Meet Dale Ulrey!

Dale Conner circa 1939

A couple weeks ago one of my readers asked why there seemed to be so little information on 1950s Oz and Baum illustrator Dale Ulrey. Indeed, no Oz folk seem to have ever even seen a photo of her! Might something be done about this? While a basic internet search proved rather fruitless, popping into a couple of Eric's and my genealogical resources turned the trick!

Mildred Dale Conner was born January 1, 1904, on a farm near Sulphur Springs, Texas. Her father was William Madison Conner (1870-1936) and her mother was Nellie Nichols (1872-1949). The family moved to Dallas in 1916 where her father became a salesman for Butler Bros., a department store and mail-order firm.

Young Mildred seems to always have drawn. The Dallas Morning News, September 2, 1939, wrote of the small brunette: "Before she was old enough to enter school, the future artist drew sketches of people. Her consuming ambition as a child was to 'write a book and draw all the pictures.'" She finished grade school at John S. Armstrong School in Highland Park, Texas, and spent all four years of High School at Oak Cliff High. She graduated in 1921.

Mildred Dale Conner at Oak Cliff High (1921).

Her year book says: "Some one has described Mildred as the little girl with the 'come hither' eyes and it's not such a bad description. Besides being very easy to look at, 'Cricket' can draw almost anything on earth - even a crowd." So little Mildred had the nickname of "Cricket." Oh, the things one can discover online! Cricket spent all four of her high school years on the staff of "The Acorn," the Oak Cliff High newspaper. 

Mildred Dale Conner and the "Art Staff" of THE ACORN.

She apparently adored her art instructor, Nellie Clement, and according again to The Dallas Morning News, two of her classmates also found art careers: Commercial artist Jewel Brannon of Fort Worth, and Lansing "Lance" Nolley, who went on to have a very full career working for Walt Disney Studios. See the "comments" section below for more information on Lance Nolley.

She spent another year in what the newspaper calls "post-graduate work" at Oak Cliff High studying art and Advanced French; and spent a year at the University of Texas "concentrating on line drawing and technical drawing." She also studied anatomy and life drawing with Vivian Anspaugh. While still studying in Dallas she began work in the art department of the Palace Theater.

Dale must have enjoyed her movie theater art work as she moved to New York (for the next twelve years) where she worked for Hap Hadley's theatrical art studio, handling publicity for many of the major movie studios.

Her earliest cartooning work seems to have begun when she started working for Martha Orr, creator of  the comic strip Apple Mary, later renamed Mary Worth's Family. In 1937, Orr married, and turned over all of the drawing chores to Dale.

One of Dale's "Apple Mary" strips from August 23, 1939 - click to enlarge

An original Sunday strip of MARY WORTH'S FAMILY from 1941.

You can read the entire and fascinating history of the transformation of Apple Mary into Mary Worth, here, in this Comics Journal essay. But Conner's reasons for departing from the strip are best summed up here, in a letter she wrote to fellow cartoonist Milton Caniff: “I’m so heart-sick over what Apple Mary has turned out to be. Working on it has become a chore. There’s no action to draw, only dull and childish conversation, and the plot is so inane that I gag as I try to make something of it. I dread seeing the proofs each week for my feeling shows in them.”

Sometime between September 1939 and April 1940 Dale Conner married Frank Herbert Melville Ulrey (1898-1958). The 1940 census shows them living in Chicago. Herb Ulrey was a navigator in World War I and after the war continued his work as a navigator, working for Sir Thomas Lipton, the famous yachtsman. A 1942 Dallas newspaper article states that Herbert Ulrey had previously drawn his own comic strip about a "G-Man," but I can find no information on or evidence for this claim.

Soon after their marriage, Dale quit Mary Worth's Family and she and Herb developed a new strip called Hugh Striver, relating the adventures of a newspaper boy; it debuted October 5, 1942.

Hugh Striver seems to have been only moderately successful. It came to an end in February 1945. You can see the first strip below:

HUGH STRIVER, October 5, 1942, by Herb & Dale Ulrey - click to enlarge

For a time the Ulreys lived in Barrington, Illinois, (on Bateman Road) and in August of 1943 they had a daughter, Dale Caroline Ulrey.

