Original Art by John R. Neill!

Greetings! We now have a sister blog called "The John R. Neill Collection" which is connected to our new sister website called JohnRNeill.com. I'm very excited to announce that we will be offering a fine collection or original artwork by John R. Neill for sale! CLICK HERE to see our first offerings

These wonderful drawings, paintings, and illustrations which we are offering for sale come directly from the family of John R. Neill (1877-1943). After his death, Neill's second wife, Margaret Carroll Neill (called Moy by the family), carefully preserved and treasured her husband's art work in Neill's final home, "Endolane," in Flanders, New Jersey.

Mrs. Neill died in 1984 and the Neill archive was distributed among Neill's three daughters, Natalie, Annrea, and Joan. This youngest daughter, Joan Neill Farnsworth, dutifully preserved her share for many years, making it available to researchers and scholars as needed.  Joan died in 2011 and the Neill archive was split, yet again, between Joan's four children.

The wonderful pieces offered here are all from the collection of one of the granddaughters of John R. Neill. Each piece of art sold at johnrneill.com comes with a letter of provenance. This is a rare chance to own one of Neill's original drawings. We will be featuring some of his exquisite pen-and-ink work, sumptuous paintings, original magazine art, and of course some very rare Oz material. Keep checking our store - more drawings will be added weekly.

One of the treasures of the collection is this magical rabbit painting from Pictorial Review! Click here to see the sale page.

"The Bunny Band" Original painting by John R. Neill $10,000.00 SOLD!

We also have some of Neill's exquisite pen-and-ink work such as this jaunty illustration of a dapper young couple out for a ride in their sporty automobile. Click here to see the sale page.

"Out for a ride! Pen-and-Ink by John R. Neill $1250.00

There is much more to see at our online gallery store so come on over and explore this wonderful collection! We hope, too,  that you will find much enjoyment in owning a piece of original art by one of America's most extraordinary, but under-rated illustrators from the golden age of illustration.

Come check it all out at

www.johnrneill.com

Christmas Cards - Have a Cool Yule!

I've previously blogged about several examples of holiday cards drawn by the creators of the Oz series. Eloise Jarvis McGraw was known to engrave wood-blocks to print her own Holiday cards (click here). And Eric Shanower drew his own Christmas cards for many years. Here's one of my favorites featuring Percy the Personality Kid. Bill Campbell of the Oz Collector blog recently shared a great collection of John R. Neill's personal Christmas greetings.

Here is a Christmas card drawn by Oz illustrator Dick Martin. It is a commercially produced card designed by Martin in the mid-1950s. Dick created dozens of different greeting cards back then. Many delighted in '50s kitsch, such as this trumpet playing cat lounging in a bowl chair. The front of the card gives little indication this is, in fact, a Christmas card. But as you'll see from the inner spread, it is!

As this cat says, "Have a cool Yule . . . and a real crazy new Year!"

Map of Oz Monday - Ojo Mojo

OK, boys and girls, we are setting off on a major hike through the Munchkin Country today. And Ojo and Realbad and Snufferbux are going to be our guides! Luckily Ojo has brought along the Oz maps created by L. Frank Baum and Ruth Plumly Thompson, and Snufferbux has his copies of the relevant texts.

Together we're gonna try to untangle what I see as the one terrible error on the Oz Club's maps, and that is the shifting of Ojo's and Doctor Pipt's homes to the northern Munchkin Country. Baum's map (and text) has them in the southern Munchkin Country.

Granted, there is a textual contradiction in Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914). In short, the club maps chose to honor a totally unimportant slip of the pen by Baum (a reference to the Gillikin Country) and thus made hash of the story logic (and often explicit detail) of Baum's Patchwork Girl and Ruth Plumly Thompson's Ojo in Oz (1933).

I will be getting into Baum's text in detail. But here's what we're talking about.

Baum's map on left, Club map on right - Click to enlarge.

On the left is Baum's map showing Ojo in the South near the Quadling border; on the right is the Club's map showing Ojo in the north with Dr. Pipt's mountain on the Gillikin border. Exactly who pushed for this change is not known. At least originally, Jim Haff followed the bulk of Baum's story and kept Ojo in the south as you can see in his master research map, below. (Remember that the Club maps show east on the right hand side of the map.)

Jim Haff's placement of Ojo in the south on his original "research" map.

