of fear that was lodged in her throat. Who was she? She didn’t know. Then, she thought of the letters on the box hidden in her pocket. They spelled a common name.

“Of course I know who I am.” She put as much hauteur in her voice as she could muster. “My name is Meg.”

Rachel obviously wasn’t one to let a good idea go to waste. But once a decade might have been enough, since I've yet to find this naming convention in any of her other books. But there are still plenty of books to go, so we’ll see if she ever did it again.

White Edition Wednesday - TIK-TOK

2012-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

Last week we pieced together The Patchwork Girl of Oz, so this week we've little choice but to to wind up Tik-Tok of Oz. This is actually the first hardcover "white edition" that I ever read. I already owned the ten Rand McNally "white edition" paperbacks then available, but I had never actually seen one of the hardcovers until I found a copy of Tik-Tok at the Albuquerque Public Library. I checked it out and devoured it. I remember reading Baum's letter to the readers and wondering what the heck The Tik-Tok Man of Oz was - and I was really surprised at the wraparound cover design. And that unusual feature of this "white edition" gets us firmly into today's blog.

The cover of Tik-Tok is one of Dick Martin's greatest finds and best choices. It is based on an original drawing by John R. Neill that was meant for the dust jacket of the first edition in 1914. For some reason it was not used, and Dick probably found the artwork in Reilly and Lee's files in the early 1960s. It was first published as the cover of the Christmas 1961 issue of The International Wizard of Oz Club's journal The Baum Bugle.

It would have been such a great dust jacket back in 1914! In any case, it finally joined the text it was meant for in 1964. It is too bad it throws off the uniformity of the full "white edition" series by lacking a spine vignette and having the wagon and harness wrap around the spine - but who cares, it's a grand image! Since I knew Dick Martin had access to the original line art, I was surprised to notice that he redrew the faces of Betsy, Polychrome, Ozga, and Queen Ann.

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Also note that one can only see Neill's original spine lettering on the Bugle cover - Dick redrew it to make it narrower and a tad easier to read, and, of course, to alter the publisher's name.

I thought I'd take a few minutes on this title to discuss the four-color, hand-done, color separation technique that Dick used on these books. There used to be two distinct ways to prepare an image for printing in color. One could do it photographically which required a piece of finished full-color artwork which was then photographed four times using filters to create four separate printing plates: cyan (a light blue), magenta (a vivid pink), yellow, and black (called "k"). This photographic-separation technique was always used for high-quality reproduction, for photographs, fine art books, etc., but many publishers used a cheaper method - they had a graphic artist draw each of the printing plates by hand, using his imagination to "create" a color image. This is what Dick Martin did for the "white editions." Below is an image showing each of the four drawings Dick prepared to print the Tik-Tok cover.

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The black drawing features the main line drawing - essentially Neill's original drawing. The blue drawing shows the grass, fills in some of the clothing, and outlines the title. The red drawing fills in the "Oz" and the title, the plumes on Hank's back, and is lightly shaded in to make Ozga's gown pink. The yellow drawing has lots of solid color, showing the grass again, the wagon, and a base-color for Hank. So you see, the light blue overlaps the yellow to make green grass. When you add the blue and red shading visible in Hank to the heavy yellow of Hank, you get a brownish Hank! First grade color theory at work!

Dick did something a bit unusual. He didn't always use the standard four printing colors. For example, above, he used a bright stop-sign red instead of the usual process-color magenta. The light blue was Dick's choice for all the white editions, though sometimes Reilly & Lee used cyan (which is a bit darker) and makes some printings of the books look a bit odd.

OK, on to Tik-Tok's interior. The ownership page has been omitted in favor of the "Famous Oz Books" ad - but you can see that Dick has reused the upper portion of the image.

The cover of the original edition of Tik-Tok was very striking - perhaps one reason the original dust jacket design was abandoned back in 1914. Dick must have found the cover an appealing image, too, as he traced it and prepared a new frontispiece for the book - and eliminated Tik-tok's gun. Note, too the blue outlining of the title in the original cover design. It is clearly Dick's inspiration for the same thick blue outlining on the "white edition" cover.

There are four copies of the "white edition" of Tik-Tok here in the Tiger Den, yet every copy here lists all forty Oz books on page two. Does anyone out there have a copy listing only Baum's fourteen?

Eventually, Rand McNally did release Tik-Tok in paperback, though I only found it in 1978 just as the paperback rights were being pulled from Rand McNally. It was at the same store on the same visit that I first saw the Glinda paperback, too. Rand McNally never did publish paperbacks of Rinkitink and Lost Princess. Do any of my readers recall exactly when they first saw or purchased a copy of the Rand McNally Tik-Tok or Glinda?

Next week, The Scarecrow of Oz!

Sis Sez Sunday - 74

2012-01-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

If there was ever an advantage to being the rear end of a horse it's when one is skating on thin ice!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 60, in April 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

White Edition Wednesday - PATCHWORK GIRL

2012-01-18T06:30:00.000-08:00

Last week we looked at The Emerald City of Oz, so this week we get to spend some time with The Patchwork Girl of Oz. For the cover Dick Martin adapted the original 1913 pictorial dust jacket design seen below.

The new cover design is in fact wholly redrawn and re-lettered by Dick Martin, though he clearly stays very close to John R. Neill in spirit. Breaking up the edges of the orange background with the parchment effect is a nice touch and the removal of the "steps" that Scraps and Ojo seem to be sitting on makes the image a bit simpler and elegant. The Woozy on the spine is from the original edition of the book. It's interesting to compare Neill's original (below left) with Martin's redrawn version (below right).

In many ways I think Martin has improved the image, making Scraps and Ojo more visually appealing. I'm especially glad Dick got rid of the red eyes and the Fred Flintstone-esque five-o'clock shadow on the Patchwork Girl.

Dick Martin made a number of interesting modifications to the interior. He eliminated the original ownership leaf, but reused the illustration on the "Famous Oz Books" ad page.

Dick Martin made two really nice "fixes" to the fore-matter. In the original color edition (circa 1913-1935) the Patchwork Girl's hair on the half-title was printed in red. When the color was eliminated in 1935 it left the illustration a bit nonsensical, showing Scraps with no hair and some missing art where the hair used to be. Dick drew in new "hair" and inked in a bit of the missing art to make the picture whole once again.

Left: 1913 original, Center: typical 1935-1965 edition, Right: Dick's improved version.

Dick gave the same treatment to the picture of the Shaggy Man listening in on "the wireless," but note that Dick repositioned the sparking letters to avoid some rather ugly overlaps and clunkiness in Neill's original.

Left: 1913 original, Center: typical 1935-1965 edition, Right: Dick's improved version.

Bibliographic Oddities

The earliest copies probably featured a list of forty Oz books on page two, but none of the copies in the Tiger Den list forty Oz books. Can anyone out there confirm a copy listing all forty titles? However, in looking over copies I have access to, I found two variants of the book featuring the list of fourteen Oz books. In variant one, the "Famous Oz Books" ad has had the numeral "40" replaced by "14" in a new bold typeface and on the verso the ad lists the fourteen Baum books at the top of the page. Clearly the other twenty-six Oz books in the list have simply been eliminated. At the bottom of the page is the publisher's name (see below).

Variant One

Variant two, clearly later, has had the "Famous Oz Books" ad reset and partially rewritten, eliminating the need for a number at all. The list of the fourteen Baum books on the verso has been centered and the publisher's info has been eliminated.

Variant Two

What is odd about these two variants is that variant one was purchased new by me in 1979. It has a penciled-in price of $8.95 and it was bought at a major chain bookstore. The cover of this copy is also stamped in the lighter blue I believe Dick Martin preferred, yet this copy also has the under-sized boards, making the stamped image wrap wrongly. The interior is clearly quite early - the under-sized boards (I believe) indicate a later date. Variant two was recieved by Eric as a gift in 1971 and it has the proper-sized boards, but the blue ink on the front cover is the darker process-blue.

I find it very odd that a copy with an interior printed before 1971 shows up at a new bookstore in 1979 - though by that time the "white editions" were officially out of print. I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, but it is something to ponder. Any of you have any other variants?

That's it for Patchwork Girl right now - next time we'll pay a visit to Tik-Tok of Oz.

Pondering the Program

2012-01-17T00:18:00.000-08:00

Program Book for 2009

It's time for me to start giving some serious thought to my plans for the 2012 Winkie Convention Program Book. This year will be our fourth edition of the expanded convention guide.

If you've seen the Program Book you know that in addition to all the basic contents like the schedule and map and meal information, it also contains essays and articles about the books we are honoring at each convention. This year we are celebrating the centennial of one of L. Frank Baum's finest books, Sky Island. If you would like to write an essay or article on Sky Island or on Trot and Cap'n Bill, I'd be delighted to have it.

We are also celebrating Ruth Plumly Thompson's birthday with a special focus on her two Pumperdink books, Kabumpo in Oz and The Purple Prince of Oz, and I'd be happy to have an article or essay on RPT or her Pumperdink books.

The Winkie Convention can not pay for your submission, but we will make sure you get a copy of the Program Book - this can be especially nice to have if you aren't otherwise attending the convention. The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2012, though I'd appreciate them before then if possible.

If you would like to submit an original illustration or artwork, that is great, too! Images must be in black and white or grayscale and should measure proportionally 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".

For information on attending this year's Winkie Convention click here or click the Winkie Convention tab at the top of this blog. You may send submissions or submission questions to me at chair@winkies.org

Sis Sez Sunday - 73

2012-01-15T14:49:00.000-08:00

All Sis needs is Mickey Rooney and she could be in Strike Up the Band!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 59, in March 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Eric on the Road to Oz

2012-01-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

Today there's just a quick post to let you know that Eric Shanower will be speaking at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco next week. Details follow below. Hope to see you there!

Travel down the Yellow Brick Road with award-winning cartoonist Eric Shanower as he presents words and images from his many Oz projects through the years. Laugh as Shanower discloses his childhood efforts to channel the magic of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. Cheer as Shanower details his struggles to find a publisher for his early Oz comics. Sigh with relief as Shanower extolls his collaboration with Skottie Young on their New York Times best selling series of Oz graphic novels. Don’t miss this unique peek behind the curtain of today’s Oz comics and illustration.

The suggested donation for this event is $5. Please join us at the Cartoon Art Museum on Thursday, January 19, 2012 from 7:00-9:00pm for this special presentation.

For more info you can visit the Cartoon Art Museum's website by clicking here.

Rats!

2012-01-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

Not everyone has lived with an Oz character. But in the early 1990s I did. And I don't mean Eric Shanower; I mean Eric Shanower's pet rat, Percy - the Personality Kid.

Percy came to live with us after Eric was hired to illustrate Rachel Cosgrove Payes's The Wicked Witch of Oz. Percy was to play a large part in the book, and Eric felt strongly that one reason Percy had not been much loved in Hidden Valley of Oz was because Hidden Valley illustrator Dirk Gringhuis drew the original Percy (in Eric's words) "like a deformed guinea pig."

Dirk's Percy form HIDDEN VALLEY (1951)

Indeed, Dirk's Percy is almost uniformly ugly and unappealing. His paws are elongated and formless, his head often perched on top of his torso like a furry darning egg. Dirk seems never to have consulted rat anatomy or any rat photos. Occasionally Dirk's Percy is a bit more rat-like - but often he's just weird - especially when Dirk had to draw Percy in a non-rat-like posture, such as walking on his hind legs or riding in Jam's collapsible kite.

Eric determined to redeem Percy, to make him both look like a real rat and to make him a likable character. Percy was to play such a large part in the book that Eric thought photo research would not properly suffice, so he headed to the pet store and bought a rat. At the pet store Eric watched the assortment of rats, checking out their personalities, finally selecting "Percy" from the ratty riff-raff.

Eric sketched Percy, taught Percy to "pose," after a fashion, by placing food on top of the cage so Percy would stand on his hind legs. So not only did the illustrations of Percy in Wicked Witch look a lot more like a real rat - but the personality of this "real" Percy came through as well.

One thing to note about drawing rats from life is that male rats have rather large balls. Eric wanted to remain true to life, so there is a good deal of rat-scrotum in the book, though Eric kept poses as clean as possible for the most part, as in the fine illustration above.

The picture I remember the most about was the title page/frontispiece spread. Eric had drawn a life-sketch of the real Percy sleeping and decided to use it in the book. He then decided that it would be a fine title-page spread and he could fill up the space, and sort of tell a little story, if there were a lot of rat paw-prints. Eric needed some reference for rat prints so he dipped Percy's feet in blue watercolor and let him walk around on white paper. Eventually Eric got some good prints and Percy got a rat treat.

I think Rachel was pleased that Eric got a real rat to help him with the book. Rachel much liked rats. Eric got Percy in July 1992, and we had him for about seven months. Percy succumbed to a respiratory infection in early 1993. No rat ever had a better memorial than The Wicked Witch of Oz. So long, kiddo!

White Edition Wednesday - EMERALD CITY

2012-01-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

So sorry to keep you waiting so long for this installment of "White Edition Wednesday," but holiday travels made it difficult. Last time we took a trip down The Road to Oz - thus it was inevitable that our next stop be The Emerald City of Oz.

The cover was inspired by the pictorial label used on Emerald City circa 1917-1928 (at right), which was based on the original first edition endpapers for Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz.

For the front cover of the "white edition" Dick seems to have used a photostat of the Dorothy and the Wizard endpapers rather than redraw the image. But for the back cover he has traced in busts of Jack Pumpkinhead and Tik-Tok and he redrew part of Dorothy so that her arm hangs in front of the wall. Dick also eliminated Eureka. It's a very handsome design. You can see the original Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz endpapers below.

Original 1908 endpapers for DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ

But there is one very interesting part of this cover design which I'd not particularly noticed before. The Nome King seems to be a Dick Martin original. I can find no Neill illustration that this Nome King is based on. With the background removed it's easy to see how very Martinesque this fine drawing of Roqaut really is. [Blogger's note: A reader has pointed out that Dick based this drawing of Roquat on the cover of the 1913 "Little Wizard" story, Tik-Tok and the Nome King.]

Dick Martin made very few modifications to the interior of Emerald City. There are only a few additions to the fore-matter. The "Famous Oz Books" ad on page one is illustrated with a modified version of the front cover illustration; Page four features a vignette of Ozma from the front cover. Indeed, the only real addition is the pair of lovely drawings on pages eight and nine of Ozma's and Dorothy's heads that were pulled from the original 1910 Emerald City endpaper design.

Original 1910 endpaper design for THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ

The earliest copies of the book list all forty Oz books, later printings reduce the list to Baum's fourteen. I have one query for my readers - Paul Bienvenue's Collector's Guide to Oz and L. Frank Baum shows an Emerald City "white edition" cover that is much darker, much more "emerald" that the usual "key-lime pie" color most copies of the book feature. Does anyone have a "white edition" Emerald City with this darker green? It may just be an oddity of Bienvenue's photograph - but it's also possible that some copies were much darker.

It actually looks like this "variant" might have been printed in true CMYK, the four process-color printing colors, cyan, magneta, yellow, and black (k). But Dick had clearly specified his own non-standard ink colors, so whether this odd-ball version is early, late, or a printer's glitch is hard to say. If you have one of these darker copies let me know if it had ads for fourteen or forty or if it has an inscription date.

OK, that's it for this week - next week we pay a visit to The Patchwork Girl of Oz!

Let it Snow!

2012-01-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Oz acquisitions of 2011 was this very nice first edition copy of The Shaggy Man of Oz in a rather nice first dust jacket.

I've generally enjoyed the Snow Oz books. They don't violate Baum's Oz as much as Thompson's often do. I've also developed a fondness for Snow because he was gay in a time when it was not so easy to be so. I wish someone had done an in-depth interview with him, or an oral-history of sorts (though that really wasn't being done much back then). Snow did leave his personal papers to Fred Meyer - but Fred proceeded to destroy all of Snow's personal letters and documents not of an Ozzy nature. It's a great shame. Snow's private papers might have shed some light on his private life in New York City but Fred had a homophobic streak and probably felt he was improving Jack's reputation by destroying the personal material.