Herb and Dale Ulrey circa 1943.

In April 1945 Dale Ulrey launched a new "adventure" comic strip that she both wrote and drew called Ayer Lane, about a young man with an airplane. This strip ran until sometime in 1947.

Ulrey's AYER LANE strip from August 11, 1945 - click to enlarge

Dale Ulrey began her association with Oz publisher Reilly & Lee in 1953 when she illustrated L. Frank Baum's Jaglon and the Tiger Fairies. The cover has always struck me as extremely dull. I suspect the blame should be placed with Reilly & Lee, not Ulrey, as anyone with Ulrey's skill and gifts at composition simply could not create such an uninspired cover.

Compare the cover to one of the interior illustrations shown below. It is lovely, beautifully executed, and thoroughly charming.

Interior art for JAGLON AND THE TIGER FAIRIES by Ulrey.

In 1954 she designed a dust wrapper for Jack Snow's Who's Who in Oz, but it was used only in advertisements for the book, being replaced by the yellow and red jacket based on the endpapers of The Royal Book of Oz.

There are a number of drawings by Ulrey for Ozma of Oz. No such edition was ever published, and given the fact that they were executed in varying techniques, I suspect they were work samples. You can see more of these on Bill Campbell's Oz Enthusiast blog. One of the prettiest is seen below.

Unpublished illustration by Dale Ulrey for L. Frank Baum's OZMA OF OZ.

Reilly & Lee must have liked the samples because in 1955 Ulrey began a project to re-illustrate the Oz series with a new edition of The Tin Woodman of Oz. Presumably the publisher thought more modern illustrations would help invigorate sales.

While most Oz fans would argue that Neill's original illustrations are inseparable from Baum's text, Ulrey produced a very handsome volume. You can see and read much more about Ulrey's edition of The Tin Woodman of Oz in this previous blog post.


The next year, in 1956, Ulrey got the honor of illustrating the first edition of The Wizard of Oz to be published by Reilly & Lee.

Ulrey's jacket design for the 1956 edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Ulrey's illustrations are handsome, though not as successful as those she did for Tin Woodman. They were all printed in two colors.

Dale Ulrey illustration from the 1956 edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Herbert Ulrey died on January 29, 1958, of a cerebral hemorrhage. At the time he and Dale were living in Hickory, North Carolina, on 450 3rd Avenue Drive, S. E., though I can not yet find when or why the family had moved to North Carolina, but it was after 1951.

After her 1956 Wizard of Oz, Dale Ulrey may have retired, as I can find no evidence that she did any additional work in either comics or illustration. Dale died October 14, 1989, in Dallas, Texas. It seems an absolute crime that no one ever interviewed her for The Baum Bugle or tried (as far as I know) to get her to a convention. Such missed opportunities! We will take closer looks at Ulrey's edition of The Wizard of Oz in the coming weeks.

Meet Walt Spouse

For years Eric Shanower and I have been curious about exactly who Walt Spouse was and what he did with his life. As most Oz folk know, Walt Spouse was the writer artist of the 1932-33 comic strip adaptation of five Baum Oz books: The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, and Tik-Tok-of Oz.

The adaptations of Land, Patchwork Girl, and Tik-Tok were later collected in The Funnies, the early strip-reprint comic book. And Land, Ozma, and Emerald City have been collected into individual trade paperbacks here at Hungry Tiger Press. Click here to check them out!  But Walt Spouse himself has been a complete mystery!
 
Well, thanks to online genealogy websites, recently released census records, and digitized newspaper archives, I was finally able to track our boy down.

Walter Woolston Spouse was born in Camden, New Jersey, on January 21, 1894, to John James Spouse (b. 1861) and Annie McGrory (b. 1866). Walt was a middle child. The 1900 census lists four older siblings: J. Alfred, older sisters May and Edith, and a brother Charles (just a year older than Walt). Finally, there is a younger brother named Thomas Manley Spouse.

Walt's father had been born in England and his mother had been born in Scotland. They immigrated with their first three children to the U.S. on December 30, 1891. They first settled in Camden, New Jersey, where Charles was born in October 1892, and Walt was born in January 1894. Walter's father was a controversial Baptist minister and union organizer. For a time Walt's father was working in Philadelphia, but by 1899 the family had resettled in Saginaw, Michigan.