In all likelihood it was either Fred Meyer or Dick Martin that "corrected" Jim's careful research and argued for shifting Ojo and Pipt to the north. Fred had a persnickety obsession with certain details and I can imagine him focusing in on that word "Gillikin" and not letting go. Dick Martin seems to me to have approached the maps from an "ease of drawing" perspective much of the time. And the northern section of Haff's Munchkin Country was kind of empty and it's also possible that Dick urged the move to simply fill up that space on the map. This is all conjecture; we simply don't know at this point what happened, only that Jim Haff's careful design was radically altered.

This may seem like a big fuss over nothing. What does it matter that one map shows Ojo in the north and another shows Ojo in the south? Well, it turns out to matter a lot, much more than I even realized from an Oz history perspective. In the Oz Club choice, all you gain is the chance to honor Baum's unimportant slip of the pen, "Gillikin."

But I think much was lost by that choice. Whereas, if Ojo and Dr. Pipt are in the south, innumerable details in the stories of both Patchwork Girl and Ojo in Oz make sense in story-telling logic and in geographical unity. This should not be surprising when we now know Baum had already mapped the Land of Oz sometime in late 1912 or early 1913, according to Gottschalk, and we know that Thompson was using the text of Patchwork Girl (and both Baum's and her own maps) in the writing of Ojo in Oz, as you will see further below.

Let me take you on a tour through the southern Munchkin Country! We'll explore both the various texts and the various maps.

The trouble begins when Ojo and Unc Nunkie run out of food and have to leave their humble cottage deep in the dismal Blue Forest. Ojo says, "All I've ever seen of the great Land of Oz, Unc Dear, is the view of that mountain over at the south, where they say the Hammerheads live . . . and that other mountain at the north, where they say nobody lives."

Unc Nunkie reminds Ojo that the Crooked Magician Dr. Pipt and his wife live on that mountain at the north. Ojo continues, "They live high up on the mountain, and the good Munchkin Country, where the fruits and flowers grow, is just on the other side."

So Ojo and Unc Nunkie set out from their cottage in the Blue Forest, heading north to get to the good part of the Munchkin Country that lies on the other side of Dr. Pipt's mountain.

Here we come to Baum's slip of the pen where he writes:

At the foot of the mountain that separated the Country of the Munchkins from the Country of the Gillikins, the path divided.  One way led to the left and the other to the right — straight up the mountain. Unc Nunkie took this right-hand path and Ojo followed without asking why. He knew it would take them to the house of the Crooked Magician, whom he had never seen but who was their nearest neighbor.

Baum should not have written that phrase about the Country of the Gillikins. He has already explained that Doctor Pipt's mountain is separating Ojo and Nunkie's home from the more fruitful plains of the Munchkin Country, these fertile fields being Ojo and Nunkie's destination. Based on Baum's previous text detail, the paragraph should have said something like: "At the foot of the mountain that separated the fertile fields of the Munchkins from the Blue Forest, the path divided."

Remember Ojo and Nunkie are explicitly journeying from their home, where they have no food, to the good part of the Munchkin Country. And remember, too, they are not journeying to visit Doctor Pipt. The Doctor is just a rest stop on the journey over the mountain barrier.

Back to the story . . . Unc Nunkie and Ojo take the right-hand path up the mountain. It must be a rough or steep climb, because they made it from home to the bottom of the mountain by early morning, yet they will be trudging up the mountain most of the day. They stop for lunch at noon and then hike for another two hours before arriving at Doctor Pipt's.

After the Liquid of Petrifaction accident, Ojo, Scraps, and Bungle decide to set off to find a cure. They continue on the path over the mountain, the same route Ojo and Nunkie always planned to take, into the fertile fields of the Munchkin Country. Baum writes: "Ojo had never traveled before and so he only knew that the path down the mountainside led into the open Munchkin Country, where large numbers of people dwelt."

After reaching the foot of the mountain they come to a brook which Scraps jumps across. They journey on, and shortly before sundown they meet a Munchkin Woodchopper who invites them to spend the night. They decline, as Ojo wants to press on with their journey. They walk late into the night, eventually coming to the house with the disembodied voice. The next day, after encountering the live phonograph, they meet the Foolish Owl and Wise Donkey (the latter says he is from Mo). They then free the Woozy and finally arrive at the Yellow Brick Road. This is not Dorothy's Yellow Brick Road but another one.

Now you might be asking, why did you cover all of that stuff in so much detail? What does it have to do with maps? Well, my friends, allow me to show you!  The events described above fit quite wonderfully into the pre-Oz Club maps! And with some surprising synchronicity, IMHO!