The thing that makes this copy of Shaggy Man a favorite acquisition of 2011 is that it is inscribed by Snow on the ownership page: "This Book Belongs to Pat and Janet Nelson with love from the author, Jack Snow".

I've no idea who Pat and Janet are, nor whether Pat is male or female thus the book could be inscribed to an adult couple or to two little girls. Perhaps they were twins like Twink and Tom? In any case I'm very pleased to have this small but direct contact with the fourth Royal Historian of Oz.

Sis Sez Sunday - 72

2012-01-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

I think Sis's boyfriend Bill is kind of a jerk. Keep writing, Sis - freckles and all!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 59, in March 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

The Return of RETURN TO OZ

2012-01-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

This fine French Return to Oz picture book was discovered a few months ago by my Ozzy friend Freddy. I had never seen one before and it wasn't listed in the published Return to Oz bibliography.

Given my fondness for Return to Oz and my interest in learning French, I had to have one! Knowing what to look for, my Ozzy friend Freddy pointed me toward a second copy - and voila! - I immediately ordered it from a fellow named Jordan in France. It took quite a few e-mails, some in my mediocre French and some in the seller's much better English, but finally the deal was done, the book was shipped. Then one day a few weeks later I go to the mailbox and the postman greets me saying he has a damaged package for me. Indeed, he ONLY has the damaged package for me - the large envelope covered in French stamps is ripped open and empty. The book is missing.

I scold the post office. I sob a little. I call the dead letter office, describe the missing book, and leave my cell phone number, then sob a little. I call Freddy and sob a little. And then Eric and I take off for our holiday trip.

One day out on the road I get a call from a nice woman named Roseanne at the dead letter office. She has found my book! I explain I am on the road for the holidays and will be back on January fourth. She says she will hold it and mail it to me to arrive on the fifth. It arrives. My book and I are happily united and my faith in the U.S. Post Office is greatly renewed. Thanks to Freddy, Jordan, and Roseanne for helping me get such a nice copy of Oz un Monde Extraordinaire!

Dorothy of Oz

2012-01-02T23:01:00.000-08:00

We're happy to offer another preview treat today - the cover by Eric Shanower for the first issue of the Dorothy of Oz prequel comic series coming in March from IDW!

Sis Sez Sunday - 71

2012-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

That is no way to spend New Year's Day, Sis! Besides, I think the cop saw you!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 58, in February 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

WEW Goes on Vacation!

2011-12-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

What is WEW you ask? Why, "White Edition Wednesday," of course! But WEW is going on vacation for two weeks. But it will be back with The Emerald City of Oz on January 11th.

Now to cheer yourself up, why not go listen to our internet radio station for a while? It's free and it's Ozzy! What's not to like?

It's easy to listen to Emerald City Radio on Live365. Just 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.

If you don't want to hear any ads, you can become a Live365 VIP listener. Just click on the banner ad at the bottom of today's blog. It costs a few bucks a month to be a Live365 VIP, but as a VIP you can listen to a wider range of internet radio stations and you'll skip the advertisements.

Emerald City Radio allows a limited number of free non-VIP listeners. So in the slim chance you're kicked off the station or can't connect as a free listener, try again later when there may be fewer listeners. Or convert your account to VIP and you'll never have to leave Live365 unless you want to.

So come on and give Emerald City Radio a try. Our current playlist is over 7 1/2 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!

Gargoyles!

2011-12-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

I thought you might like an advance look at the super cover for issue #5 of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz from Marvel Comics. The wooden gargoyles were one of the few things in the Oz books that scared me when I was little.

Not too long after I read Dorothy and the Wizard for the first time, I saw a TV movie called Gargoyles (1972) which scared the bejeezus out of me. It was a pretty scary movie - and not badly made for a TV film in the early seventies - but much of the film was set in New Mexico and some of the location-shots were filmed in Albuquerque where I was living at the time, which added a lot of verisimilitude to the movie.

The Wooden Gargoyles still make me think of that movie - so scary!

Sis Sez Sunday - 70

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

You tell 'em, Sis!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 58, in February 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Poor Lambert!

2011-12-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

Today's blog stars Lambert from Eloise Jarvis McGraw's The Forbidden Fountain of Oz. I have two things to say: First, I thought I'd share the little-known fact that in the early drafts of the Forbidden Fountain manuscript Lambert was actually named Billabong! I also decided to share Eloise's own recipe for Lemon-Lamb Ragout. It sounds very tasty! Poor Lambert ...

Lemon-Lamb Ragout

By Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Serves four generously. For a party of six, use 1-1/2 times these amounts. For eight, double. If making half recipe, only cut sauce by 1/4. This recipe may be made using veal or chicken instead of lamb, but I think lamb is best of all.

3 lbs. boneless lamb, in 1-1/2 inch cubes (This requires about a 5 lb. leg of lamb. Lamb shoulder may be used but involves much more waste.)
1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. oil
2 slices of bacon, diced
1/2 tsp. marjoram (dried)
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1 tsp. salt
(Thickening Mixture) 3 Tbsp. flour mixed with 1/2 cup cold water
1 can (13 oz.) chicken broth, regular strength
1/4 cup dry Vermouth
1 bay leaf
a clove garlic, minced or pressed
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
6 quarter-inch slices of lemon
1 package frozen or 1 can of artichoke hearts
1/2 cup cream (optional)
6 additional very thin slices of lemon for garnish
Fresh dill or dried dillweed for garnish

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Trim fat from lamb, dry it thoroughly in paper towels. In a lidded flameproof casserole, about 4-5 quart capacity, melt butter, add oil, slowly brown bacon. Add lamb a few pieces at a time, removing them (and bacon) as they get brown enough, until all are pale brown. Return all lamb and bacon to casserole. Sprinkle with the marjoram, cayenne, and salt, stir, and let cook on low heat about five minutes; meanwhile, heat in a saucepan the chicken broth with thickening mixture stirred in, adding Vermouth when sauce has thickened slightly. Stir sauce into meat (all returned to casserole by this time, of course), add the bay leaf, garlic and Worcestershire sauce. Lay the lemon slices on top. Bring casserole to a boil, then cover and place in lower third of the preheated oven. Reduce temperature of oven if necessary to keep meat at a bare simmer. Cook 1 to 1-1/2 hours, until meat is fork tender. Tip casserole and skim off all fat. Discard lemon slices and bay leaf (if you can find it).

Up to this point the recipe may be made up to a day ahead, simply allow the ragout to cool, cover tightly with foil and refrigerate. To reheat, bring to room temperature and place in 325 degree oven for 30-40 minutes until stew is just bubbling.

To finish heated stew: Add 1 package of frozen artichoke hearts, cooked and warm, or 1 can artichoke heart, drained, rinsed, and warm (at least room temperature). Stir in 1/2 cup heavy cream (optional). I often use half-and-half and it's just as good.

Transfer the ragout to a warmed oven-proof dish suitable for the table - about 9" x 12" with shallow sides to contain the sauce.

Garnishes: Put 6 very thin lemon slices in a row on the stew; sprinkle all liberally with 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill or 1 tsp. dried dillweed (or more). Serve with rice or noodles.

A green salad and a good French bread are all you need otherwise, and a really good red wine such as Italian Barolo or Chianti Classico. This meal turns out satisfying but light, and dessert-lovers may spread themselves (no pun intended) on a fruity tart or pie, or maybe cheesecake.

—Eloise Jarvis McGraw

White Edition Wednesday - ROAD

2011-12-21T07:35:00.000-08:00

Last week we looked at Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - this Wednesday we journey down The Road to Oz. This "white edition" is relatively unchanged from the usual Reilly & Lee edition beyond the new cover design and a few minor additions to the fore matter - but the cover is one of my favorites. The front cover is based on one of John R. Neill's finest pen-and-ink drawings from the interior of the book. I don't know that Dick owned this original drawing at the time he designed the "white edition," but he did eventually have it in his collection.


Original Neill drawing from THE ROAD TO OZ originally in the collection of Dick Martin.

My suspicion is that Dick already owned the drawing. He certainly would have had access to it in the Reilly & Lee files - and I think the new "white edition" cover is more than likely based on the original art rather than the version printed in the book. There is a lightness and subtlety to it - this is one cover image that does not appear to my eyes to be "Martinized."

Cover of the 1909 First Edition.

The back cover is based on the back cover of the first edition (see above) from 1909, though it has been redrawn by Dick and has a much more attractive color scheme than the original. Toto on the spine is based on the original spine illustration, though Dick has added the blue ribbon around Toto's neck.

Of course the "white edition" of Road is the only one in the series to have its correct original endpapers, since Dick chose these handsome Road to Oz end sheets for each of the fourteen volumes.

As I mentioned above, the fore matter in Road got very few changes. For the "Famous Oz Books" ad on page one Dick created a new drawing based on the donkey-headed Shaggy Man from the cover of the first edition.

Dick added an Ozzy border to the original ownership leaf (see below) which I think quite an attractive change.

Original at left - "white edition" at right.

Facing the half-title page we come to an odd choice - Dick has added a flock of butterflies drawn by Maginel Wright Enright for Baum's Policeman Bluejay (1907).

The title page has been reset and Dick has added a small head of Jack Pumpkinhead to replace the usual Reilly & Lee "lamp" device. Finally, facing the author's note, Dick has printed one of the "laughing children" chapter headings with an "Oz" in the center. And after the ads at the end of the book we get the redrawn Toto head from the spine once again.

The Road to Oz was my favorite Oz book as a child and in many ways it still is. No Oz book but Wizard introduces so many good and long-lasting characters, the alleged plotlessness never bothered me - road-trips don't have plots - and no Oz book ever had finer illustrations.

I try to add a little bonus item to many of the "white edition" posts and today's is a photo of young Eric Shanower (with his sister), holding the first full-length Oz book he ever had - the "white edition" of The Road to Oz.

Eric Shanower holding his first Oz book - THE ROAD TO OZ.

"White Edition Wednesday" is going away for the holidays but it will be back on January 11th with The Emerald City of Oz.

Sis Sez Sunday - 69

2011-12-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Well, these days Sis would be welcome to join up. But from a purely historical perspective it's interesting to consider what's going on in Europe in January of 1940 and what's coming down the pike twenty-three months later.

That said, please don't try jumping off the roof with an umbrella!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 57, in January 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Emerald City Radio

2011-12-17T19:27:00.000-08:00

We in the Tiger Den are delighted to announce that Hungry Tiger Press has its own internet radio station. And it's available free to all listeners! Our current playlist includes music from almost every Oz musical and Oz film - songs from the 1903 Wizard of Oz on up to the latest Oz hit by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

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.

We're Off to Blog the Wizard!

2011-12-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted to announce that I am a guest blogger today on The New York Public Library's "Musical of the Month" series discussing the 1903 Wizard of Oz musical.

An initial post yesterday by blogger and NYPL Digital Curator Doug Reside included a digital version of Baum's 1903 copyright deposit script.

Many of you probably know I've been quite fascinated with this particular show for the last decade or so and am working to finish my long overdue book on the show. I've also produced the award-winning 2 CD set Vintage Recordings from the 1903 Broadway Musical The Wizard Of Oz which earned Grammy nomination as "Best Historical Album" of 2003.

Anyway, go on over and read my guest blogging antics on the NYPL site by clicking here.

http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/12/15/musical-month-production-history-1903-oz

White Edition Wednesday - DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD

2011-12-14T02:09:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday we looked at Ozma of Oz and today we examine Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - and since this title has more changes than usual for the white editions, let's get right to it!

I think this is one of Dick Martin's more striking covers. I especially like the bright red that unifies the design. The front cover is based on Neill's original pictorial cover label (at right). The piglet on the spine is from The Oz Toy Book (1916). The back cover has always been a favorite of mine, too. I can remember staring at it for hours when I was little, fascinated by Eureka in the cage and wearing that amazing suit, and wondering why a cat prisoner had a little pistol. Perhaps she would have used it had the trial gone worse than it did. The image is from one of Neill's best color plates in the 1907 edition.

Dick Martin radically altered the fore matter to this title, so we'll start on the very first page of the "white edition." For the "Famous Oz books" ad Dick used the drawing from the original half-title page. For some reason he redrew it - it's subtle but it's clearly been redrawn from scratch. (See below)

1907 half-title at left - Dick Martin redraw at right.

Dick Martin's choice for the new ownership leaf is especially odd. The one seen below left is the original 1907 version showing Dorothy and Eureka. In 1916 the text was re-imposed and the original ownership leaf was replaced with one from Rinkitink in Oz (below center). Oddly, Dick Martin chose a surprisingly generic image from John R. Neill's picture book series "The Children's Own Books," (below right) rather than restoring the original 1907 ownership leaf in the "white edition."

1907 first edition at left - center image circa 1916-1965 - white edition at right.

However, that image may have led Dick to the discovery of a little-known drawing Neill had done for Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz in 1907 that had not made it into the original edition.

1980 "Children's Own Books" advertisement and half-title page.

And Dick turned that image into the new "white edition" half-title page - the first time this picture was ever printed in the book it was drawn for! The small image of the Wizard facing the new half title is a redrawn portion of the chapter heading for Chapter Thirteen.

The "white edition" frontispiece is a new black and white drawing by Dick Martin based on one of Neill's original color plates.

Dick was able to use nine of the original sixteen color plates in the 1965 "white edition" if you count the back cover. Most are like the above example where Dick just traced and inked the original image, but for the charming picture of Dorothy facing page one, Dick used only a portion of the original plate. (See below)

Here are a couple more examples. When I was a kid it never occurred to me that these drawings were stylistically off from Neill. To my eyes now they seem very cartoony and modern - especially the one below, featuring the Wizard giving Gwig "what for."

One reason Dick added these black and white "color plates" to this title and didn't for the other titles is that Dorothy and the Wizard is the shortest Oz book by page count. The story isn't shorter, but Neill did less artwork, so it's always been a thinner volume. And as far as page count goes, the original edition included the sixteen color plates (both fronts and backs) in the pagination; thus the first edition text ends on page 256. The "white edition" pagination, even with all Dick's new artwork and beginning the page numbers on the first page of text, only allows the "white edition" to reach page 220 on the final page of text.

A few other little changes occur at the end of the book. Dick omitted the tail-piece of Ozma gazing out the window. Dick created a new "The End" illustration after the last of the ads by combining several different images of the piglets.

There are two mystery images in the book - let's see if my reader's can place them. One is the fine Neill illustration facing the "To My Readers" page. It looks like some images I've seen for John R. Neill bookplates.

The other is this little guy. He appears on the new title page Dick prepared. He doesn't look Neillish to me - nor very Dick Martin either, for that matter. Does anyone recognize him?

Bibliographic Oddities

Like most of the "white editions," the earliest copies of the book list all forty Oz books in the ad at the beginning of the book. Later copies reduce the list to Baum's fourteen. However, at least two copies of the "white edition" have been reported that have old 1950s text blocks in them. It doesn't seem at all unlikely that Reilly & Lee might have had some unbound text blocks hanging around in storage and bound them up in fancy new "white edition" covers. And if they did this with Dorothy and the Wizard, perhaps they did it with other Oz titles, too! It may be simply that the revised Dorothy and the Wizard text is just different enough that someone noticed this publishing oddity. So check all of your white editions as we go along and do let me know if you have any older editions bound up in "white edition" covers.

Well, that's it for today. Next week we'll take a walk down The Road to Oz.

Go Fish!

2011-12-13T00:58:00.000-08:00

Well, in a couple weeks issue No. 4 of Marvel Comics's Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz will be out and Dorothy and her friends will be walking on water in the incredible Valley of Voe.

As you may remember, Eureka thinks this trick is a nifty way to possibly catch a fish, but Skottie Young may have given Eureka more than she bargained for!

You'll have to go buy the issue to see what happens!

Sis Sez Sunday - 68

2011-12-11T19:48:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays and best winter wishes from Sis and the gang!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 57, in January 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Happy Birthday, Rachel Cosgrove!

2011-12-11T01:43:00.000-08:00

Today, December 11, 2011, would have been Rachel Cosgrove Payes's 89th birthday.