Saginaw News, November 21, 1899

Considering how much loving detail was worked into The Wonderland of Oz, I always assumed Walt must have been a Baum/Oz fan. Now I can see he was the perfect age to be one. He was six years old when The Wizard of Oz was published and thus he was probably reading the Oz books as fast as they were being originally published..

By the 1910 census, Walt's father is listed as working for the wireless telegraph. That's the same year, coincidentally, in which Ozma cut Oz off from the big outside world in every way - except, of course, by "wireless."

Not surprisingly, Walt seems to have been drawing all of his life.

Walt won a prize for a drawing of Santa Claus, December 27, 1906. He was eleven years old.

And while in high school, Walt won first prize from the Saginaw Art Club for a poster sign advertising the club's free art exhibition, announced below in the March 8, 1910, Saginaw News. Walt was sixteen. He completed only two years of high school.

March 8, 1910, Saginaw News announces Walt Spouse wins prize for poster.

According to Walt Spouse's World War I draft card (dated 1917) he was short, stout, had brown eyes and dark brown hair. He was now living in Indianapolis, where he was working as a staff artist for the Indiana Daily Times. Note how similarly Spouse printed his name at the top of the card (below) to how he signed his Oz comics (see above). His actual signature at the bottom of the card is very ornate and quite handsome. I love the highly flourished capital S! I'm making an assumption that Spouse himself filled in the bulk of the information on the card.

Walt Spouse's WWI Draft Card.

 
In May 1924 Walt immigrated to Canada. His immigration application says he is moving to obtain work in advertising and he seems to have a job with an agency, but I can not read the company name on the application. He returned to the U. S. in August 1926. By 1928, Walt's older brother Charlie was living in Toledo, Ohio. And it is perhaps on a visit to his brother that Walt met his future wife, as on November 30, 1929, while in Ohio, Walt married a woman named Adelaide Rader.  Adelaide had been previously married to a Mr. Cassady with whom she had a daughter, Elaine. Mr. Cassady seems to have died.

The 1930 census shows Walt living in Dearborn, Michigan. And it lists Elaine Rader as Walt's step-daughter. Walt listed his occupation as an  "artist" working in "commercial art." So Walt had a young child at home while he was drawing Wonderland of Oz in 1932-1933.

Splash panel from Spouse's adaptation of Baum's Land of Oz.

A page from the comic book reprint of Spouse's Patchwork Girl of Oz.

On August 5, 1937, Adelaide filed for divorce from Walt, citing "cruelty and no support." The divorce was granted on June 23, 1938. There are no specifics, but Walt did not contest the divorce. The judge also said "no alimony."

In the 1940 census Walt is living in Detroit as an "artist," working in "advertising." He lived in a rented home that cost $40 a month. In the week prior to the census being taken, Spouse worked a 48 hour week. His total income in 1939 was $2750. The census also shows that Adelaide and Elaine have moved in with the parents of Adelaide's first husband.

Walt's World War II draft registration card says that he is still living in Detroit and he is working for the Ralph L. Woolf Co., and then the information on Walt Spouse comes to an abrupt halt.  I find no more information until Walt's death on May 10, 1975. He was eighty-one. It's too bad no one tracked him down for an interview about The Wonderland of Oz.  I would love to know more about Walt's exposure to Baum and Oz, how he liked working in comics for those few short years, and what else he did with his life.

So now you've met Walt Spouse! Come check out his Oz comics!

Buy Walt Spouse's WONDERLAND OF OZ!

The Land of Oz

Ozma of Oz

The Emerald City of Oz

Drink Your Juice!

Happy February! We have an especially attractive TIGER TALE this month over on the main website - it's  Duffy's Apple Juice Imp, by W. W. Denslow - a rollicking poem with a half dozen fine drawings by Denslow in color! Come check it out!

I also wanted to share the news that the incredible and extremely over-sized edition of Eric Shanower's Forgotten Forest of Oz is now out of print. We shared the news on our Facebook page last week and every copy we had left sold in a couple hours.  We do still have copies of the two Little Adventures in Oz Volumes though - and Forgotten Forest is available in Volume two. Click here to order a copy

Lastly, I know a good many of you are still planning on coming to this summer's Winkie Convention and I urge you to get your registrations in as soon as possible - especially if you want to stay on-grounds at Asilomar. We have a lot of new people coming this year and we have a limited opportunity to request more rooms for Winkies. You can learn more about this year's con from our WINKIE page and you can download info and registrations forms via the link below.