Below is Baum's 1914 Oz map. I have added indicated the paths (as described in Baum's text) in yellow, showing the the path from Ojo's house to the base of the mountain that separates Ojo and Nunkie from the fertile plains of the Munchkin Country. You can see the fork, where the path divides. Ojo and Nunkie took the right-hand path up the mountain to Doctor Pipt.

Narrow yellow line shows paths in the Blue Forest and path followed by Ojo to the YBR

I also added in the "second" Yellow Brick Road as it was not shown on Baum's map. It would obviously not be so straight, but this is more of a diagram to show how well Baum's text can be plugged into his own map of Oz. Note that there is even a "brook" or river for Scraps to jump across after they get down out of the mountain. This brook is on the original map; I only added the yellow path and road.

I firmly believe Baum wrote the Patchwork Girl text using his Oz map as a guide, though the map would not be published until the next year's Oz book, Tik-Tok of Oz (1914). We already have evidence that Baum drew the map in late 1912 or so (see this previous blog post). But in another unidentified 1913 newspaper interview Baum states: "the Land of Oz has grown to be a very real place to me. I have even mapped it all out, and its characters are known to me quite intimately."

Let's add another layer into all this. Ruth Plumly Thompson had clearly reread Baum's Patchwork Girl of Oz in preparation for writing her "sequel" Ojo in Oz. Below is Thompson's map of Oz. It is a tracing of Baum's 1914 map in which she has worked in the locations from her own Oz titles. I have added in essentially identical versions of the paths and Yellow Brick Road.

Thompson's map showing Ojo and Dr. Pipt and her own Bandit's Forest and Seebania from OJO IN OZ.

I think this map shows Thompson wrote Ojo in Oz using the 1914 Baum map as reference. And she has placed Seebania (the kingdom Unc Nunkie and the infant Ojo fled) just to the left of the Blue Forest where Ojo and Nunkie lived. And look where a path to the left would lead on Thompson's map - toward Seebania! No wonder Unc Nunkie avoided it.

Now what I also love about Thompson's geography here is that it justifies why (from an Oz history perspective) there is a second Yellow Brick Road and what two places it connects. The Baum and Thompson geography in Patchwork Girl and Ojo strongly allows for this Yellow Brick Road to connect the Emerald City with the old capital of the Munchkin Country, Seebania! This may well be constructive conjecture on my part, but there can be no dismissing the fact that Thompson meant Ojo's home and Seebania to be in the same general vicinity.

Below is a similarly modified version of Walt Spouse's beautifully detailed "Wonderland of Oz Map" showing the paths and Yellow Brick Road. I have added in Seebania (where Thompson has positioned it) and labeled the "brook" that Scraps jumps over.

Modified version of Walt Spouse's 1932 "Wonderland of Oz" map.

There are many subtle details from both books that can take on added significance once one begins to see the entire geographical picture. Of course Unc Nunkie avoided the "left-hand" path on the way to the fertile Munchkin fields; he knew it went to Seebania. When the Wise Donkey informs Ojo and the gang that he is from Mo, it's not surprising when one realizes Mo is just across the desert from nearby Jinxland, as The Scarecrow of Oz (1916) makes clear.

I think it makes much more sense for Dr. Pipt to have moved almost as far as he could from his old home in the Gillikin Country (where he knew Mombi) to the very desolate southern corner of the Munchkin Country. And in kind, it makes more sense to me that elderly Unc Nunkie, who fled the court of Seebania with a literal babe in arms, took refuge in the dark Blue Forest in the first empty cottage he came upon. 

Now, I do not particularly think L. Frank Baum or Ruth Plumly Thompson necessarily worked this all out in this kind of detail. But a literary fantasy land finds a life of its own as layer upon layer of fictional history is built up, as maps get modified, as characters grow - whether looking for adventure or searching for their pasts.

I think Jim Haff understood this. He brought his professional skills as a cartographer to this project, and as we'll see in the coming posts, he largely succeeded in compiling the various bits of research into a logical, geographic whole. Note that I'm not certain whether Haff paid any attention to Thompson's hand-drawn map of Oz. Still, his Munchkin Country generally followed most of the story points above. Here's my yellow schematic laid over his "research" map:

He has Ojo and Doctor Pipt in the far southern Munchkin Country, Ojo must journey over the mountain (visiting with Doctor Pipt at the summit) then down into the fields of the Munchkin Country. He has even got the Yellow Brick Road essentially connecting the old capital of the Munchkin Country (Seebania) with the Emerald City. This is because he followed the story logic and geographic sense. (Here the "left-hand path" through the forest is unresolved, but since Baum never specified where that path leads, Haff made no error there.)