In the summer of 1979 I finally obtained a copy of her first book The Hidden Valley of Oz (not a first edition) and after reading it I wanted to write Rachel Cosgrove and get my book signed. I wrote Fred Meyer, then secretary of the Oz Club, for her address, but he warned me she'd probably not answer as she hated Oz and hated Oz fans. But he sent me her address and I decided to try my luck.

Click to Enlarge

I got an immediate reply from Rachel and she couldn't have been more charming. She even doodled little pictures of her characters Percy and Spots from Hidden Valley at the bottom of the letter. She happily agreed to autograph my book and signed the letter "Oz forever!"

It turns out she didn't dislike Oz or dislike Oz fans - she disliked Fred Meyer. When the Oz Club was founded in the late 1950s Fred had written to Rachel asking if she'd like to join. She politely declined for various reasons, including having two young children to raise. But Fred kept badgering her - and he really kept badgering her to send him a copy of her then-unpublished second Oz book, The Wicked Witch of Oz. She finally had to read him the riot act - asking him to leave her alone - something that I'm sure she could do quite well! And Fred wrote her off as an Oz hater.

Now, Rachel did indeed have a problem understanding grown men devoting their lives to Oz. She repeatedly said, "Oz is for kids." Rachel also had great trouble comprehending what she called "the collector mentality." But to some extent these were just sound bytes Rachel would toss out. Anyone who makes herself a Wicked Witch of the South costume (pointy hat included) and delights in showing off her silver high heels (as silver slippers) must have a big streak of Ozzy fandom running through her veins.

So back to that first letter from 1979. I sent Rachel my copy of Hidden Valley and she signed it. We struck up a pen-pal sort of correspondence, exchanging a couple letters a year and birthday and Christmas cards. In early 1985 I was going to be in New York State and I wrote and asked if I might pay her a visit. She said she'd be delighted. Rachel was living in Shrub Oak, New York, about half an hour north of NYC. She welcomed me in, we talked for a bit, she showed me the shelves that held copies of all of her books (almost forty titles at that time), and we also looked at her research library which she used in writing the gothic romance novels she wrote in her latter years.

Rachel Cosgrove Payes in her living room, January 1985.

The most surprising thing about the visit was finding Rachel had a bad foot. She had fought a serious battle with cancer a couple decades before, and the experimental chemo that saved her life dissolved some bones in her foot. She got around fine, and her foot never stopped her from doing extensive world travel or going dancing with her husband Norman. I had acquired a first edition of Hidden Valley by this time and I brought it along, hoping she would sign it. She happily agreed to do so.

We continued to exchange notes on occasion - especially after I started attending NYU. But in the summer of 1990 our relationship kicked into higher gear. Eric Shanower and I had just started living together and suddenly Eric was asked by the Oz Club to illustrate Rachel's Wicked Witch of Oz. The Oz Club had just gotten the rights to reprint Hidden Valley of Oz, too. Rachel decided to attend the Munchkin Convention that year and her Ozzy renaissance began. She and Eric wrote back and forth quite a bit while he was illustrating the book, Rachel became a regular at the Munchkin Convention, and in 1994 I asked her to write something Ozzy for the first issue of my forthcoming anthology Oz-story. A few months later a long short story arrived in the mail, "Percy and the Shrinking Violet."

Eric, Rachel, and David at the OZ-STORY No. 1 Publication Party - June 1995

She wrote me another story, "Spots in Oz," for Oz-story No. 3. She and Norman had become good friends. Eric and I held publication parties for each issue of Oz-story and Rachel and Norman always came. Rachel often brought little hand-made gifts and bottles of wine, she baked Hidden Valley muffins for us, she went to a lot of trouble to track down a refrigerator magnet set she thought Eric and I needed - it was a Michelangelo Statue of David magnet complete with removable Santa suit! It's on our current refrigerator still. Every few weeks Eric and I would get a letter (sometimes addressed to our dog) and Rachel would have scribbled some complaint about writing, clipped a cartoon, and thrown in some coupons for something she thought we might need. Rachel was no longer the Royal Historian of Oz - she'd just become a good friend.

Happy Birthday, Rachel.

Comics and More Comics

2011-12-09T00:10:00.000-08:00

A few weekends ago Eric Shanower and I paid a visit to the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco to see a wonderful exhibit of Oz comics including lots of Eric's original artwork as well as many pieces by Skottie Young.

There's lots of cool stuff to see - I'm also pleased to say I loaned them a page of Skottie Young art from my collection, too. One of my favorite things in the exhibition was the Denslow Father Goose comic page and also the several Neill Nip and Tuck comic pages. All the original Shanower art is great - but since it usually resides here in the Tiger Den it doesn't seem as special to me as it might to others - though I do like seeing it all matted and framed and hanging on the wall.

We’re off to see the Wizard! The Cartoon Art Museum celebrates The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with an exhibition featuring vintage newspaper tearsheets and original artwork spanning over 100 years of classic comics.

At the dawn of the 20th century, L. Frank Baum created a world of wonders that was to hold a permanent place in the culture of America: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Then in 1904, to promote his second book, Baum, along with master cartoonist Walt McDougall, brought his famed characters to Earth in a new medium, the comic strip. Famed Oz illustrators W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill also launched their own syndicated comic strips in the early 20th Century. The Cartoon Art Museum’s exhibition will include a selection of tearsheets from these talented artists: McDougall’s Queer Visitors from Marvelous Land of Oz, Denslow’s Father Goose and Billy Bounce, and Neill’s Nip and Tuck, courtesy of historian and publisher Peter Maresca of Sunday Press.

Acclaimed writer and artist Eric Shanower’s first Oz comic, The Enchanted Apples of Oz, was published in 1986, beginning his 25-year (and counting!) association with Baum’s characters. This exhibition will feature highlights from five of Shanower’s Oz graphic novels, as well as a selection of art from his latest series of Eisner Award-winning Oz adaptations for Marvel Comics illustrated by Skottie Young. Additional collaborators include Anna-Maria Cool and the legendary Ramona Fradon.

Presentations and booksignings featuring publisher Peter Maresca and writer/artist Eric Shanower are in the planning stages. Information on these and other Oz-related events will be available soon.

The show runs through April 15, 2012 - If you're in the area go check it out!

White Edition Wednesday - OZMA

2011-12-07T00:33:00.000-08:00

Last week we looked at The Land of Oz - so today we come to the "white edition" of Ozma of Oz. Dick Martin's changes to the interior of Ozma were minimal and most of our discussion today will center on the cover design.

If you downloaded the Ozmapolitan last week (and you were very observant) you might have noticed that the covers for The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz on the final page of the Ozmapolitan do not quite match the published books; they seem to be mock-ups. This may indicate that Land and Ozma were the last of the 1964 releases to be designed.

The Land of Oz mock-up is quite different, while the Ozma mock-up seems essentially the same. It looks like Dick Martin simply took a stat of the old 1920s cover label and stuck it on a 1950s edition of Ozma (note the semi-script Reilly & Lee imprint on the spine).

This cover label with the crowd of Oz characters peering around a short brick wall was first used as the original dust-jacket design in 1907. It became the first pictorial cover label for Ozma around 1918 or '19 and remained in use until it was replaced by the so-called "slinky Ozma" cover in 1929.

Cover of OZMA OF OZ circa 1918 to 1929.

As you can see, if you compare images, Dick Martin completely redrew the image; he also added cast shadows to create more light and dark dynamics for the new cover. And of course, the colors are new. The spine is a slightly redrawn version of the original spine illustration.

For the back cover Dick utilized a section of the original pictorial end papers, redrawn to eliminate the background, and rotated slightly.

Original endpaper design from 1907.

This back cover design brings us to an unusual bit of Oz merchandising. The back covers of the "white editions" of Wizard, Ozma, and Glinda were issued as posters by the Ozco Poster Company of Beverly Hills. I have no idea why they selected only these three images or who they were.

1967 Poster from the Ozco Poster Company

The posters measure 20" x 28.5". The posters from Wizard and Ozma are dated 1967, but the Glinda poster is dated 1969. The dates indicate that they were sold separately, yet my three came as a set in a plastic sleeve with a small label saying Ozco Posters, featuring an illustration of the Tin Woodman. These are the only three designs to be made into posters as far as I know - I asked Dick about them in the early 1980s and he said these were the only three, also.

The interior of the "white edition" of Ozma is little changed from the then-current Reilly & Lee edition. A new page one has been added showing the text ad for "The Famous Oz books," for which Dick has used the illustration of the Scarecrow and Billina from the verso of the "List of Chapters." On the backside of this new page is the usual listing of the Oz books. The earliest copies no doubt list all forty titles while later ones cut the list to Baum's fourteen. On the verso of the ownership page Dick has created a new illustration adapting the drawing of Tik-Tok and a Wheeler from the original endpaper design.

Dick did some repair work to the "List of Chapters" illustration (see below). When the color was eliminated from the illustrations in the 1930s, Ozma's long sleeves (originally printed in blue) disappeared creating some nonsensical holes in the illustration. Dick redrew them.

On the verso of this page Dick created a new illustration of the Cowardly Lion, Hungry Tiger, and Billina looking thru an Oz logo to replace the image of the Scarecrow and Billina he moved to the ad of page one. This new image was adapted from the 1907 back cover design.

So that's it for our blog on the "white edition" of Ozma of Oz. We'll close with the handsome bookmark below, prepared to publicize the new "white editions." Next week we'll explore Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz!

Who Stole the Sexing Stones?

2011-12-06T01:57:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Rachel Cosgrove's SF novel The Deathstones, published by Avalon Books in 1964. As with all of Rachel's SF for Avalon, the book was published under her pseudonym E. L. Arch. Most of my readers know that Rachel Cosgrove was the fifth Royal Historian of Oz, author of The Hidden Valley of Oz and The Wicked Witch of Oz. I've kind of gotten onto a Cosgrove kick lately. I had to dig thru my Cosgroviana a few weeks ago to find a checklist of Rachel's work for a friend who's been bit by the research bug. I wish him lots of luck and much fun!

But as I was saying, I just finished reading The Deathstones. The novel begins on the planet Isis in the Ranian system. Captain Jack Landers is looking for a crew for his small spaceship, the Motley. He and his first-mate hire three peculiar aliens to crew the ship, and yes, Rachel makes a joke about the Motley Crew several times. The three aliens are called X, Y, and Z.

X is the most interesting. He's a protoplasm blob sort of like Odo from Deep Space Nine, except that X can't take other forms. X is a native of the planet Isis. The species is quite intelligent, but can't communicate directly with humans. They can, however, absorb information or instructions if they are in direct physical contact with the person thinking said information. These Ranians (the blobs) have no gender until they make a pilgrimage to the Temple of the Sexing Stones. They enter the temple as grey blobs and leave as either bright red or deep violet blobs who must then mingle with a blob of the opposite color.

Well, Captain Landers is hired by six humans to take them to Osiris (the most distant planet in the system). The bulk of the novel plays out on the crowded little spaceship. The passengers consist of five men and one woman; Captain Landers is none too pleased to have a woman on board. His attitude is very misogynistic, as are the attitudes of the other male passengers. Oddly, the woman is in fact kind of awful. I kept hoping Rachel would redeem her or address the sexist attitudes of the men, but she did not. At one point Amanda says, "I'm such a dope about mechanical things . . . I need a man around to help me." She's simpering, ditzy, and manipulative. Within a few chapters someone has killed her and the book plays out as a murder mystery.

But wait, there's a subplot! Halfway through the journey they hear over the news service that Isis is in chaos - the Sexing Stones have been stolen! Without them the gray blobs will never discover their genders, won't be able to "intermingle" with the opposite color, and there will be no more baby blobs. But in the end the Sexing Stones are found, the murderer gets what he deserves, and all ends as it should with a little help from the Deathstones.

The book was a quick and pleasant read. The grumpy pessimistic captain, the small crew, the half-dozen passengers with secrets (one of whom is a preacher), tooling around a single solar system at sub-light speed definitely reminded me of Joss Whedon's Firefly.

I got my copy of the book many years ago, but never sat down to read it. I wish I had so I could have discussed a few things with Rachel, such as Amanda's character, which seems so odd coming from the strong, well-educated woman Rachel was. I did ask Rachel to sign my copy of The Deathstones, and I was very pleased with what she wrote. I do miss her friendship.

You can read about E. L. Arch's Bridge to Yesterday by clicking here.

Sis Sez Sunday - 67

2011-12-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

Sis was pretty ahead of the times to be this down on smoking in 1940! Somehow I thought Ruth Plumly Thompson smoked, too.

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 56, in December 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

White Edition Wednesday - LAND

2011-11-30T00:28:00.000-08:00

Last week we discussed the "white edition" of Wizard. Today we discuss The Land of Oz. Reilly & Lee's edition of Land from the early 1940s until the 1964 "white edition" was quite unattractive. It had a dreary cover label by a staff artist, and the book had been re-typeset. The illustrations were getting blobby and were showing a lot of plate wear. Dick Martin took the opportunity to give Land a complete overhaul in the "white edition."

For the front cover Dick Martin adapted the pictorial cover label design that had been used by Reilly & Lee from the early 1920s through the early 1940s. He used the original spine illustration of General Jinjur and rendered it in color. The back cover is extremely interesting. It is based on a very rare advertising poster for the original publication of The Marvelous Land of Oz in 1904. The only known copy was preserved in one of L. Frank Baum's personal scrapbooks which Dick Martin happened to own.

There is one major - but not very apparent - improvement for the "white edition" Land of Oz over the mediocre '40s and '50s edition that Reilly & Lee had been peddling. Dick had them reshoot the interior from a good Reilly & Britton copy, thus restoring the original typesetting and greatly improving the reproduction of the line-art illustrations.

A typical copy of The Land of Oz from the period between1935 and 1964 had the following fore-matter: blank endpapers, a generic title page, copyright page, author's note, dedication, list of chapters, small image of Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, first page of chapter one. Dick's design for the "white edition" was somewhat more generous: he gave Land (and all the subsequent "white editions") lovely pictorial black and red endpapers from the first edition of The Road to Oz.

Endpaper design used in all "white editions" except for some copies of WIZARD.

The new fore-matter begins with a mini-essay called "The Famous Oz books," featuring the illustration also seen on page 57 of the "white edition." The next spread features a list of the Oz books and a new ownership leaf..

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Dick created the new ownership leaf (above center) by borrowing the rather generic one from Rinkitink in Oz (above left). He eliminated the kids and the rabbit and traced in Glinda from the Land of Oz color plate seen above right. The next spread features the drawing of General Jinjur from the spine and a new half-title page that Dick created by using a portion of the original 1904 endpapers (below).

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Dick greatly improved the title-page spread, as you can see in the comparison below. He traced one of the original color plates to create a new frontispiece and he slightly modified the original 1904 title page, removing the word "Marvelous" and the reference to Montgomery and Stone, and changing the publisher's name from Reilly & Britton to Reilly & Lee.

ABOVE Land of Oz circa 1935-1963. BELOW: 1964 "white edition."

The next spread is the copyright page and Author's Note. Dick has restored the original 1904 typography for both.

The verso of the "white edition's" Author's Note features a line art version of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman as pictured on the front cover. At this point Dick Martin adds one more page, a second half-title featuring the illustration from page 127 of the "white edition." On the verso of that is a picture of Tip that Dick has traced from the color plate where the main characters meet the Wogglebug.

The Land of Oz was one of the original eight "white editions" released in 1964. To publicize them, as well as the publication of the "poster edition" of Wizard, Dick Martin prepared a new issue of The Ozmapolitan, the imaginary newspaper of the Emerald City. You can download a PDF of the entire issue by clicking here.