Click here for downloadable registration forms.

Getting Carded!

My birthday was a few days ago - and one of the nice things about having artistic friends is the occasional hand-created Ozzy birthday card. This year I got one from my friends, cartoonist Joe Phillips.

Joe has drawn other Ozzy things before, he's submitted art for the Winkie Con Program book and produced the incredible paper-sculpture of the Tin Woodman in the Winkie art show last year.

Anyway, Happy birthday to me!

Happy Holidays!

I suppose folks have noticed that I've been blogging a lot less than I used to. There are many reasons - I have been busier at work, I became irritated over a handful of obnoxious people who were leaving obnoxious comments on the blog (I deleted them), and I must admit I felt a little bit of blogger burn-out - a quite common disease! I sincerely hope to begin blogging more regularly again and will do my best to do so.

Today I am sharing an assortment of Ozzy news, but wanted to add a personal touch as the more personal blog posts have always been the more enjoyable to write. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my first exposure to Oz was my watching the MGM film on our black-and-white television when I was four years old. I enjoyed it a lot, but it certainly didn't turn me into a mega-Oz fan. However, not long after seeing the film, my mom and I were walking through the Lobo Bookstore near the University of New Mexico campus, and on an end-cap I saw a copy of The Wizard of Oz - the edition pictured below.

I don't remember if I saw the cover and knew what it was or whether my mom pointed it out. In any case, we bought it and I think it was read to me. However, the main thing I remember was how much the cover illustration fascinated me. I'm still not sure why. Perhaps it was because the characters looked quite different from the way they did in the MGM film? I think it was partly the heavy blue/green tonality of the image. I don't know what happened to the original copy of the book we bought, but when I found this copy about fifteen years ago, I saw the cover illustration and instantly was taken back to being four years old. It was quite a powerful sensation!

The book has proved quite interesting to examine with my adult eyes. The book was published by Avon Books, and this copy says "First Camelot Printing, November 1967." I suspect I encountered the book right after it came out. The interior is an unabridged Wizard text featuring all of the illustrations from the early 1960s Reilly & Lee "white edition." The little book even has a collage of Denslow images printed on the inside covers and fly-leaves, creating an "endpaper" effect. I am sure, in retrospect, that one thing that drew me to want the book when I was little was the fact that it was profusely illustrated. 

So this was my first ever Oz book. I wasn't really hooked until my second grade teacher started reading us the later Baum Oz titles, but I'm really happy to have found a copy of the first Oz book I ever remember seeing or owning.

OK, now that I have made you read this far, I will toss a few bits of Ozzy news into the blog. First, we have posted our December Tiger Tale on the website and I hope you'll take a moment to check it out. It is L. Frank Baum's short story "Aunt 'Phroney's Boy," first published exactly a hundred years ago in the December 1912 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine.

I am also pleased to announce that a new issue of Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze has just been published. Copies can be ordered from our website or found in your local comic book store. Click here to order.

That's about it for today - I'll do my best to not make you wait too long for another blog post.

Happy Holidays!

Getting Ahead in Dunkiton

The third issue of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's picturesque and picaresque adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Road to Oz has just come out.

The Road to Oz is one of my favorites of Baum's Oz books - though that is generally for sentimental reasons. Another reason is John R. Neill's sumptuous artwork.

However, I am in awe of Skottie's ability to reimagine Baum's Oz books and be both so totally original and yet feel so faithful.

This cover of this new issue features the Shaggy Man after he's acquired his gift-head from King Kick-a-bray in Dunkiton. I can't help but see a subtle connection to the original Reilly and Britton first printing of The Road to Oz from 1909. Both show Shaggy with his donkey-head and both have a green background. I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, but I like the coincidence just the same.

Remember that all four hardcover collections of the Marvel Comics Oz books are available at our on-line store - and each can be autographed by Eric Shanower! Here's a link to Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. The other three titles will be found at the bottom of that webpage. They make GREAT holiday gifts, too!