Sadly, someone convinced Haff that that single word "Gillikin" mattered; and that wrecked the entire geographical and story-telling logic of two books. Here is the way the beginnings of Ojo's journey look on the published Oz Club map.

Ojo's route (indicated in red) to the Yellow Brick Road on the Oz Club map.

So, Ojo and Unc Nunkie want to get from their home to the fertile plains of the Munchkin Country. So they journey in the opposite direction of the fertile plains and climb a steep mountain for no reason. Ojo visits Doctor Pipt whom they were not particularly going to see, climbs back down the mountain, and hikes on over to the Yellow Brick Road. This seems a bit nonsensical to me, but, joy! - at least the other side of Doctor Pipt's mountain is in the Gillikin Country!

When Ojo and Nunkie's cottage was shifted to the north, that choice led to a major reshuffling of much else in the Munchkin Country. Back when Haff had Ojo and Nunkie's cottage in the south he had placed the majority of the locations from Ojo in Oz (1933) in the north. Below is the relevant section of Haff's original map:

Haff's "research" map - Routes of OJO IN OZ: Ojo's party indicated in yellow; Dorothy's party in red.

Haff's "research" map puts these Ojo in Oz locations to the north of the Yellow Brick Road used in The Wizard of Oz, the orange line at the bottom of the image. The route followed by Ojo and Realbad I've indicated in yellow: Crystal Mountain, Tappy Town, Unicorners, and finally Moojer Mountain. And the route of Dorothy and her rescue party I've indicated in red: arrival in the Blue Forest, traveling the Rolling Road to Dickseyland, and then the route Reachard leads them on toward the Emerald City, though they run smack into Moojer Mountain before they get there.

I don't really see why Haff placed these locales in the northern Munchkin Country. But when he moved Ojo to the north in the published club map all of this Ojo in Oz stuff moved to the south. I suspect this is Dick Martin trying to keep the density of "map detail" well spread out. Once they moved Ojo's and Pipt's cottages to the north there was a paucity of detail in the southern Munchkin Country. But from an "Oz as a real place" perspective, simply filling up empty space is a dumb reason, IMHO.

Below you can see how this affected the routes from Ojo in Oz on the 1962 version of the Oz Club's map.

1962 Club map - Routes of OJO IN OZ: Ojo's party indicated in yellow; Dorothy's party in red.

All this is now far to the south of the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz. For some reason, too, Dorothy's group (red) is now traveling north of Ojo and Realbad's group (yellow). I can't see the reason for this change. But on the whole, I do prefer that this is all so much closer to Seebania than the original Haff layout had it. It makes for a geographical unity. Of course there would be even more geographical unity if they had left Ojo and Nunkie in the south where they belong.

In later versions of the Oz Club maps (1967 and on) this area gets heavily reworked yet again. I'm not keen on Haff's shifting the arrival of Dorothy's party to a different forest, the one where she met the Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion back in The Wizard of Oz. This change seems to have been made to angle the Rolling Road so that it can dump Dorothy and her rescue party into the river, as described in the text of Ojo in Oz (see below).

2008 Club map - Routes of OJO IN OZ: Ojo's party indicated in yellow; Dorothy's party in red.

As you  might have noticed, this section of the Munchkin Country is now a lot denser, too. All of the many locations from Merry Go Round in Oz were added to the map in 1967.

There are some other Ojo-related glitches and omissions from the Club's map, too. There is no river for the unicorns to bathe in, the fairly large village that Ojo and Realbad pass through is not on the map, and various mountains seen by the travelers are nowhere to be seen. The biggest mistake still not discussed is that the Oz Club's map places the Bandit's Cave in the northern central Munchkin Country. The bandit's cave is not actually on Haff's "research" map, so its inclusion in the published map may have been a late decision.

It it pretty clear Thompson wanted the Bandit's Cave in the same vicinity as the other locales from Patchwork Girl and Ojo. She has shown the Bandit's Cave (though she calls it "Bandit's Forest") on her map, directly above the "U" in QUADLING. [Update: it is also possible to view the "Bandit's Forest" on Thompson's map as being the hideout of Vaga and his men in Grampa in Oz. See "comments" below.] But in any case, this southern location for the Badit's cave in Ojo in Oz is very strongly implied in the text. Mooj throws Realbad into a deep ravine near the castle of Seebania. Realbad is rescued by the bandits and taken back to their cave, where he is nursed back to health.