If you look through the paper, it's pretty obvious that at this point Reilly & Lee still had plans to keep all forty Oz books in print. There are news articles in the paper about several later Oz books, including Pirates, Captain Salt, Hidden Valley, and Merry Go Round. By 1965 the decision had been made to let the non-Baum Oz titles go out of print.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ODDITIES
This section will be modified as more information on variants comes in

I suspect that in the earliest "white edition" copies of Land the mini-essay "The Famous Oz Books" appearing on page one lists the number of Oz books at "40" in paragraph two, line three, and that the list of Oz books on the verso lists all forty titles. Please do let me know if you have a copy that does indeed list all forty books and what the number is on page one. The ads at the back of the book are the usual synopses of the fourteen Baum books. One other oddity - my copy has four blank leaves at the end after the last page of ads. Eric's copy has only one blank leaf after the ads. My copy with the multiple blank leaves also has the endpapers printed on a very heavy paper similar to a stiff card stock. I suspect my copy is a later printing of the "white edition."

Next week we'll explore Ozma of Oz!

Adolf Hitler in Oz - A Review

2011-11-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

Today we have a guest blogger: Eric Shanower, cartoonist of Oz comics and other stuff.

Adolf Hitler in Oz: A Children's Book for Adults
by Sam Sackett
Published by Xlibris Corporation, 2011
To order: www.Xlibris.com
A Review by Eric Shanower

Talk about high concept! You can’t get much higher than a mash up between one of the twentieth century’s most infamous monsters and America’s favorite fairyland.

If you think that the title is a joke or that author Sam Sackett won’t deliver on the premise, you would be wrong. The story - set, of course, during World War II - begins in the final days of the war in Europe. Hitler, realizing that the end is quickly approaching, tries to hide that fact from Eva Braun while secretly commissioning construction of a time machine he believes will let him escape.

The tense atmosphere is well defined in Sackett’s clear and comfortable prose, but some of the nuts and bolts aren’t so clear. Whether the time machine can do what it’s supposed to is a question never answered. At first it seems to work, but the German Colonel that Hitler uses as a guinea pig is revealed to be lying about his experience using the machine. Later, Hitler successfully uses the machine to reach the Land of Oz, but this result is clearly not what he expected. No matter, the adventure is off to a fine start.

The first people that Hitler meets in Oz are two bumbling oafs named Stanley and Ollie, who quite convincingly reproduce the familiar screen personas of the twentieth century film stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. But when Stanley and Ollie are revealed as residents of Oogaboo I wondered why their names aren’t Jo. I expected Sackett, author of the seminal Oz essay “The Utopia of Oz” (The Georgia Review, vol. 14, p275-91. [Fall 1960]; reprinted in The Critical Heritage Series edition of The Wizard of Oz, Schocken Books, 1983), to hew closely to the Oz established by L. Frank Baum. But Sackett doesn’t.

The story proceeds to raise more questions for anyone familiar with Baum’s Oz. Why is Oogaboo located in the Gillikin County instead of the Winkie Country where Baum placed it in Tik-tok of Oz? Why has Jo Files married Queen Ann instead of Ozga, who isn’t even mentioned? I kept waiting for a big reveal of why things had changed so much in Oz between 1914 and 1945. More than halfway through the book no reveal had been revealed. The story only raised more questions by introducing more inconsistencies with the Oz books. But I’m in the camp that says that inconsistencies are part of the Oz experience, so I was content to continue reading because by that time I was heavily involved in the story of Hitler’s plan to conquer Oz.

Hitler quickly maneuvers into becoming Reichschancellor of Oogaboo. He gains allies from Runnymead, where the inhabitants run races all day long, and he sets the people of Flame City – led by the Red Hot Mama – to making rifles. Hitler’s interactions with the inhabitants of Oz are all very delightful, especially when Hitler's inhumanity bumps up against the innocent natures of the Oz residents. I don’t quite buy Sackett’s characterizations of familiar Oz characters such as Dorothy and the Wizard (no other author has ever quite matched Baum in this, either), but this is a minor quibble since the story doesn’t spend much time with them, instead focusing on Hitler and Oogaboo. And to a great extent the book strikes the right Ozzy tone of gentle humor.

At the last moment Hitler’s plans go awry. And this is where I have a major problem with the book. Hitler is foiled because he lacks knowledge of a significant detail long ago established in the Oz books. I didn’t lack knowledge of the significant detail, but Sackett fails to introduce it at the logical place in his story. As I read, I wondered why he didn’t mention it. Since so many of the other details in the book don’t match the details of Baum’s Oz books – and because this particular detail would so obviously prevent Hitler’s plan from succeeding – I assumed that Sackett had eliminated that detail from his version of Oz. My assumption was incorrect. In fact, Hitler is stopped because of that very detail and I felt cheated by the author for first playing fast and loose with the Oz “facts,” then solving a major problem with an Oz “fact” he’d left previously unmentioned. Not fair, Mr. Sackett. Was Sackett’s intention to mimic Baum’s frequent use of deus ex machina - such as introducing previously undiscovered powers of the silver shoes, convenient use of the Magic Belt, water that wipes minds, etc.? If so, Sackett’s attempt doesn’t work. It feels like a cheat, whereas I never felt cheated by Baum.

Fortunately Hitler’s failure isn’t the end of the story. The book goes on to relate Hitler’s “incarceration” in Tollydiggle’s jail. I was quite interested to see how that situation would play out, how the Oz system would deal with such a man as Adolf Hitler. I can’t say that Sackett’s conclusion is altogether convincing, but it’s a good try in the face of formidable odds and it brings the story to a satisfying end.


Another connection between Oz and Hitler! An illustration by Frank Kramer for the article "On a Limb" by Anthony Boucher, Unknown Worlds, October 1941. Kramer also illustrated The Magical Mimics in Oz and The Shaggy Man of Oz.

Overall, I found the book an enjoyable and comfortable read. The only thing that keeps me from recommending it more strongly is that Sackett’s garbling of the established Oz mythos creates problems for the story itself. But if the title Adolf Hitler in Oz intrigues you at all, I’d say give it a try.

So what’s next? Idi Amin in Oz? Pol Pot in Oz? How about Jim Jones in Oz?—I’d be first in line to read that one.

Sis Sez Sunday - 66

2011-11-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

Sis just doesn't seem to have a lot of luck with boys - but I suspect this one is gonna get the hot seat if he's not careful!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 56, in December 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

MGM on Parade!

2011-11-26T19:57:00.000-08:00

I was just sent a super cool link from my Ozzy friend, John Kennedy, of some home movies from the 1939 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

At time marker 1:07 the huge and wonderful Tin Woodman helium balloon goes past. Then there is a short break for a marching band (possibly playing Oz music?). And then comes along a great Scarecrow float! A Scarecrow falls up and down his hay stack and there are quite a few men in Ray Bolger Scarecrow costumes walking the street - presumably shaking hands with the crowd.

It's pretty great! And totally unknown to me until now. I only recently saw the Tin Woodman balloon for the first time a couple weeks ago - to see him in action and in color is a real treat! It's available below from both Vimeo and YouTube.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - New York, 1939 from standard on Vimeo.

Thanksgiving with John R. Neill

2011-11-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

As a little treat from the Tiger Den comes a full page poem, "The Brew of Thanksgiving Broth," by Ruth Comfort Mitchell. The poem is lavishly illustrated by Oz illustrator John R. Neill. Technically this is a recent addition to Eric's collection - but he said I could share it with all of you.

The page was originally published in the November 1919 issue of McCall's Magazine.

Click on the image below to enlarge it - and here's to the beginning of a happy holiday season!

White Edition Wednesday - WIZARD

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

Last week we got an overview of the ever-popular "white editions." Today we begin our look at the books one at a time - beginning, of course, with The Wizard of Oz. This will be the most complicated and lengthiest of these blogs, as this title has more variants and Dick Martin's modifications were much more extreme. The "white edition" shown above was published in 1965. But two other Reilly & Lee editions of Wizard preceded it, and we must pay our respects to them as well.

Martin's jacket for the 1960 Ulrey WIZARD.

The first Reilly & Lee edition of Wizard was published in 1956 and featured new illustrations by cartoonist Dale Ulrey. Her pictures were attractive and were printed in black and red in the early printings. In 1960, soon after Dick Martin started his long association with Reilly & Lee, he drew a new dust jacket design for the Ulrey Wizard. For this 1960 printing, the text illustration colors were modified to help tell the story - just like W. W. Denslow had done in the original 1900 printing. Blue in the Munchkin Country, red in the Poppy Field, green in the Emerald City, etc. I am fairly certain this ink color change to the Ulrey illustrations was done at Dick Martin's urging. I doubt anyone at Reilly & Lee even knew of Denslow's original color scheme. Dick was already a major Baum and Denslow scholar, and tweaking the colors like this is exactly the sort of thing he would have done. I also suspect Dick planted the idea that they needed a totally new edition of Wizard featuring the original Denslow illustrations. And in 1964 a new Denslow illustrated edition was published.

1964 "Poster Cover" edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ

For this first printing of the Denslow edition, Dick Martin prepared a lovely cover based on one of the original advertising posters for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from 1900. Dick also adapted Denslow's 1903 "Poppy Field" endpaper design for the book.

Endpapers of the 1964 Reilly & Lee "Poster Cover" edition of WIZARD

If you compare these to the original 1903 endpapers, which were printed in red and green, you will notice Dick has redrawn the image and extended it at the bottom by almost an inch to accommodate the Reilly & Lee Oz book proportions. The book retained the afterword by Edward Wagenknecht from the 1956 Ulrey edition and got a new foreword which may have been written by Dick Martin:

"W. W. Denslow, the illustrator, was the perfect collaborator for L. Frank Baum. His pictures could no more be separated from the text than Gilbert's words could be taken from Sullivan's music. The same spirit of fun, surprise and mystery held them both in a rare and happy partnership. This sparkling new edition contains all the best of Denslow's illustrations - including many which have not appeared since the original edition of 1900, and several of which have never before been published."

Looking at the chronology of events, it seems likely that it was Reilly & Lee's pleasure in seeing this spiffy new edition that prompted them to ask Dick to redesign all of the Oz books in a new modern format. Alas, he had given this 1964 edition a very unique cover - a style that would be hard to replicate on thirteen additional Baum titles. So Dick copied the style he'd used on Merry Go Round in Oz for the post-Wizard books, and when Wizard needed to be reprinted in 1965 he designed the new "white edition" cover we all know, as seen at the top of this blog post, to replace the "poster edition."

For the most part the interior of the "white edition" is identical to the earlier 1964 "poster edition." But there were a few changes. The illustration color scheme was improved. In the 1964 "poster edition," the first two 32-page gatherings had blue text illustrations. In the 1965 "white edition," the first 16-page gathering has illustrations printed in gray, better suiting the story. The "white edition's" final gathering of 16 pages also changed to illustrations printed in gray and added eight more pages to the end of the book. To fill these extra pages Dick cut the three-page ad [see comments] listing all forty Oz books as well as two illustrations that appeared in the "poster edition." He replaced them with a multi-page ad - featuring the plot synopses of the Baum Oz books from Who's Who in Oz - plus two additional illustrations. Many copies of the "white edition" Wizard have the Kansas illustrations printed in chocolatey brown rather than gray. The brown can be seen in the illustration of Uncle Henry sitting on the stoop further down this blog.

Before we get into looking at how Dick Martin adapted the Denslow illustrations it is well to point out one feature I only recently noticed. The typography of the Denslow edition is that of the Dale Ulrey edition. Dick Martin simply replaced her illustrations with adapted Denslow illustrations

Note that the text, page numbers, and running titles are identical in both editions. Martin has simply adapted two of Denslow's images to replace those of Ulrey. He also deleted the chapter number. In the foreword quoted above it mentions that this edition includes several illustrations which "have never before been published." That refers to these two images:

The image at left was discovered in a 1954 Metropolitan Life Insurance advertisement. In 1964 Dick still believed this was an unknown Denslow illustration. It isn't. It dates from 1954. The Lion (above right) is from Denslow's 1905 "Scarecrow and Tin Man at the Flower Festival in California" comic page.

It must be pointed out that while I am calling these Denslow illustrations, most of them have been heavily adapted and some have been completely redrawn by Dick Martin. He did this both to simplify Denslow's elaborate two color design and to create images the right shape to fit the Ulrey layout. Let's take a look at some examples:

Original Denslow on left - Dick Martin on right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Above, you can see how Dick modified Denslow's original illustration to serve as a stand-alone full-page drawing. I like that he preserved Denslow's aesthetics by allowing the sunflower to break through the frame. Yet once one realizes these "white edition" images are Dick Martin tracings it's easy to spot his work. In the right hand picture, the simple, cartoony silhouette of Aunt Em doing dishes is much more Martin than Denslow.

Below are several examples of the clever way Dick cobbled together different Denslow illustrations to meet the needs of fitting into the Ulrey edition typesetting.

Original Denslow on left - Dick Martin on right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

You can see that Dick kept the initial S to start the chapter, but he needed to remove the Munchkin hat and some of the wildflowers. However, the raised position of the S created an empty space above the type, so he replaced the original seated Dorothy with a standing Dorothy pulled from the illustration below.

Dick reused the Toto from this picture on the chapter title below. Note, too, that Dick replaced almost all of Denslow's solid blocks of color with zip-a-tone line patterns. The line pattern was easier to print reliably and probably added a subtly modern feel to the book.

Original Denslow on left - Dick Martin on right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Many of Denslow's color plate drawings were reproduced fairly accurately, though printed in a single color. However, the other illustrations were almost all Dick Martin tracings. Sometimes Dick's tracings were quite close to Denslow's original lines. At other times Dick's lines couldn't help but display his own style. And a few times Dick made deliberate changes to Denslow's linework.

W. W. Denslow above - Dick Martin below.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ODDITIES
This section will be modified as more information on variants comes in

While the 1964 printing of the "poster edition" of Wizard had "poppy field" endpapers, it is probable the earliest printings of the "white edition" also have "poppy field" endpapers. But the vast majority of Wizard "white editions" I have seen have the Road to Oz "crowd of Ozian celebrities" endpapers. (These endpapers were also used in the rest of the "white edition" Oz books.) I'd be most curious to hear what endpapers are in your copies of the Wizard "white edition." If you know when you bought your copy or it has a presentation date, that can be useful information, too. The earliest printings have the front and back cover properly centered. The later printings (probably from the mid-late 1970s) used smaller boards, 6" wide as opposed to the 6 3/8" inches of the earlier printings, as shown below.

Note how the cover on the right is off-center due to the smaller boards.

I have several copies of this book here in the Tiger Den - one of which seems somewhat atypical. I bought it new in 1979 at F. A. O. Schwartz when I was a kid. It has the smaller 6" boards, so the cover doesn't wrap well, but it does have the "poppy field" endpapers printed in black and red and the Kansas illustrations are printed in gray. The smaller board size and known purchase date indicate this is a later printing. So clearly the gray Kansas illustrations and "poppy" endpapers do not automatically indicate an early printing date.

Examples of both the gray and chocolate brown ink colors.

So I'd be most curious if any of you can share info on whether the Kansas scenes in your copy are gray or brown, and if you have Road endpapers or "poppy" endpapers. Also if there are ads in the front or back of the book for either 14 or 40 Oz books. You can leave info in the comments section.

As I mentioned last week twelve of the fourteen "white editions" were also available in paperback form through Rand McNally. Their paperback Wizard printed all of the illustrations in black and white.

That's it for today - next week we'll tackle The Land of Oz!

Ruby Slipper Adventure

2011-11-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday I set out on an unexpected journey to Los Angeles to see the Ruby Slippers for the first time. This wasn't just any pair of Ruby Slippers - these were the "Witch's Shoes," the best preserved pair, the pair used in close-ups, the pair worn by the dead Wicked Witch of the East, and the pair worn by Dorothy when she clicks her heels three times to go home.

I arrived at the Solange Azagury-Partidge jewelry gallery on Rodeo Drive. I spotted the slippers in a four-sided glass case at the back of the small gallery and approached them, these magical icons of Hollywood and Oz, and, well, they were just shoes.

I sensed no magic, my heart didn't race, they were just shoes. I felt an Ozzy exhilaration when I met Margaret Hamilton. I felt excited the first time I got to see the rotting remains of a flying monkey miniature from the film. But why nothing special for the shoes? Maybe I'm just not into feet. Or perhaps the idea of the Ruby Slippers is just so magical that the real thing can't help but disappoint with the loose sequins, the splitting seams, scratches on the orange paint on the bottoms. These aren't magical shoes - they didn't go to Oz. They're a half pound of leather, cloth, and cardboard, a pocket full of glass geegaws, and they're gonna sell for over two million dollars in a few weeks.