The Earth Moved!

I just sat down and read  the newly released Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz from Marvel Comics. Eric Shanower and Skottie Young have made one of their best efforts yet. I'd read a lot of it as it was being serialized but really prefer to wait for the collection to come out.

I enjoyed "seeing" so much of the Mangaboo country - I'd never imagined the gang walking thru the air in low-gravity the whole time they are there. I also found I liked Zeb a lot more than I do in the original - and Eureka is just the best!

The graphic novel is actually a much stronger book than Baum's original as Eric has Dorothy explain how Ozma keeps watch over her via the Magic Picture and that if the gang can just stay alive until Friday at 2:00 PM they'll be OK. With this ticking clock started it adds suspense and deflects from the Deus ex machina quality of Baum's original.

I am also glad to report that we have copies in stock at our on-line store! Why not come by one today! If you order from us your book will be autographed by Eric Shanower and he'll even do a little Oz sketch in it for you!During checkout just let us know how you'd like the book signed in the "Special Instructions" field.

Click here to order

So come order a copy for yourself and maybe even pick one up for a friend! We have copies of Marvel's Wonderful Wizard, Marvelous Land and Ozma of Oz as well as all our usual Oz and Baum titles.

On the Road Again

Marvel Comics's adaptation of L. Frank Baum's fifth Oz book, The Road to Oz, begins September 5, 2012, with Road to Oz #1. Marvel has just released a peek at Eric Shanower's variant cover to issue #1. Shanower has obviously returned to using Skottie Young's designs for the characters in this series. The color is by Jean-Francois Beaulieu.

Readers of Baum's original book should be able to easily identify this scene where the Shaggy Man first reveals the Love Magnet to Dorothy and Toto.

All the previous entries in this Marvel Comics series - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, and Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - have been adapted before into other media - stage, screen, recordings, comics. There have been translations of The Road to Oz with new illustrations, and Golden Books published an abridgement, but I believe this is the first time that The Road to Oz has been adapted into another medium, at least for widespread release. I suspect the picaresque nature of the plot and the load of crossover characters at the end have something to do with this lack. But if Shanower and Young's track record is anything to go on, if anyone can make The Road to Oz work in the comics medium, they can.

Candyland in Oz

The third issue of Dorothy of Oz Prequel is out, telling the story of what leads up to the forthcoming feature film Dorothy of Oz, based on the 1989 book of the same title by Roger Baum, one of L. Frank's great-grandsons. Denton Tipton wrote the script, Blair Shedd drew it, IDW published it, and the cover--presented below for you--is by Eric Shanower with Joanna Lafuente colors. Comic Book Resources has a seven-page preview of the interior here.

Ease on Down the ROAD

The final issue of Marvel's Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - issue #8 - just came out, so if you missed it, get to your local comic store for a copy to find out what happens when Eureka the kitten is accused of eating Ozma's pet piglet.

And, still on a roll, Marvel's next Oz book has been announced - you guessed it - The Road to Oz. The award-winning creative team of Eric Shanower (script), Skottie Young (art), and Jean-Francois Beaulieu (color) will be back on September 5, 2012, with the first issue of Marvel Comics's adaptation of L. Frank Baum's fifth Oz book, The Road to Oz. See Skottie's cover for issue #1 above. Here's how Marvel describes the contents:

When dusty Kansas roads suddenly turn into magic highways, it's a safe bet that one of them is the road to Oz, but which one? Dorothy's off on another fantastic adventure, and Toto is back, too. This time their companions are strange - an old homeless guy with a magic magnet and a mentally-challenged child named Button-Bright.

Shanower Speaks

Tonight on the internet radio program Karl Show! (starring Jason) join Jason Lamb as he interviews Eric Shanower about his life and work, including Oz, Age of Bronze, and just being a cartoonist. They'll also play some music that Eric picked especially for the show. It runs from 8 PM to 10 PM PST, and you can listen here at Portland Radio Authority: www.praradio.org/

If you can't listen live tonight, the show will be available for your listening pleasure in a few days at: www.karlshowstarringjason.com

Spouse and Thompson

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

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

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

Click to Enlarge

Map of Oz Monday - The Wonderland Map

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

1932 Wonderland of Oz Map

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's it for this week. Next week we'll be looking at another intriguing map!
Click here for the next Oz Map blog post.