But Haff has placed the Bandit's Cave in the central northern section of the Munchkin Country, quite far from Seebania. This seems like quite a trek for the bandits to carry an injured Realbad! The clear implication in Thompson's text is that the bandits and their cave are relatively close to Seebania. Indeed, at the end of Ojo in Oz Realbad decides to make the Bandit's Cave a sort of Royal Hunting Lodge where he will spend two months each year, and he allows Snufferbux the bear to use it for hibernation each winter. Clearly Thompson thought that the Bandit's Cave was close to Seebania and under Realbad's jurisdiction, not on the other side of the Munchkin Country.

I went back and looked at Thompson's map and after my recent rereading of Ojo in Oz I am convinced she was using the map in her text descriptions. She has given us a lot of detail on the boundaries of Seebania:

Long ago . . . the Kings of Seebania ruled all the southern part of the Munchkin Country, and the city where you now find yourselves is Shamsbad, the capital. When Ozma succeeded to the throne . . . my father, then King of Seebania . . . relinquished [his claim] to all the small countries at the south and retired within the borders of Seebania itself. This kingdom, still an immense but little known tract of wild forest land, is bounded on the north by the Munchkin River and on the south by the Quadling Country.

Below is Thompson's hand-drawn map, with color added to reflect what she has described in the Ojo in Oz text above. There is a river to serve as the north border, the Quadling Country is to the south, and it is an immense tract of forest land when compared to the usual size of minor countries in Oz. Given Realbad's view that the Bandit's Cave is part of his domain I extended the light blue area of Seebania to include it. This way of viewing this map even has a Yellow Brick Road connecting Seebania to the Emerald City. Thompson has, of course, traced Baum's 1914 map as her starting point and Baum clearly meant the Yellow Brick Road shown here to be that of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But I think the point has been made that we can get a pretty clear view of how Thompson saw her Ojo in Oz geography.

Thompson's Map of Oz showing Seebania as she described it in her OJO IN OZ text.

I am by no means saying there is only one solution to making an accurate map of Oz, but the Oz Club map makers seem to have never even considered this sort of contextual information. And in the end, considering the high-profile status the Oz Club maps have achieved, I think it is sort of a shame.

But then again, if the club's maps were perfect, look at all the fun I'd have missed writing this huge time-sap of a blog post!

---

And after all that, how about an end note! I should mention the one other innocuous reason that I have seen given for moving Ojo to the north so I don't have to address this in the "comments."

When Ojo and Scraps meet the Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road the Scarecrow says he is on his way to visit Jinjur.
While this Jinjur reference is clearly more that a slip of the pen by Baum, it is also easily solved on the map. Baum's text shows Ojo and Co. are just inside the green area of the Emerald City. On Jim Haff's "research" map he has the two Yellow Brick Roads merge just after they reach these green lands. So the Scarecrow can indeed be walking away from the city to visit Jinjur without her having to live on the southern Yellow Brick Road (see Haff's map below).

Jinjur will find herself the focus of several legitimate "map" debates, but we'll save all that for a future post.

Map of Oz Monday - The Emerald City Part III

Now, mapping the Emerald City raises multiple questions. What era Emerald City are we actually mapping?  There seem to be four stages of EC urban design:

1) The Wizard's Emerald City: this is the "gray" version of the city that is only "emerald" because of the green spectacles locked onto people's heads to make everything appear green.

2) The Scarecrow's Emerald City: his hay-stuffed majesty seems to have begun a major renovation, making things truly green and installing many actual emeralds and precious metals, as evidenced by the fact that Jinjur and the Army of Revolt steal said emeralds.

3) Princess Ozma's Emerald City: This is the lovely, palatial version first seen in John R. Neill's illustrations for Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and much expanded upon in The Road to Oz, where it seems kind of like a green version of San Simeon/Hearst Castle.

4) The Neill books' Emerald City: this version seems to preserve Ozma's palace design, but the houses have literally come to life and there is a distinct new wacky/cute aesthetic.

This fourth version of the city is by far the richest in known detail. But can anyone really imagine the Neill Emerald City when reading a Baum Oz book? I certainly can't, but I do admit having a great fondness for the Neill-era Emerald City design as depicted in his three Oz titles. Perhaps, as I alluded to in a previous post, this comes from having a deep fondness for Sid and Marty Krofft's Pufnstuf and Living Island where everything is alive.