They also looked really old and not nearly as pristine as legend would report. I wondered if there was a protective layer of cloth or plastic over the sequins, as they looked so faded and gray. There wasn't. But they sure looked like they needed a good dusting!

Interestingly, the shoes have come out much redder in my photographs than they looked in person. And, of course, they were designed to be photographed, not to be studied with a magnifying glass. Who am I to complain of sloppy sequin work on the heels when the shoes were never meant to be seen up close from the back? And when I got home and looked at my photographs, I started to feel some rush of magic - the shoes sparkle and the color deepens, they start to work their enchantment.

I really had a wonderful time and I can think of no better way to see the slippers. The gallery set up a very attractive display so the shoes could be viewed from any angle. The store was empty the entire time I was there, so I could look and study and take pictures to my heart's content. The store itself with its bright red interior, carpeted in a rainbow of stars, couldn't have provided a more lovely setting.

When the staff saw how interested I was they started talking to me. They couldn't believe I'd driven up from San Diego only to see the shoes. The publicist came out and talked with me for a while. They brought me a Coke and a chilled glass, and we chatted a bit more. The gallery even took a few additional photos for me with their good digital camera (mine in this blog were taken with my iPhone). As I was leaving, the store offered me a few parting gifts - a handsome hardcover gallery catalog and a 2012 Solange datebook.

It was a magical afternoon!

Sis Sez Sunday - 65

2011-11-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sis and her horsey friend are having a lot more fun this Sunday than they did on last Sunday!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 55, in November 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Bridge to Yesterday

2011-11-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

I recently read Bridge to Yesterday (1963), a science fiction novel written by a certain E. L. Arch.

If you've been eating your Magic Muffins and using your memory you probably know that E. L. Arch is in fact Rachel R. Cosgrove, author of Hidden Valley of Oz (1951). E. L. Arch is an anagram of "Rachel."

Rachel wrote quite a bit of SF in the early 1960s under this pseudonym and a fair amount of short SF under her own married name, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, throughout the 1970s and '80s.

A few passages in Bridge to Yesterday really jumped out at me. Early in the book the two main characters go to Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, in search of a man working on a cure for cancer. Ganymede is covered by a dense jungle. One of the characters quickly discovers that he is literally taking root in the Ganymede soil - the scene is clearly inspired by Rachel's memories of the Magic Isle in The Magic of Oz when Trot and Cap'n Bill start to take root. With no "magic" to rescue the hero the only solution is the one Trot and Cap'n Bill were so fearful of - he has to be pulled out by brute force, tearing the roots from his feet. What's particularly resonant if one knows much about Rachel's life is the fact that someone was on Ganymede looking for a cure for cancer. A few years before she wrote this book Rachel had a serious battle with cancer herself - she survived by undergoing a very early form of chemotherapy. The chemo saved her life, but did serious damage to an ankle and foot.

Later in the book the two main characters must go undercover in a prison. To my mind, the prison seems vaguely reminiscent of Tollydiggle's prison in the Emerald City. It's presented as a rehabilitation resort and treatment is referred to in the slang as "the rest cure." There are no fences or bars, and each prisoner wears a special robe and is assigned his own special guard called the "friend." But the "rest cure" is presented as a form of torture in many ways. One is supposed to just rest and think about the crime one has committed. The prisoner is to do nothing but relax and meditate - period! The "friend" takes the prisoner out for a walk on the grounds every afternoon - but the prisoner is on a stretcher, lying prone, wheeled around by his "friend." Even meals are spoon fed by the "friend." While on one level this seems like a parody of Tollydiggle's Oz prison - it also must surely be a satire on Rachel's long weeks in the hospital while she battled cancer. She no doubt hated her own "rest cure" with a passion.

There's another curious bit. Several times Rachel uses the phrase "shrinking violet." This must be a phrase she liked, as "shrinking violets" became a plot device in one of her final Oz short stories, "Percy and the Shrinking Violet," published in Oz-story No. 1.

The germ of the story was interesting, and it was an easy read, yet I couldn't help feeling frustrated that I was several steps ahead of the characters a lot of the time - especially for the last third of the novel.

A strong editor could have helped Rachel turn this story into a much better and tighter book with little effort. Alas, I suspect there was no editor and I know Rachel was paid a flat fee of only $300 to write it. Despite the fact that the book was probably written very hastily, I felt I could see Rachel enjoying herself: sometimes engaging in word play, writing a few subtle jokes, perhaps showing off some of her background as a biologist in describing the medical laboratory and the effects of the cryogenic process on the human body.

Rachel must have enjoyed SF to some extent. I don't know for certain, but I suspect she attended several World Science Fiction Cons. She told me once that she felt very dismissed as a Science Fiction author. But she added, with a chuckle, the only time she was ever treated with respect - and a little deference - in SF circles was when her SF writing colleagues learned that she had written an Oz book.

You can read a blog review of E. L. Arch's The Deathstones by clicking here.

White Edition Wednesday

2011-11-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

In the last few months a couple friends and I have begun discussing late Reilly & Lee bibliography - mainly that the books have never been properly described or even discussed in detail. A couple weeks ago I blogged about the little-known CBI/Regnery paperbacks (the last editions of the Oz books issued by the original publisher), but today I'm going to begin an in-depth look at the Reilly & Lee "white editions." Indeed, I suspect it will be "White Edition Wednesday" for the next fourteen weeks.

Dick Martin circa early 1960s

If you grew up in the 1960s or '70s, chances are you discovered and first read the Baum Oz books in the "white editions." Virtually identical paperback versions of the white editions were published by Rand McNally throughout the 1970s, too.

Reilly & Lee was bought by the Henry Regnery Company in 1959, mainly to acquire the Oz books. The top-heavy series had begun falling out of print and Regnery put a lot of effort into revitalizing it. For their first Oz project they accepted a proposal from Dick Martin to repackage Baum's Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz comic page into a picture book, The Visitors from Oz (1960). In 1961 they put out picture book abridgements of the first four Baum Oz books, illustrated by Dick Martin; the first Baum biography, To Please a Child (which featured a Martin dust jacket); and in 1963, a new Oz book.

For this fortieth Oz book, Merry Go Round in Oz by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren McGraw Wagner, Dick tried a fresh new Oz book design. Instead of a plain cloth binding and dust jacket, Dick created a four-color stamping design to be printed directly on white cloth. This gave a very modern feel to the book, and Reilly & Lee decided the format would suit the rest of the Oz books very nicely. They could even eliminate the costly and easily torn dust jackets, saving money and hassle in the warehouse. Dick Martin was asked to begin redesigning the covers.

He designed new covers, often based on original color plates or endpapers which had not been in the books in decades. He searched through his collection and the Reilly & Lee files and found marvelous little bits to add to and enrich each volume. If you've never sat down to compare the white editions to the original editions, you may be in for a surprise exactly how much Dick Martin tweaked and augmented each of the titles.

To launch the revamped Oz series Reilly & Lee pulled out all the stops. They prepared bookmarks, a new issue of "The Ozmapolitan" (an imaginary Oz newspaper used periodically as a publicity gimmick), and a marvelous poster advertising the redesign of the series.

On a side note, this poster was one of the things I most wanted for my collection. I finally got one about five years ago. It is reproduced in black and white on the cover of the 1964 "Ozmapolitan." One thing the poster clearly indicates (based on the Ozzy names in the border) is that Reilly & Lee probably had plans to issue all forty books in the new format. In the end, perhaps because sales of Merry Go Round in Oz were disappointing, they decided to issue only the fourteen Baum books and allow the rest of the series to go out of print.

The new white editions began to be issued in 1964. The first batch included The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Tik-Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, and The Lost Princess of Oz. The other six Baum titles would not be released until the following year.

We'll go into each title individually in the coming weeks, but before I close for today I thought I'd share another quirky bit of Dick Martin's sense of humor. In the early 1960s while Dick was designing the "white editions," several people were in heated research-mode trying to work out the complex bibliography of the Oz books. One topic receiving much debate concerned which ampersands dated from what years on what books. An ampersand, for those that don't know, is the character or sign standing for the word "and," as in Reilly & Lee. One of the fellows involved in the debate was James E. Haff, Baum researcher and cartographer of the Oz Club's maps. In a sly mood, and as a little joke to make Jim Haff pull his hair out, Dick Martin put a different ampersand on each title of the fourteen "white editions."

On that note, I will see you next Wednesday when we'll tackle the "white edition" of The Wizard of Oz.

Soup! Soup! Soup!

2011-11-14T20:16:00.000-08:00

I've been cleaning house and sorting boxes of Oz crap and recently ran across a drawing I did for Eric a very long time ago, back when he was editing the Oz Calendar.

In previous years I had done several drawings for the Oz Calendar and I'd not been terribly happy with any of them. I don't like drawing line art all that much, but I do like painting, and Eric suggested I try painting a calendar picture instead of working in pen-and-ink line art. So I did. The theme was to be "The Villains of Oz," as I recall. I was quite pleased with my picture - a silly drawing of the Roly-Rogues from Baum's Queen Zixi of Ix (1905). After I'd finished the drawing the "Villains" calendar theme was abandoned and the drawing was never published.

But the Roly-Rogues were getting hungry after all these years, so I've let them loose on the blog.

Sis Sez Sunday - 64

2011-11-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

Poor Sis - Last week she fell off the hay wagon and this week Mr. Paul tears her down. What's a girl to do?

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 55, in November 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

The Comical Land of Oz

2011-11-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

We’re off to see the Wizard! The Cartoon Art Museum celebrates The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with an exhibition featuring vintage newspaper tearsheets and original artwork spanning over 100 years of classic comics. The exhibit runs from November 12 - April 25, 2012. Click here for details.

At the dawn of the 20th century, L. Frank Baum created a world of wonders that was to hold a permanent place in the culture of America: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Then in 1904, to promote his second book, Baum, along with master cartoonist Walt McDougall, brought his famed characters to Earth in a new medium, the comic strip.

Famed Oz illustrators W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill also launched their own syndicated comic strips in the early 20th Century. The Cartoon Art Museum’s exhibition will include a selection of tearsheets from these talented artists: McDougall’s Queer Visitors from Marvelous Land of Oz, Denslow’s Father Goose and Billy Bounce, and Neill’s Nip and Tuck, courtesy of historian and publisher Peter Maresca of Sunday Press.

Acclaimed writer and artist Eric Shanower’s first Oz comic, The Enchanted Apples of Oz, was published in 1986, beginning his 25-year (and counting!) association with Baum’s characters. This exhibition will feature highlights from five of Shanower’s Oz graphic novels, as well as a selection of art from his latest series of Eisner Award-winning Oz adaptations for Marvel Comics illustrated by Skottie Young. Additional collaborators include Anna-Maria Cool and the legendary Ramona Fradon.

Presentations and booksignings featuring publisher Peter Maresca and writer/artist Eric Shanower are in the planning stages. Information on these and other Oz-related events will be available soon.

Horsing Around with John R. Neill

2011-11-10T22:22:00.000-08:00

In celebration of the current serialization of Eric Shanower's and Skottie Young's comics adaptation of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz from Marvel Comics, I thought I might re-share this fascinating Oz piece that I first published as the back cover of Oz-story No. 3 in 1997.

Eric Shanower discovered the piece the first time he visited Joan Neill Farnsworth (Neill's youngest daughter). We made plans to borrow it and have a transparency shot the next time we were both going to visit her.

This is an unused color plate created by John R. Neill for the original 1907 edition of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. It is not known why it was rejected. The image, as you can see, shows Zeb, Dorothy, and Jim the Cab-Horse falling through the earth to the land of the Mangaboos. Neill's original painting is not know to survive; but what does survive is a proof copy still in the Neill family archives. The proof is printed on the same paper as the published color plates.

The most likely scenario is that the publisher rejected this image and asked for a new one. The original edition of Dorothy and the Wizard had sixteen color plates and I doubt it was ever meant to have had more.

In any case, Neill redrew this image as a pen-and-ink drawing for the book. The ink version is much stronger. It has a better composition, the addition of the rocks up top and the clouds below give a better sense of place, and Dorothy is a bit better drawn. All this leads me to believe the ink version was created after the color version.

I do have a pet theory for why this color plate might have been rejected. In some books (not usually Oz books) color plates are sometimes viewed sideways, in landscape mode. If this image is looked at sideways it kind of looks like there's been a buggy accident and little Dorothy is gaping open-mouthed at their dead horse.

The falling rocks and clouds of the ink version make it clear that buggy and horse are falling. Also note that Eureka (in the birdcage) has been moved from the luggage area in back of the cab in the color version, to the more prominent spot at Dorothy's feet in the pen-and-ink version.

That's it for today's Oz history lesson! Remember to check out the hit new comics adaptation of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz at your local comic book store. And don't forget that we have copies of the first three Marvel Comics collections available at our online store. If you'd like to get them autographed by Eric Shanower just ask in the "Special Instructions" field during checkout.

Hit the ROAD, Jack!

2011-11-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

I must say that I had some hope that the Bradford Exchange facsimile Road to Oz would be a lovely and pleasant surprise. It's not. It is probably their worst effort so far. The two-color pages in Ozma of Oz were uglier, but some of Ozma was pretty - especially the cover. In the Bradford Road to Oz nothing is pretty, nothing attractive, nothing well done.

In the previous BE releases I could at least praise the cover stamping. On Road they've missed the sandboat. The artwork is reduced in size so that it doesn't fill the full cover area, the spine is very crudely redrawn and reduced even more, and the color of the cloth and the stamping inks is way off.

1st Edition at Left - Bradford at right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

The cloth is a horrid anti-freeze green (the scan above doesn't do it justice!), nothing whatsoever like the original. The light butterscotch brown used in the donkey-headed Shaggy Man has been replaced with a bright sunshine yellow. The copy we received is badly off-register, too. Not only are the colors not well aligned, but the printed inks don't match up with the blind-stamping. (BTW, I am not at all convinced the Oz books ever had any blind-stamping. I think this is probably just a Bradford technique for faking quality cloth-stamping.)

There are some serious printing errors in the text as well. The images of the text and running title are almost all way too high on the page and they are not uniform with one another. In the example below, look how high the text sits on the right-hand page.

There is nothing like this in any of the three first-state copies I have access to as I write this. In all of them the running titles are uniform in height and the text is positioned in the center of the page. One minor quibble, the BE version is much thicker than the three first-states here in the Tiger Den. Perhaps BE couldn't match the paper for both color and thickness? They also chose to leave the edges of the book un-tinted. Personally, I think the blue page-edging is much more attractive than just seeing the rainbow paper. The blue-edging makes the rainbow paper a surprise!

The reproduction in the BE edition is truly horrid. How bad is it? It's so poor I can't find anything to compare it favorably to. Books of Wonder is far better, the 1970s "white edition" is far better. Shockingly, the Del Rey mass market paperback has better reproduction of some illustrations.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The BE illustrations are all muddy and lacking in detail. And for some reason the ink is gray, not black, which only makes the illustrations even harder to see on the colored paper stock. They are just visually dead. I can not stress enough how terrible the BE reproduction is. Below is a good example from the endpapers - one of Neill's greatest Oz drawings ever. This example features a section of the endpapers showing BE on the left, a 1st state at center, and the 1970s "white edition" at right. This quality of reproduction is pretty typical throughout the BE facsimile.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Before anyone starts saying, "Oh, but the original is so hard to reproduce; it's printed on that colored paper!" all I can say is "Balderdash!" I have worked with these illustrations quite a bit and it's not hard to reproduce them adequately. In the example below you can see a scan I just made from the 2009 Winkie Con program book. To create it, I scanned my first state copy of Road, generated a PDF, had it printed by a Print-on-Demand printer in the Winkie program book, and then rescanned it tonight from the program book as my blog example. Why is my quick and dirty scan on the left, printed by a POD printer, better and more detailed than BE's crappy facsimile on the right?