Tony deZuniga 1932 - 2012

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

Dorothy of Oz #2

The second issue of IDW's Dorothy of Oz comic book prequel hits stores today - so why not go pick-up a copy!

The cover drawing is by Eric Shanower - though not in his typical Oz style - showing the gang in the not-so-Dainty China Country.

Based on the upcoming animated film Dorothy of Oz, the comic prequel is written by Denton J. Tipton and drawn by Blair Shedd.

Below you can see a sample page from the issue.

Looking for Work in 1901

Here in the Tiger Den there is a fair amount of material by and about Fanny Y. Cory, illustrator of L. Frank Baum's 1901 sci-fi novel The Master Key and Baum's 1903 fairytale The Enchanted Island of Yew.

Cory was also a newspaper cartoonist whose work included the one-panel Sonny Sayings, featuring the adventures of a cloyingly sweet toddler named Sonny. But (outside of Oz circles) Cory is perhaps best remembered for her 1930s comic strip Little Miss Muffet - a close cousin of Little Orphan Annie.

I have one piece of original Fanny Cory artwork which I've blogged about here. But I recently acquired a nice little signed letter from Cory written in 1901, the year she illustrated The Master Key.

I find it especially interesting to see this behind-the-scenes peek at Cory looking for work. The letter is to the editors of some unspecified children's page, discussing a project she's been given for "New Year."  In the postscript she asks why she did not receive the alphabet. I'm not sure if she's asking why she hasn't received a certain book or why she did not get a certain job.

It's a neat little letter. Tucked into my copy of Master Key or Enchanted Island of Yew it will likely be the closest I'll get to a Cory inscribed copy.

Treasury of the Forgotten Forest!

I'm very pleased to announce the publication today of a wonderful and incredibly over-sized edition of Eric Shanower's graphic novel The Forgotten Forest of Oz.

This new "Treasury Edition" from comics publisher IDW measures 10" x 13 1/4" so that Shanower's art is printed larger than ever before, allowing full appreciation of the fine, detailed linework and the rich tones of each watercolored panel. But there's more than just the acclaimed story of The Forgotten Forest of Oz. Aside from the dramatic new cover painting, this Treasury Edition features over sixteen pages of bonus material, including previously unpublished color versions of the original endpapers, never-before-seen character sketches, the artwork and script for the very first version of this tale called "The Story of Nebelle," and the preliminary art and script for the original ending of Forgotten Forest which was quite different and hasn't been published in its entirety until now!

I'm also happy to let you know that this spectacular new reprint is available to order at our online store. And as a special offer,  the first hundred copies ordered from Hungry Tiger Press will come with a signed and numbered bookplate designed especially for this offer by Eric Shanower.

Also, if you would like your book personally autographed, Mr. Shanower has agreed to do so. Simply make the request in the "special instructions" field during checkout.

You can look at a preview of the new edition of The Forgotten Forest of Oz by clicking here.

To Visit our online-store click here.

DOROTHY OF OZ hits the streets!

The first issue of IDW's Dorothy of Oz comic book prequel arrives in comic books stores today.

It features a very atypical cover design by Eric Shanower - an interesting twist since Shanower was offered the job of illustrating the original Roger Baum novel back in 1989. Eric had to turn down the project for a variety of reasons, but somehow fate decided to get him back on board. I'm not sure whether to blame the evil Jester or Marshall Mallow!

The comic is written by Denton J. Tipton and features art by Blair Shedd. You can check out an eight-page preview by clicking here.

You can see Eric Shanower's cover for issue one below. Enjoy!

Ozzy Tattoos

I've met a fair number of people with Oz tattoos - but while  Eric and I were at WonderCon last weekend Eric met a couple with an Ozzy  matched set. I didn't get to see these fine tattoos in the flesh - but Eric kindly took a photo and got permission to share it from tattoo owners Guru and Wiggle.

The tattoo images are based on this John R. Neill double-page spread from The Patchwork Girl of Oz.

But Scraps's head is based on Andy Hirsch's Patchwork Girl from Tommy Kovac's Royal Historian of Oz (SLG, 2011). Very Cool!