So when I was writing Part One and Part Two of this Emerald City Map series I had been thinking that Neill's Emerald City urban design and aesthetic were limited to his three books. I began thinking how bizarre it would be to imagine Dorothy and her three friends first encountering the Emerald City in Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz if they had arrived at Neill's Emerald City. And then it hit me, Dick Martin had done just that in his 1961 picture book abridgement!

Dorothy and friends' arrival in the EC from Dick Martin's 1961 abridgement.

Martin's EC has the same zany, cartoonish aesthetic that Neill's does. I had always just imagined this was Dick Martin's version of the Emerald City, but, in fact, I believe it is explicitly Neill's vision that Martin is emulating.

Below, note the cover of Martin's picture book showing the main entrance to the Royal Palace and how closely it matches Neill's double staircase design, massive towers on either side of the entrance, and layered turrets reaching higher and higher.

Martin's EC palace entrance compared to Neill's EC palace entrance.

Well, that's sort of neat, I thought. I wonder if Dick Martin explicitly utilized Neill's architectural and urban design in his other books. And then, duh! I immediately realized that Martin had used Neill's EC design in his Cut and Assemble the Emerald City of Oz (1980) from Dover.

I pulled my copy off the shelf and there is Neill's Emerald City!

It's simplified, of course, but the above view is virtually the same view we get in the wonderful cityscape Neill drew for The Wonder City of Oz below. The palace stands towering over the city in the middle, the shorter anthropomorphic houses surround the palace on all sides, and the city's circular main street rings itself around the city, broken up by spokes of road to create the city blocks.

Some of Dick Martin's buildings are very similar in design to Neill's, such as the Ozmapolitan Building below:

Even more interesting is that Martin provides an additional map of the Emerald City that I had never even considered, though it is, in fact, just his layout suggestion printed in the book.

Dick Martin's "map" layout of the Emerald City.

This truly is Neill's Wonder City of Oz design, Strawberry Street and all! Indeed, Martin pays some homage to Neill in the final paragraph of his instructions:

Many Ozian authorities state that the Emerald City is circular in layout (see the diagram). If you agree, you might make a Yellow Brick Road of yellow construction paper, "paved" to match the sections under the Emerald City Gates. The Road should be about 2" in width, the outer diameter of the circular part being about 18".  This may be mounted on the center of a sheet of green poster board, about 24" square in size. A short length of road, extending from the front edge of poster board, should lead directly to the city gates. Side roads might lead, like the spokes of a wheel, from the palace entrances, as shown in the diagram; as a finishing touch, trees or flower beds could be made to ornament the palace grounds.

Now for a bit of behind-the-scenes info and bibliographical detail. The original printing of Martin's Cut and Assemble the Emerald City of Oz did not contain an actual Yellow Brick Road, but only Martin's instructions above, on how you might make one. But in Spring of 1983 I was in a bookstore, flipping through a copy, and noticed the addition of a new centerfold containing all the pieces needed to make a Yellow Brick Road as described in the instructions above.

Yellow Brick Road added to later printings of the EMERALD CITY book.

I was corresponding with Martin quite a bit in the early 1980s and asked him about the addition. On April 8, 1983, he replied:

Yes, the new printing of the Emerald City cut-out book has an added doublepage spread of Yellow Brick Road. It was quite a surprise to me, as I knew nothing about it until someone pointed it out to me. (Now, there's an example of an editor making changes without informing the illustrator!)

I may have one more part in this discussion of mapping the Emerald City. But it is a bit tangential and I may just plow on to our next more general map of Oz. You'll find out next Monday!

Click here for the next installment of Map of Oz Monday!

Dick Martin's Neill-styled anthropomorphic Emerald City buildings.

Map of Oz Monday - The Emerald City Part II

Last week we explored the layout and design of the Emerald City in John R. Neill's The Wonder City of Oz (1940) and The Scalawagons of Oz (1941) and the first, albeit partial, map of the Emerald City that we have seen.

In the late 1950s, Oz and Baum scholar Robert R. Pattrick began his own endeavor to map the capitol of America's fairyland. He had published a four part article on Oz geography in The Baum Bugle in 1959 and '60 when he died rather suddenly on August 17, 1960, at the age of thirty-three.

Robert R. Pattrick's gravestone at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles.

After Pattrick's death, his notes and maps were shared with fellow Oz scholar Judy Pike who picked up where Pattrick left off. Pike published their research in the Spring 1972 issue of The Baum Bugle. It is the Pike/Pattrick map we will be discussing below.