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The Road to Oz is generally considered John R. Neill's finest Oz illustration work. Many consider Road the most beautiful Oz book. This should have been the easiest facsimile for BE to pull off. There are no color plates, no arcane printing needs like Wonderful Wizard requires. Yet BE has given us a uniformly ugly book, with gray, blobby illustrations throughout. The book is corrupted with mis-positioned pages and off-register cover stamping. When this printing rolled off the press someone at BE should have taken a look, demanded a do-over, and pulped this entire printing. When some of the illustrations in a $60 facsimile can be bested in reproduction by a Del Rey mass market paperback printed on newsprint, something is seriously wrong.

Don't cha come back no more, no more . . .

Microcosmic Tales

2011-11-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that Rachel R. Cosgrove, author of Hidden Valley of Oz (1951) and The Wicked Witch of Oz (1993), wrote romance novels as well, usually under her married name Rachel Cosgrove Payes. It's less well known that she also wrote science fiction, sometimes under her own name, and sometimes under her pseudonym, E. L. Arch (an anagram of Rachel). In today's blog I discuss an unusual SF short story included in the anthology Microcosmic Tales - 100 Wondrous Science Fiction Short-Short Stories, published by Taplinger Publishing Co. in 1980 and selected by Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander.

Rachel's contribution is called "Mattie Harris, Galactic Spy," first published in Vertex, April 1974. The story tells the tale of a voluptuous young woman named Matilda Harris (some word play on Mata Hari) who, as the title states, is an Intergalactic spy "with a emphasis on the gal." Matilda must prevent an assassination. Her suspects include a hot-blooded folk singer from Betelgeuse IV and an unsavory attaché - an arthropod named Ontha Lefnik - who is from an unfriendly planet in the Caroline series. In the end it's a very (deliberately) silly story.

Among the other ninety-nine tales are several written by people with strong Oz connections: two by Harlan Ellison (big Oz fan), one by Robert Payes (Rachel's son), one by Oz club charter member Ruth Berman, one by Philip José Farmer (author of Barnstormer in Oz), and a story by Lester Del Rey (part of the Del Rey publishing line responsible for the mass-market Baum Oz books and a dozen or so trade-paperback Thompson Oz books). The volume also includes stories by such icons as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, William F. Nolan, and many others.

Sis Sez Sunday - 63

2011-11-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not familiar with the custom of wishing on the first load of hay. But after seeing Sis's luck, I don't think I'm gonna start anytime soon!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 54, in October 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Dickin' Around

2011-11-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

Dick Martin circa 1980

No doubt you are all familiar with the work of Oz illustrator Dick Martin. He was the last "official" illustrator for the Reilly and Lee Oz books and created the pictures for The Visitors from Oz (1960) and Merry Go Round in Oz (1963.) He also illustrated picture-book abridgements of the first four Oz books and he designed the ever popular "white editions" of the Oz series that dominated bookshelves in the 1960s and '70s.

Dick also played a huge part in the early days of the International Wizard of Oz Club, doing research, editing and laying out The Baum Bugle, working on bibliography, and much else including illustrating Ruth Plumly Thompson's final two Oz books, illustrating the McGraws' Forbidden Fountain of Oz (1980), and finally writing an Oz book of his own, The Ozmapolitan of Oz (1986). And at the time of his death in 1990 he had the finest Baum and Oz collection in the world.

Dick was a very private man, very reserved and quiet (he was very hard-of-hearing), and he hated fandom of any kind, despite being a fanatical Oz collector, comic collector, and toy collector himself. I am sure, too, that some of Dick Martin's reserve was because he was gay (but pretty firmly in the closet). It wasn't exactly a secret (at least to other gay people). I suspected Dick was gay the first time I got a letter from him. His tone, his quirky sense of humor, his ultra-dapper author's photo in The Oz Scrapbook (1978) all set my Gaydar off, even though I was a sixteen-year-old closeted gay boy myself.

I'll share more Dick Martin stories in the future, but in today's blog I'm gonna discuss Dick's mischievous side. Dick's illustrations were fairly cartoony, always light-hearted and fun. But he also liked to work in quaint references, little in-jokes for his friends. Sometimes these were Baum or Oz collecting references, sometimes bits of sly innuendo like in this charming illustration from Merry Go Round in Oz showing two cute little boys holding hands in the Land of Good Children. In Oz it seems everyone is a Friend of Dorothy.

Two Ozzy boys holding hands in MERRY GO ROUND IN OZ

Or in the illustration of Prince Gules below. Note the placement of the big Easter egg and Gules's excitement at finding that big ring. And if it's not obvious enough what's going on, Gules's right hand signals it quite blatantly.

This "after dark" in Oz streak is most evident in a short bit of Oz fiction Dick wrote for friends in the mid-1960s called Oz ad Nauseum. It was later printed in a fanzine called No, no.10 (June 1972), edited by charter Oz Club member Ruth Berman, and it was included as a premium broadsheet in our own Oz-story No. 6 (2000).

But for your reading pleasure it is also available as this month's free on-line Tiger Tale. I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this very irreverent Oz tale, and you'll get to spend a few minutes with a more private Dick Martin than you get to know from only his illustrations. Go read it!

Painting Pictures with John R. Neill

2011-11-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

A neat item arrived in today's mail. Technically it belongs to Eric, but he said I could blog about it. It's a full page of John R. Neill art printed in the Philadelphia North American for a coloring contest. It's pretty early in Neill's career, too, dating from April 20, 1902, two full years before he illustrated his first Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, in 1904.

This particular example of the North American children's page came with "paints" printed on the page so children could color the image. The "paints" really work - you just use water and a brush to activate the color spots and you're ready to go! Luckily the child this paper was delivered to got bored after sloppily painting a bit of blue on one little girl.

Neill did a number of these paintable pictures and W. W. Denslow did a few paintable Billy Bounce comic strips, too. It seems to me newspapers were a lot cooler 110 years ago.

Writing a Better Oz Book

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I shared some memories of visiting with Eloise Jarvis McGraw back in 1984. In that blog I mentioned that she donated a first edition copy of John R. Neill's The Scalawagons of Oz to the Winkie Convention auction.

I already had a first edition, but I knew the story behind Eloise's copy and much wanted to win it for myself. The bidding was spirited, but in the end I seized the day and seized Eloise's copy of Scalawagons. After the auction I asked Eloise to write down the tale of how this copy of an often-reviled Oz book played an important role in Oz history. Please note the name Gayla scribbled in pencil above the title on the front cover. Here's the tale as Eloise wrote it down:

"Gayla McCreight is the daughter of my first cousin - This book, which was originally hers, came into the possession of my daughter (and co-author) Lauren Lynn McGraw, who was reading it one day in 1962, looked up at me and said, 'We could write a better Oz book!' Whether we did or not is not for me to say, but we tried - in Merry Go Round in Oz. - Eloise Jarvis McGraw"

So this copy of Scalawagons prompted Eloise and her daughter to write Merry Go Round in Oz.

Interestingly, Rachel Cosgrove, author of Hidden Valley of Oz, also credited her irritation with Scalawagons as motivation for writing her Oz book! I tried to acquire Rachel's copy of Scalawagons, but was never able to. I thought the two copies would make a neat set.

Sis Sez Sunday - 62

2011-10-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

So true, Sis - so true!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 54, in October 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

The Annotated Utz and the Mo the Merrier!

2011-10-29T00:53:00.000-07:00

The Annotated WIZARD in Hebrew

This weekend Eric Shanower and I are at the World Fantasy Convention which is being held in San Diego this year. One of the nice little extras at the convention has been the chance to reconnect with Oz friend Gili Bar-Hillel from Israel. Back in the early 1990s I illustrated Gili's first published Oz story for Oziana. A bit later Eric Shanower illustrated her second story.

We finally got the chance to meet Gili face-to-face at the Winkie Convention in 1995 and she still holds the record for traveling the farthest to get to the Winkie Convention by traveling from Tel Aviv to California. I saw Gili again at the Centennial Oz Convention in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2000 where she gave me a book, a Hebrew edition of the first Harry Potter title. Gili had become the official Harry Potter translator in Israel! I was very impressed and have proudly shown the book to Potter fans who've visited.

So, as I mentioned, we got to visit with Gili this weekend, and to continue the tradition she brought me two books: a copy of the Hebrew edition of The Annotated Wizard of Oz (which she has translated!) and a Hebrew translation of L. Frank Baum's Magical Monarch of Mo. I am most pleased with my presents.

Magical Monarch of Mo in Hebrew

Toto Tomb

2011-10-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

A couple weekends ago Eric Shanower and I were in Los Angeles to see the latest preview of Debbie Reynolds's Hollywood costume auction. Two friends joined us, and after breakfast and a proper perusal of Debbie's old clothes, we set out on an Ozzy adventure to go find the grave of Toto from the MGM Wizard of Oz film.

Me and Toto's Tomb

It seems that Toto's original grave was paved over when they built the Ventura Freeway in 1958. Since then there has been no way to visit or pay tribute to Dorothy's little dog. But a few months ago someone rectified the situation. JP Myers created a Facebook page and publicity drive to get Toto a proper memorial, and on June 18, 2011, it was unveiled at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Alas, Toto's remains are still under the Ventura Freeway, but there is a nice bronze version to commemorate the canine hero. It was a bit of a chore to find the little dickens. We walked around for a long while looking for him, but had no luck. After we found no help at the cemetery office or in the flower shop we finally brought up a video of the dedication ceremony on my iPhone and saw it was near a high wall. Once we knew that, we set out walking the perimeter of the cemetery and we eventually found him. He is just in front and to the right of the huge Douglas Fairbanks grave and not too far from Johnny Ramone.

The marker is very handsome and I'm sure Toto would be very pleased. This was a very spur of the minute visit and I really had no idea what this cemetery was, but many movie stars, composers, and artists are buried there. Take a look at the website link above and plan to spend some time walking around after you visit Toto. And remember Toto prefers dog biscuits over flowers!

The Incredible Shrinking Oz Books

2011-10-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

A friend and I were recently discussing the Henry Regnery/Contemporary Books releases of the L. Frank Baum Oz titles. These books were available for a short time in 1978-79. They look much like undersized versions of the better-known Rand McNally paperbacks from the 1970s.

Regnery had owned the rights to the Oz books for over twenty years and had tried very hard to reinvigorate the series by issuing abridgments, a new Oz book, major publicity, and finally repackaging the fourteen Baum titles into the "white editions" we all know from the 1960s and '70s.

Around 1971 Regnery struck an agreement with Rand McNally to issue paperback versions of the "white editions." They were the same size as the hardcovers, but much less expensive, retailing originally for only $1.50.

By 1978 Regnery's attitude toward the Oz books was somewhat ambivalent. But not wanting to sever their long association with L. Frank Baum, they decided to cut costs and reissue the Oz books as undersized paperbacks and put the cloth-bound "white editions" out of print. The paperback rights were withdrawn from Rand McNally. Fred Meyer announced that the Rand McNally paperbacks were officially out-of-print at the 1978 Winkie Convention.

Cloth bound "white edition" at left - mini paperback at right.

These new Regnery paperbacks were quite small, measuring only 5" by 7 1/2", and retailed for $3.95, double the then $1.95 Rand McNally had charged for the full-size paperbacks. Regnery created new cover art for the new paperbacks - simplified versions of Dick Martin's "white edition" covers. Some shading lines are removed from the images and the faces are rendered a bit simpler and more "modern" looking. The title and credits were replaced too with more modern looking type.

Back Cover

The new mini-Oz books dropped the back cover illustrations used on the backs of the "white editions" and replaced them with the front cover artwork sans type. The interiors of the books are just a down-sized version of the hardcovers with the end papers eliminated. The mini-edition of The Wizard of Oz has the illustrations printed in colors just like the "white edition."

I bought these little books when they came out. I recall two releases a few months apart. But I was surprised when I noticed the publisher info had changed. Some were published by Regnery. These say Regnery on the spine, "Henry Regnery / Chicago" on the title page, and list Regnery's address (180 North Michigan Avenue) on the copyright page. Other have CBI on the spine and list the publisher as Contemporary Books, Inc. on the title page and copyright page at the same 180 North Michigan Avenue address. Exactly what's going on is unclear. It is my memory that the Regnery imprint came first, followed by the CBI imprint. I bought one each of the books I found. My understanding is that CBI owned Regnery which owned Reilly and Lee.

Just as all this is happening in 1978-'79 Judy Lynn and Lester Del Rey (of Del Rey books) have a notion they would like to try issuing the Oz books as mass-market paperbacks. Regnery/CBI agrees and the mini-Oz books are quickly put out of print, thus ending the last connection between L. Frank Baum's Oz books with their original publisher.

I began this blog by saying a friend and I were discussing these little books. The debate point was how many of the mini-Oz books were issued. I was actively trying to obtain them as they were issued and went so far as to try and keep track by getting on the CBI catalog list. I never found evidence of more than seven of Baum's fourteen being issued - the seven you see in the photo above. Over the years I have kept my eyes out for others, scanned shelves of friends' books, and I have yet to find any evidence the others were ever published in this format.

I did however notice that some of my friend's copies (he doesn't have all seven) have differing publisher imprints than mine: he has CBI versions of Ozma and Rinkitink, showing that those two titles at least got more than one printing. My friend immediately pointed out that the 1988 revision of Bibliographia Oziana says all fourteen were issued. I found it hard to believe that in decades of being on the lookout I had never once seen one of the missing seven titles. And in my opinion it doesn't even seem like there was enough time for the series to have been completed before Del Rey took over. I have asked Peter Hanff and Douglas Greene, who together did the revisions for the 1988 edition of Bibliographia Oziana, about their claim that all fourteen were issued. Neither had much interest in these late printings and the claim that all fourteen were issued seems to have been unverified.

So here's my little query: Does anyone out there have Regnery or CBI paperbacks of Land, Dorothy and the Wizard, Emerald City, Patchwork Girl, Tik-Tok, Tin Woodman, or Glinda? If you do, please comment and let me know what you have. I'd also be happy to hear if you have any different combination of publisher imprint. You can see which titles I have as CBI and which I have as Regnery by looking at the first photo above.

I'm most curious!

Sis Sez Sunday - 61

2011-10-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

When Sis goes out on the town the men are in black and white but she's blue all over!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 53, in September 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Picnic with the Royal Historian

2011-10-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

Eloise McGraw and David Maxine - Mount Hood.

I recently ran across a little stash of photos that has prompted me to continue the blog-story I began last December about my friendship with Eloise Jarvis McGraw (author of Merry Go Round in Oz, The Forbidden Fountain of Oz, and The Rundelstone of Oz.) You can read part one by clicking here.

I returned home from the 1983 Winkie Con, determined to change my life. I had always loved the theatre and while I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I started taking acting classes at the Guthrie Theatre's outreach program. Within a few months I was working there, first as a stage management intern, then as Production Assistant and stagehand. By the next summer I felt I had my life by the tail and could hardly wait for the 1984 Winkie Con. Eloise had invited me to fly to Portland, Oregon, and stay with her and her husband Bill for several days before the convention, and then the three of us would drive down the west coast to Winkies, which was being held for the first time at Asilomar.

Eloise and Bill (who also wrote children’s books under the name of William Corbin) picked me up at the airport and drove me to their home in Lake Oswego. After being shown the guestroom I was to occupy, Eloise gave me a tour of the house, which she and her husband had designed. It was a multi-level home, lots of wood and glass, very inviting.

Bill McGraw (William Corbin) on the deck of his Lake Oswego home.

She shared a writing room/library with her husband. One wall was lined with books: books they had written, reference works, and other children’s books. Near the big window at the end of the room were two facing desks (or was it a partner’s desk?). In any case, it was clear they worked easily in close proximity. One thing Eloise showed me was her computer, one of the first home computers I’d seen close up. Eloise had switched from her Selectric typewriter to the word processor a year or so before. She loved it! I was quite impressed that a woman of almost seventy had made the shift to this new technology so easily and happily.

Eloise critiquing a manuscript for a course she was teaching.

That night Eloise cooked dinner - she showed me all of the neat little bits of architecture she had worked into her kitchen. She was a gourmet cook. Alas, I don’t recall what we ate that night, but she had baked a loaf of French bread and she took me down into the wine cellar to help her pick a bottle of wine. The McGraw wine cellar was built into a natural cleft in the rock that the house sat upon, cooled by the earth, a true wine cave. I joked that it looked like her own private entrance to the Nome Kingdom, which she thought very funny.

Eloise working on a multi-block Oz print.

Eloise was an artist and print-maker. The lowest floor of the house was her art studio. She was preparing what would be her only Oz print as a donation to the Winkie Convention auction. She had a little work left to do on it and she showed me how all the various print blocks worked, the different colors, etc. She had a big stack of proofs and samples and little sketches for the Ozzy print. She was planning to throw out these preliminary materials - I volunteered to take them home with me and still have them

The print was a design for a coat-of-arms for Bzz-antium, a kingdom of bees featured in an Oz manuscript Eloise was writing at the time. That manuscript was never published.

I especially enjoyed breakfast at the McGraws. There was a sort of breakfast nook, very sunny, and we just had coffee, juice, and a couple slices of Eloise’s homemade bread, which we toasted. Eloise had me try some very nice marmalade she had brought home from England. It was the first time I’d ever liked marmalade.

Self-portrait by Lauren Lynn McGraw in the breakfast nook.

Hanging on the wall in the breakfast nook was a very large watercolor self-portrait of Eloise’s daughter, Lynn McGraw, co-author of Merry Go Round in Oz and The Forbidden Fountain of Oz.

At one point I asked Eloise if she still had her childhood Oz books. She took me upstairs to look at them. They mostly dated from the 1920s when she had received them as a child. A few more were acquired for her own kids, Lynn and Peter. As we looked through them she decided she ought to give one to the Winkie Auction - I think she asked my advice. She settled on parting with a first edition of Scalawagons of Oz, a book that had crept into the collection via a cousin when Lynn had been a child. That copy of Scalawagons played an important part in Oz book history, but I’ll save that story for another blog. (Click here to read)

My last full day in Lake Oswego was the Fourth of July. Eloise proposed we drive up Mount Hood and have a picnic. She packed a grand lunch and we spent the day on the mountain. That evening, after we got back to Portland, we all went over to Lynn McGraw’s house. I think Eloise and Bill dropped me off and I visited with Lynn for the evening. She showed me her paintings (she is an artist) and I bought two watercolor studies. Then Lynn and Willie (her partner at the time) and I had a light picnic dinner and watched the fireworks.

Lynn drove me back to Lake Oswego. When I went in I found Eloise had already put on her pink flannel nightgown. I was struck by the informality of it, how comfortable Eloise had become having me around. We stayed up and talked for a bit and listened to James Galway playing in a Fourth of July concert. The next morning we began our drive down to the Winkie Convention.

For the most part I’ve been relating all the stories and anecdotes that relate to Eloise. What isn’t included here is the interest she took in what I was doing with my life: the acting classes, my job at the theatre, my story writing. My visit with the Royal Historian turned into more of a visit with a new grandmother.

Eloise McGraw and David Maxine - Picnic on Mount Hood.

Sis Sez Sunday - 60

2011-10-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

Sis has kind of had it with house guests, and this one has been hanging around since 1940!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 53, in September 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Age of Bronze "Seen"

2011-10-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

Page One of Age of Bronze "Seen"

The world has made many technological advances since the Bronze Age. Now the ancient story of the Trojan War is being published in the latest technological format - an an app for iPad. The first issue of Age of Bronze "Seen," Eric Shanower's award-winning retelling of the complete story of the Trojan War in comics, goes on sale today for only 99 cents in the iTunes store.

The enhanced digital app includes such new features as a Reader's Guide by Thomas Beasley, Yale Classics scholar, that details the literary sources and archaeological references for each page of the story; a forum for discussion where readers can post their reactions and questions; maps; a list of characters; and for the first time Age of Bronze will be seen in full color by John Dallaire who worked closely with Shanower on the coloring. Further issues will be released on a monthly schedule.

And before anyone asks, yes, the comic book serialization and the graphic novel series of Age of Bronze will continue.

Click here for Age of Bronze "Seen" in the iTunes store.

Sad Little Oz Boy

2011-10-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

My parents divorced in the summer of 1977, and within a few weeks of that, our house burned down. The family badly needed an escape. So my mom and sister and I went to the Winkie Convention in Yosemite, California. It was a life-changing experience.

I returned home full of courage and very Ozzed up. My childhood love of Oz shifted into high-gear. I began to eat, sleep, and breathe Oz - whether it was pleading for an advance on my allowance to buy a another first edition or requesting an Oz map on my birthday cake. And it wasn't enough to buy every Oz book in sight and turn my bedroom into the Royal Oz Museum of Greater Albuquerque, I wanted the entire family to be Ozzy. I suggested to Mom we needed a custom license plate for our car. For some reason mom agreed.

As you can see, I picked my favorite character's name. But also because I knew the custom plates in New Mexico were blue and of course were rectangle-shaped. The day it arrived I rushed out to the car to bolt it on. It got a lot of attention! People would honk and wave, they'd also give our car a wide berth. It took several weeks for us to realize that "Woozy" had a very different meaning to the average schmo on the streets of Albuquerque than it did to me (and my Ozzy family). But the car remained Woozy until we sold it several years later.

In 1978 we returned to the Winkie Convention with our Woozy mobile. And to make it even Ozzier, I made an Oz flag to go on the radio antenna. It came out exactly as I'd wanted except that I didn't know how to embroider an "Oz" in the center - so I left it off. When it was finished I carefully folded it and put it in the glove compartment so we wouldn't forget it. After we entered Yosemite and were about five miles from the Wawona Hotel where the Winkies met back then I had mom pull the car over. I got out, attached the flag to the antenna, and we sailed on in to the Wawona, Oz colors flying.

Mom is gone now; but I still have the license plate and Oz flag. I don't like to admit it, but it seems pretty obvious to me now that I used Oz to replace the family that was dissolving before my eyes. It quite probably saved my life.

No EUREKA! in Facsimile Land

2011-10-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

If this was just an attempt at a lovely edition of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, this review might be a rave. I keep trying to be positive about the Bradford Exchange "facsimile" series, but after four books, the fact that they still can't get one right has greatly disheartened me. I will begin by saying that this is almost certainly the most handsome edition of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz currently in print. It's the first of the Bradford books that is at least on par with the Books of Wonder edition and Bradford's lovely cloth and paper-label cover gives Bradford the win.

But when Bradford has stuck its chin out so far with claims that "no detail has been overlooked in recreating the precise specification of the original editions, from the quality of the paper, to the printing of the art plates" and their even more over-the-top "This masterpiece collection is 100% authentic to the ground-breaking first editions of the Wizard of Oz book series in every exacting detail," well, it's hard for me to give a passing grade to the at-best adequate reproduction and sometimes very poor design choices.

As usual with these reissues, the cover is quite lovely and authentic in feel. The color of the cloth, the spine printing, and the gold in the label are very similar to the original 1908 first edition, but the reproduction of the figures is a bit grainy. Another minor quibble, the 1908 first edition is bound in horizontally ribbed cloth and the BE cloth is not ribbed. I realize I'm being picky here - but I'm not the one that claimed the books were "100% authentic to the ground-breaking first editions."

The other problems are a lot more serious than a lack of ribbed cloth. The paper choice is not good. Bradford seems to like choosing bright white paper for these books when the originals just weren't ever printed on such stuff. The paper in Dorothy and the Wizard also suffers from pretty severe show-thru - something the original editions of the Oz books have certainly never had.

The reproduction of the color plates is generally adequate, but they could have been much better. The comparison below shows one of Bradford's more successful color plates, yet it is still far from ideal. Make sure to click on the images below to see the comparison in detail.

Click to Enlarge!

You'll notice the decided graininess in the Bradford plate at left. The colors seem dirtier, less pure. The figures in the doorway seem more gray than blue as seen in the original at right. Perhaps you've noticed that the Bradford image is bigger, too. Well, for some reason Bradford has enlarged all the text pages and color plates. For my money, that just shot any claims of "100% authentic" out of the waters of the Nonestic. What possible reason can Bradford have for enlarging the text and illustrations? Did someone use a wonky scanner?

Click to Enlarge!

Compare the two versions of the text illustration above. Again you can see how much the illustrations have been enlarged. But look how much detail Bradford is losing! The fine shadows in the Wizard's face, the subtlety in Dorothy's eyes, the fine lines in the Wizard's silken hat all dissolve into blobs and murk. I do want to point out that Bradford's reproduction of the line art is much better than the 1960s Reilly and Lee "white editions," yet why is Bradford's so sub par to my quickie 600dpi scan of the first edition for the blog? If you can scan something; you can print something. Plain and simple.

Click to Enlarge!

On first glance the end papers look pretty good, but then one compares them to the original and one starts seeing the deficiencies in reproduction. Why can't Bradford reproduce fine lines? Look at Eureka's whiskers, the finer lines in Dorothy, the delicate speckling of the trees in front of the palace. I can tell you Bradford made it hard on themselves by reproducing these endpapers in a rather idiotic way - they are printed in full color, not in just black and yellow as they should have been.

Click to Enlarge!

A close-up comparison of one of the towers shows how crude the Bradford reproduction truly is. The line art has swollen into a caricature of the original. How did John R. Neill's evenly speckled dots in the tower roof at right turn into the scruffy mess seen in the tower roof at left? It's just a crappy, crappy scan. The blobbiness and softness are no doubt worsened by printing the image in full CMYK color. If you enlarge the image above and look closely at the tower at left, you will see the bits of cyan (blue) and magenta lurking around. This image should be printed in black and yellow only. There would have been nothing wrong in Bradford's scanning the original endpapers in full color, but it's utterly ridiculous to have not split the channels and deleted the magenta and blue from the printing plates. It would have made a crisp clear image, printed in black and yellow just like the first edition. But why bother? What is this, a facsimile?

Bradford claims that their Oz book reprints are faithful reproductions of the first printings, but that's clearly not true. Some aspects of these books make it seem like they're trying to do a good job. The slapdash results of other aspects make it seem as if no one at Bradford cares. Their edition of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz is an attractive book - much prettier and satisfying than their Ozma of Oz (my review of that book here) - but as a fulfillment of their promises of authenticity, Dorothy and the Wizard falls between the cracks.

Sis Sez Sunday - 59

2011-10-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Poor Sis is gonna need a vacation after her vacation!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 51, in July 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

The Winkie Convention 2012

2011-10-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

The 48th Annual Winkie Convention

Celebrating the World of Oz and L. Frank Baum

Chaired by David Maxine & Judy Bieber

Hungry Tiger Talk is happy to announce that 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, and much more to be announced in the coming weeks.

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!

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.

Please Register Early!

Registration is open until May 20, 2012, after which registrations will be handled on a space-available basis. But we would greatly appreciate receiving your registration and payment to guarantee your room by December 1, 2011. Over the course of the year the Winkie Con must make several substantial downpayments to Asilomar for the convention. If everyone waits till the last minute to register this can be a problem, so please register as early as possible. As the registration deadline approaches, the Winkie Con tends to run out of rooms on the Asilomar grounds. We always do our best to accommodate late registrants, but early registration will guarantee your Winkie Con accommodations and help us with our cash flow. Click here for PDF Registration Forms

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 which contains updates and much other helpful and interesting information to enrich your Winkie Con experience:

http://winkies.oogaboo.org/news.html

The Scarecrow Goes to College!

2011-10-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

In doing much research on the 1903 Wizard of Oz musical for my 2 CD set of Vintage Recordings from the show and my current book project, I have become a fan of Fred Stone who created the role of the Scarecrow. While I have only read of his amazing, amusing, and acrobatic antics on stage, I have seen quite a few of his films from later in his life, and I've got quite a little scrapbook of photos, clippings and odd bits relating to Fred Stone.

One thing I did not have until today was one of his Scarecrow sketches. Occasionally when he signed his autograph he would doodle a Scarecrow. I've seen a dozen or so of these over the years, but either lost out in the bidding, or thought the asking price was too high, but I knew I'd eventually find one.

I'm quite happy with this one. It is large, measuring about 6" x 9" and drawn in pencil which I think adds some subtlety to Stone's drawing. This particular sketch is on the back of a guide book for Knowles Memorial Chapel at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida dated 1937.

I have not yet deciphered the second autograph. Any guesses?

Sis Sez Sunday - 58

2011-10-02T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well, Sis is out in the wilderness on a camping trip and I'm here typing out blog post 300. Time sure does fly! Thanks to all of you who read the blog and get some enjoyment from our tiger-striped antics. Now on to this week's Sis Sez. This is actually one of my favorites.

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 51, in July 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

Good TIMES for Ozma!

2011-09-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's Ozma of Oz graphic novel from Marvel Comics has just made The New York Times Bestseller list for Graphic Novels (Hardcover).

Click here to see for yourself!

In the Psych Ward with O. Z. Diggs

2011-09-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

No one is perfect - not even the little old Wizard of Oz. If you'd been involved in a kidnapping and coup, hidden all by yourself for decades in the back rooms of a palace, been asked for the impossible by Scarecrows and Lions, fled back to America for a little relaxation and retirement, then all of a sudden your balloon is swallowed by the earth and you're trapped in a land of talking vegetables - and all those piglets! - everyone has a breaking point.

But fear not! Oscar Diggs (the Wizard of Oz himself) has gotten some help over on the Marvel Comics website in Tim Stevens' Psych Ward. Mr. Diggs said it was OK to share this, so go on over and sit in on the next therapy session. Click here

Tim Stevens has seen Dorothy Gale on occasion, and you can read about her session on the couch here.

The first issue of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz went on sale at comic stores yesterday. It's really terrific and may just be the best series yet from Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. And don't forget that the just-released Ozma of Oz hardcover collection is now available at our Hungry Tiger Press on-line store.

All copies of the Marvel Oz books sold thru Hungry Tiger Press will be autographed by writer Eric Shanower!

If you'd like your book personalized, just let us know how you'd like your book signed, and to whom, when you "check out."

Of course we have copies of Marvel's Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz, too! If you'd like them signed just let us know.

RETURN TO OZ Babies

2011-09-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

These cute little guys from Walt Disney Studio's Return to Oz were produced by Hart á Hart as part of the Japanese merchandising for the 1985 film. They each stand about four inches high, except for Tik-Tok who clocks in at about three inches. These little guys are not quite as hard to find as the big Return to Oz "plushies," like the Tik-Tok and Scarecrow I have previously blogged about. But these little guys are still quite uncommon.

They are really well molded and the attention to the costumes for figures so small is striking. The figures are minimally articulated, too. Their heads rotate and their arms can be posed. The Tin Woodman's legs are articulated as well. Back in the old MySpace days I made an animated GIF of Tik-Tok waving his arms and blinking. You can see it here if you like.

I got my first Tik-Tok and Scarecrow at the Winkie Con in 1987, not too long after the toys were released. I finally found the other two at a Disney Collectibles Convention in one of the Disneyland Hotels in 1989. I had to buy a set of the four to get them. So I had two duplicates. Don't ask! The two extras have been long sold off.

I've always wanted to make a Gump for them to hang out in - perhaps one day I shall!

Sis Sez Sunday - 57

2011-09-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

I've never quite decided how old Sis is. She most often seems like a young woman, possibly in her late teens - then an episode pops up where she's dancing in gym class and has irritated the P.E. teacher.

How old do you think Sis is supposed to be? Any opinions?

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 50, in June 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

The Un-Curious Cottabus

2011-09-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Well, boys and girls, this round of Oz Connection proved either incredibly boring or so stymied you that you didn't even hazard a guess. I will thank Scott O. for his entry connecting Groucho to Mervyn LeRoy through the film At the Circus (1939), the only answer or guess that was posted. Shall we abandon the silly game in the future or shall the next list of names include the likes of Mickey Carroll, Pink Floyd, and Kristin Chenoweth?