Emerald City map by Judy Pike and Robert R. Pattrick (1971)

Before we begin analyzing this map I should point out that Judy Pike has flipped Neill's partial map to make it  match directions and orientation with the Oz Club maps (which we haven't discussed yet). Apparently, Pattrick had used the Neill/Thompson "Munchkins on the left and in the west" orientation. I don't know if Pattrick actually preferred the Neill/Thompson orientation, but it makes sense that he would have used it while researching this map and working his way through Neill's books looking for details in the text.

I do think this concentric beltway/spokes design is very appealing. The map above shows only the major streets. Each of the sixteen "segments" or "blocks" in the map is actually interlaced with winding and twisting streets.

Pattrick and Pike also went through the Baum and Thompson books and attempted to work in every textual detail they could find into Neill's EC design.

This map shows four gates to the Emerald City, one facing each of the four countries of Oz, as established by Baum in The Patchwork Girl of Oz on page 184. The map also shows: Unk Nunkie's cottage just outside the Munchkin gate;  the location of Notta Bit More's circus tent in the far suburbs; the public square (where Ozma's Road to Oz birthday festivities took place) is on the south side of the palace. The Love Magnet is hanging above the South Gate, and Pike has added in many textual locations from the Neill Oz books.

Judy Pike seems to have gotten confused about Jack Pumpkinhead's "Pumpkin Park." She has moved it from its textually explicit location north of the Emerald City and repositioned it to the west having drawn in a wedge of Winkie Country to accommodate it. I suspect Pike believed she was restoring Jack's gigantic hollowed-out pumpkin home to its proper Winkie location. But, in fact, Jack's "Pumpkin Park" location is his "second" home where he stays in the old Ozoplane when he wants to be closer to the Emerald City.

One problem I have with this map and this research is that Pike is not clear about what detail is explicitly based on textual evidence and what detail Robert R. Pattrick seems to have invented.

"Pattrick discovered that four main streets in the city connect the four gates to the palace. They are Celery Street (Winkie Gate), Custard Court (Quadling Gate), Pumpkin Place (Munchkin Gate), and Strawberry Street (Gillikin Gate). Each, as researched by Pattrick in the Neill books, has certain extensions into the countryside, and these extensions are noted on my map."

Personally I'd like the references. From my admittedly hasty look through the Neill books I can not find that all four streets are named and that all four road extensions are named. It's possible I missed them. It is also possible that those details are in Neill's original manuscript for The Wonder City of Oz (the published book is heavily rewritten by a staff writer) or possibly from Neill's original manuscript for The Runaway in Oz, both of which Pattrick had access to. Anyway, I haven't had time to plow through the three books and two manuscripts. If any of my readers want to post text references in the comments section of this post I'd be delighted!

Pike does imply later that all these streets are mentioned in the text as she deliberately leaves off a few names Pattrick did invent, such as calling the road he adds around the palace Tangerine Terrace.

Pike's article is generally very solid and she has worked meticulously through Neill's books to place some of the locations such as Pancake Park:

"Although Pattrick always located this park on his maps between Strawberry Street and Doughnut Drive, he enlarged and shrank it in his various map versions. He was trying, I think, to reconcile some of the facts given in the Neill books, primarily the statement that as Sir Hokus comes into the city from Pumpkin Park, he takes a shortcut through Pancake Park to the Castle. In addition, I found that one must be able to look down Pudding Place and see the park, and that, when within the park boundaries, he should be able to see the sun rise. As I've placed Pumpkin Park in the West, Sir Hokus would enter on Celery Street. By locating Pancake Park straddling Celery Street and Pudding Place and fairly close to the walls of the Castle, one may reconcile the facts into an acceptable location. In spite of the high Castle Wall, the sun's rays at daybreak might well reach into the park at the Pudding Place boundary."

I will try to add a PDF version of the full article when I have a few minutes. It's very detailed and quite good.

Next week, we'll explore some additional ways Neill's Emerald City design and these maps impacted more recent Ozian iconography.

Click here for the next Oz map blog post.

Map of Oz Monday - The Emerald City Part I

There has been one major thing missing from every Oz map we have discussed so far. That is any sort of detail in the Emerald City. As a rule, Oz maps seem to indicate the city's location by a large jewel or a small illustration of an Emerald City skyline as in the Oz Club's maps. What use is that?

I can remember wanting more detail about the Emerald City when I was a kid and there was very little to go on. Yes, it was lovely, marble everywhere, set with emeralds and chased in gold . . . blah, blah, blah . . .  Give me details!