OK, enough grumping from me . . . So what are the Baum or Oz connections for Groucho Marx, John Keats, and Farrah Fawcett-Majors?

Let's begin with Groucho Marx. I am sure there are many ways one could make Oz connections for Groucho via his many films and TV shows, but there is one very strong Oz Connection. In 1960 Groucho was to have starred in an NBC television special of L. Frank Baum's The Magical Monarch of Mo. The teleplay was written specifically for Groucho by novelist and historian Gore Vidal (a long time lover of Oz and Baum himself).

Vidal subtitled the Mo teleplay as "A Fairy Tale for Adults." Alas, the show was never produced, though publicity art and Vidal's script both survive. I assumed Groucho would be pretty easy.

I knew romantic poet John Keats would be a lot harder. The clue is in the name Keats. The poet's great great grandniece was named Emma Keats Speed. In 1896 Miss Speed married a man named Henry Aylett Sampson. He was sports editor for The New York Times, and himself a great great grandson of Patrick Henry. Anyway, Emma Speed Sampson became a writer of children's books, including the continuation of L. Frank Baum's Mary Louise series after Baum's death. The Mary Louise books were all published under Baum's pseudonym, Edith Van Dyne.

I threw in Farrah Fawcett-Majors as a random name. I had no special plan for how to connect her to Oz. Here are a few that come to mind: The red swimsuit she wore in her best-selling poster from 1976 is now at the Smithsonian near a pair of famous red shoes; she also did a voice in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998), which was written by Oz collector Willard Carroll; but I'm going to play connect the Oz connections and mention that Farrah also played Mary Ann Pringle in the film version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970). As you may have heard, Gore Vidal is a Baum enthusiast who published several important essays on Oz in addition to his many novels and histories. He also wrote the teleplay of Baum's Magical Monarch of Mo back in 1960.

Dorothy and the MARVELous Wizard in Oz!

2011-09-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

If you're ready for an in depth sneak-peek at Marvel Comics' great new adaptation of L. Frank Baum's Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, then head over to Newsarama to read an interview with both Eric Shanower and Skottie Young and check out a preview of the first few pages of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. As a bit of a teaser, here is an advance look at Eric Shanower's "alternate" cover for the first issue.

And don't forget that the just released Ozma of Oz hardcover collection is now available at our Hungry Tiger Press on-line store.

All copies of the Marvel Oz books sold thru Hungry Tiger Press will be autographed by writer Eric Shanower!

If you'd like your book personalized, just let us know how you'd like your book signed, and to whom, when you "check out."

Of course we have copies of Marvel's Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz, too! If you'd like them signed just let us know.

The Troubles of Pop Wombat

2011-09-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

This month's free on-line Tiger Tale is L. Frank Baum's The Troubles of Pop Wombat, one of his Animal Fairy Tales from 1905. The story was originally published in the August issue of The Delineator that year and featured quite handsome illustrations by naturalist illustrator Charles Livingston Bull. It's a good story and all of Bull's illustrations are included, too. As always, there's a little bonus from Ruth Plumly Thompson and the Forgetful Poet.

So get a nice cup of tea and settle down with Pop Wombat. Just click here to begin your journey!

More Oz Connection

2011-09-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

How about we play Oz Connection again! Perhaps you recall our little game: It's kind of a three-way combination of Ozian lore, Trivial Pursuit, and a pop-culture quiz all rolled into a game approximating the party game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." It's an amusing thing to do while driving to an Oz Con. It goes something like this:

One person says, "E. B. White," and then another player must try and link E. B. White to Oz as closely and quickly as possible. While there are probably MANY different routes, the first to pop into my head was: E. B White wrote Charlotte's Web. In the 1973 film version, the voice of the Goose was contributed by Agnes Moorehead, and she played Mombi in the Shirley Temple television production of The Land of Oz. You can check out our previous couple rounds by typing "Oz Connection" into our SEARCH window.

Post your answers in the blog's COMMENTS section - not on Facebook. Just click the "comments" link at the bottom of this post.

I will not publish or post any of the proposed Oz Connection answers until Friday morning. This will give everyone a chance to answer. Remember there is no single answer - there are many different ways you might connect these three to Oz. There is also no prize beyond the fact that it's a great way to show your own obsessive geekiness and superb cultural knowledge! Have fun!

Give me your best Oz Connection for the following three people:

Farrah Fawcett-Majors

Groucho Marx

John Keats

The answers to this round of Oz Connection can be found by clicking here.

That Hamilton Woman

2011-09-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

When I was in my mid-teens and just starting to seriously build my Oz collection, I went on a jag trying to get as many of my books autographed as possible. A few of the folks I contacted became good friends: Dick Martin, Elosie Jarvis McGraw, Rachel Cosgrove; and a few politely agreed to autograph books by mail, they signed the books, and that was that: Russell MacFall, Edward Wagenknecht, Donald Wollheim, etc.

I had met Aljean Harmetz the year before her landmark Making of the Wizard of Oz was published, and I got a signed copy from her the next year. But that book also had a foreword by Margaret Hamilton and I really wanted to get the foreword signed, too. So I wrote Hamilton a letter asking if I might send my copy of the book to her for an autograph (with return postage of course) and I didn't hear back . . . and didn't hear back . . . and then finally a letter from Margaret Hamilton! It was postmarked July 28, 1980, seven months after I had first written her.

She wrote in quite a scrawl, up the side of the page and then back across the top where she signed it, "Maggie H." (upside-down above the words New York in her printed address). Here's what she wrote:

Dear Mr. Maxine - I just can't believe it! Dec. '79? Please accept my guiltful!!?! apologies! I hate to have people mail anything you want back! We have lost books mailed - never to turn up. Our NYC mail is the worst in the nation!If you do not care why send it and we'll both pray. If you do care - let me suggest you tape this card with my greetings or a nice smaller one. I would not suggest the U.S. mails, nor trust them. I was so sad not to make the convention - next year I hope! So you do as you wish and I'll do all you ask at this end. Let's hope for good luck!

Very best to you - Maggie H.
PS - Do you know my friends the Hibbens?

Well, as it turned out I received her letter about a week before the 1980 Munchkin Convention for which she was to be a special guest. I took my book with me, and she signed it there, in person. The first thing that struck me was how very tiny she was. True, I was six feet tall, but my mom was 5'- 3" and even she was surprised by how tiny Margaret Hamilton was! At lunch I was able to sit at her table and I remember looking at her hands, wondering if I could see any scars from her accident while filming in Munchkinland. I couldn't - they just looked like spotty old lady hands.

Somehow no one much discussed The Wizard of Oz. The main story I recall Hamilton telling at the lunch table involved a film called These Three (1936), the first film version of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, in which they turned the child's lie about lesbianism into a lie about heterosexual adultery. It's actually a good film, despite the meddling.

There is a scene where the child, played by Bonita Granville, admits the lie after it has destroyed three lives, and Margaret Hamilton (playing a maid) has to slap Granville very hard. They shot the scene several times, Hamilton kept pulling back on the slap, and Granville wasn't making the slap believable with her acting. Finally, director William Wyler had had enough, and he got rather angry. They were wasting time, money, and film. He told Hamilton to really slap her, slap her good, so they could get the shot in the can and move on. As I recall the story, Wyler told Hamilton in private so Granville would react properly. Action! Hamilton hauled back and slapped Bonita Granville hard across the cheek. In the film Granville looks stunned, pauses for a moment, begins to shake slightly, and the tears pour out and she runs up the stairs. It's great! Hamilton was very upset over it. She said after Wyler called cut, she could still see her hand-print on Bonita Granville's face. She went out and bought Bonita a gift. Some Wicked Witch!

I was very glad I got to meet Margaret Hamilton.

I'm Stuck on THE WIZ

2011-09-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

A few months ago ago I got an unusual Oz item. I'm not even sure exactly what it is but you can see it at left.

It's a WIZ stick pin. The design of the logo is clearly based on main title logo from the 1978 film version of The Wiz (see poster below). But what exactly is it? Was it sent to movie theaters for ticket-takers to wear? Was it a prize for some Ozzy contest? Was it perhaps a cast and crew gift?

I tend to think it's the latter, but I have no real evidence for such a claim. I have not been able to find anything on the web about such a pin either.

It is very well made. The little gold plunger is heavy and I have wondered if the pin might actually be gold (I have not had it tested) but the casting of the logo is very detailed and the stick itself is very soft and bendable.

As a Wiz fan I'm quite happy to have it - but I'd be delighted to know more about what it actually is, too!

Pinocchio Meets Jenny Jump!

2011-09-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

At a recent book show I came across a group of very pretty picture books in dust jackets. What initially caught my eye as I scanned the shelves were the Reilly & Lee imprints on the spines. Reilly & Lee, of course, was the original publisher of the Oz books.

All of the books in question were illustrated by William Donahey, and all but one were his Teenie Weenie books. The non-Teenie Weenie title was Hi! Ho! Pinocchio - The American Boy by Josef Marino (in actuality a pseudonym of Roy Judson Snell who wrote almost two dozen boy's series books for Reilly and Lee under his real name.)

Hi! Ho! Pinocchio, published in 1940, tells of the famed puppet's immigration to America, painting a portrait of the Italian immigrant experience just before World War II. The book actually seemed kind of interesting, but my interest was dampened by the price tag. Before I put the book back on the shelf I flipped thru, looking at all Donahey's illustrations and color plates and finally at the jacket flaps. The back flap was an advertisement for John R. Neill's first Oz book, The Wonder City of Oz, also published in 1940. I didn't particularly recognize the text so I took a photo - but it turns out that it's the same text that's on the front flap of the Wonder City dust jacket. Assuming most of my readers may not have Wonder City in jacket, and they probably don't have plans to rush out and buy a copy of Hi! Ho! Pinocchio's dust jacket either, here is the Wonder City ad for your enjoyment.

The Wonder City of Oz

Life in the Wonder City is as pleasantly Ozish as everything else in Oz. In the first place, the houses are alive and the animals - tiger-lilies, bull-rushes, and horse-chestnuts - grow like plants in gardens, and they talk. And then there's the Turnstyle, where all the royalty - or anyone else in Oz can get clothes. They go through the turnstyle and come out clothed just as they wish by pressing buttons on the arms of the turnstyle. Jenny Jump - she of the two fairy ears, one fairy eye, one fairy foot, and eight fairy fingers - runs the turnstyle.

All sorts of things go on in the Wonder City. The town crier blubbers and weeps because Whistlebreeches, Jenny's errand boy, won't stop whistling so people can hear him cry. And the Wizard makes some very strange changes in Jenny. She and Jack Pumpkinhead are made prisoners behind chocolate bars by chocolate soldiers. Jack Pumpkinhead has a glee club composed of old shoes. All unnecessary squeaks are removed from the shoes and kept in a sound-proof bag. They sing Shoebert, Shoeman, and Golden Slippers.

With such people living there and such things going on all the time you can see that almost anything might happen in the Wonder City. And does. Adventures and magic and lovely, funny people doing funny things - every single page of THE WONDER CITY OF OZ is chock full of them. It's the most exciting, the merriest, the most deliciously astonishing Oz book of them all.

An Ozma Original

2011-09-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

Since everyone is so excited that Marvel Comics' Ozma of Oz is finally out in hardcover, I thought I'd finally share my favorite acquisition from this year's San Diego Comic Con - this page of original Ozma art by Skottie Young.

I really adore this page! I love the long shot of the Nome King's throne room, I love the expressions on Dorothy and Ozma's faces, and I love the panel showing Roquat. He seems so exactly how I always imagine the Nome King - sorta like a manipulative, spoiled, sort of charmingly rotten version of Santa Claus. And there's so much story communicated in these three panels - even with the word balloons missing!

If you don't yet have a copy of the hardcover collection of Ozma of Oz, we have copies (autographed by writer Eric Shanower) available at our on-line store. Click here to check it out!

Sis Sez Sunday - 56

2011-09-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hats off to Sis for knowing when to walk away!

This installment of Marge and Ruth Plumly Thompson's SIS SEZ page first appeared in King Comics, No. 50, in June 1940. If you love Marge's Little Lulu you're sure to get a kick out of Sis!

Please note that if you click on the image it will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.

My, What Big Dice You Have!

2011-09-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of the great items to add to one's Oz and Baum collection is a copy of the lovely and rare 1921 Parker Brothers Wonderful Game of Oz.

The game featured a beautifully lithographed game board, six wooden dice that spelled out WIZARD, and four pewter playing pieces in the shapes of Dorothy and her three famous friends.

Well, way back in 1991 when Eric Shanower and I hosted our first Winkie Con we made a copy of the game that could be played by conventioneers. It was created from color photocopies of my game board, we bought reproduction playing pieces, I made the dice, and on the whole it was a grand success. At the con we set up the reproduction game on these large wooden seating benches that are about eight feet square. I joked at the time that I thought it would be super neat if we had a HUGE version of the game that filled the entire eight foot square bench.

Twenty years later, I finally made one.

Below you can see the world's largest Wonderful Game of Oz! I scanned my own game board at very high resolution and blew it up to seven-foot-six by seven-foot-six and had it printed out on weatherproof vinyl.

Winkie Con attendees reading the RULES before playing the game.

I ordered a set of the 4" tall pewter Oz figurines from The Soldier Factory. They were the perfect size! I had to make the six wooden WIZARD dice - they are about two inches square.

The original game came with only one rule booklet, but for ease of play I made several copies. Jane Albright kindly supplied me with scans of the original full-color rule booklet cover.

Oz Club President Carrie Hedges (seated) playing The Wonderful Game of Oz.

The game was a big hit! Conventioneers played it during the reception on Friday and during the day on Saturday when they wanted a break from the auction or came back from a swim or a beach side stroll. It will definitely be back next year. So if you'd like to play, start making plans to join us at the 2012 Winkie Con! For more information on attending Winkie Con 2012, you can click here or on the WINKIE CON tab above or subscribe to our Winkie newsletter or find us on Facebook.

Electronic Adventures in Oz

2011-09-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

Eric Shanower's Little Adventures in Oz has just been published as an app for iTunes and is ready for download for hours of Ozzy fun on your iPhone, iPad, or on your computer via iTunes. Volume one is available now, volume two will be along soon. This first iTunes release includes The Enchanted Apples of Oz and The Ice King of Oz.

Click here to go to the iTunes app store.

The actual book is available at our on-line store, too. And if you'd like your copy signed, just ask in the "Special Instructions" field when you check out.

So, what better way to keep your favorite Oz graphic novels with you at all times (short of a backpack) than to have them on your iPhone!

It's Ozma Time!

2011-09-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to announce that the hardcover collection of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's Ozma of Oz from Marvel Comics arrived in stores today!

The book has also just been added to our Hungry Tiger Press on-line store!

All copies sold thru Hungry Tiger Press will be autographed by writer Eric Shanower.

If you'd like your book personalized, just let us know how you'd like your book signed, and to whom, when you "check out."

Of course we have copies of Marvel's Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz, too! If you'd like them signed just let us know.

Please do note that our copies will not ship out to customers until early next week. But if you want a signed one - now's the time to order, since we may have a limited supply for a while.

Sunday Pop-Up Sunday

2011-09-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

Last night Eric and I watched Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) starring Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch, and Murray Head.

I had somehow always assumed the film was about the infamous massacre in Ireland in 1972 which later inspired the U2 song of the same name. Yet the film predates that tragedy and is instead a domestic drama in which Jackson and Finch are each having a relationship with Murray Head.

The film was enjoyable enough, Murray Head was kinda cute, and the film is set circa 1970, which is one of my favorite modern periods. Anyway, a bit into the film is a scene where Jackson and Head are baby-sitting a bunch of rowdy hippie children. The two are having a conversation when Murray Head picks up one of the kids' books and starts playing with it while he talks to Jackson.

As you may have surmised by now, it is a copy of the 1969 Random House Pop-Up Wizard of Oz! Head primarily looks at the elaborate Emerald City pop-up which came with green glasses.

I've been toying with the idea of starting a series of blog posts on the various Oz pop-up books - perhaps this will push me into it. Oz really is everywhere!