One place I could find details was in Neill's artwork. Good examples were Neill's drawings of the walls and gates in The Marvelous Land of Oz and the intricate drawings of the Emerald City architecture in The Road to Oz. And finally, the pièce de résistance, the lovely double page drawing of the Emerald City in John R. Neill's The Wonder City of Oz.

Click to Enlarge

And of course The Wonder City of Oz is none other than the Emerald City, and finally we have a book featuring a vast amount of detail on Emerald City architecture and some clear indication of the city's layout. I really do love Neill's design of the Emerald City. It is charming, lovely, and funny all at the same time! It is also a very intelligent design with the wide concentric boulevards circling the palace in the center of the city and the wide avenues radiating outward from the palace like bicycle spokes. It seems very appropriate that the design of the capital city of the American fairyland should in many ways echo the L'Enfant/Banneker aesthetics of our own capital, Washington, DC.

The image above shows the city from the north side. Strawberry Street runs pretty much directly north from Ozma's palace to the north gate of the Emerald City. Most interestingly, in the same book Neill gives us another double-page illustration looking north from Ozma's palace up Strawberry Street toward the Gillikin hills in the far distance.

Click to enlarge

Comparing the architecture in the two drawings it is pretty clear Neill had diagrammed the city and palace to some extent. I truly wish his design sketches would turn up!

I noticed one other detail showing how thoroughly Neill seems to have envisioned the city. In The Road to Oz (1909) Neill drew a lovely and detailed picture of Dorothy being welcomed by Jellia Jamb on an elaborate curving staircase leading up to Ozma's palace. You can actually see the staircase drawn into the big city-scape above that was drawn for Wonder City of Oz thirty-one years later as you can see in the image comparison below. Jellia and Dorothy's positions are noted by green dots in the latter image.

EC stairway in ROAD (1909) and same stairway in WONDER CITY (1940).

One thing I am not totally sold on is that the city is itself alive, each house having a personality of its own and limited mobility. It's not so much a bad thing as much as it has never been that way in the past. There is certainly some justification for it as even W. W. Denslow in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz anthropomorphized Oz architecture. And Neill continued that tradition in his portrayal of the domed Oz houses with the dual "stick-em up!" chimneys. Wonder City just takes it to an extreme. Do you really want a house that bickers with you? It's not unlike Living Island on Pufnstuf.

Another thing I have trouble with is the names Neill gave to the city streets. Banana Boulevard, Strawberry Street, Celery Street, Pudding Place, etc. It just doesn't seem to fit the Emerald City. Why should everything be named after food? Why not named after important Oz characters? I'd much prefer Pastoria Boulevard to Pudding Place. Or named after shades of green: I'd  prefer Chartreuse Court to Celery Street. Neill's street names just feel arbitrary and a bit twee.

But to continue . . .  I suspect the lovely city-scape drawing from Wonder City proved popular with the kids, or the publisher, or Neill himself, as he reworked it by adding a night sky and using it as the pictorial endpapers for The Scalawagons of Oz.

And further on in Scalawagons we find two maps! One of which provides the first ever actual map of the Emerald City. Showing Banana Boulevard and Strawberry Street, this map is clearly following the design of the city as laid out in Wonder City the year before.

As you can see, this map shows Ozma's Castle with a wall or road around it, and it shows Strawberry Street, the main thoroughfare leading to the north-wall gate to the Gillikin Country. It also shows Banana Boulevard, the major circular thoroughfare in the city, and it shows Jenny's Turnstyle Shop.

There are some problems with this map. The outer wall surrounding the entire city seems to be missing. Did Neill simply fail to draw it in? A logical place to add the wall would be to start at the point where Strawberry Street becomes Peanut Pike and draw a large concentric circle around the city.

Revision showing addition of the outer wall of the Emerald City.

But this solution raises problems. It puts the city wall directly through Pumpkin Park. Jenny's Turnstyle Shop is in the middle of a block, not on a corner of Banana Boulevard and Strawberry Street as explicitly stated in Wonder City. And the Yellow Road from the Winkie County extends a good way into the city which it should not do. It should end at the city gate.

As a reminder, Pumpkin Park is not Jack Pumpkinhead's pumpkin-shell home in the Winkie County. Pumpkin Park is where Jack lives inside an Ozoplane, his Emerald City (or near-Emerald City) pied-à-terre. Whether Pumpkin Park is inside or outside the city wall is unclear in the text, but I'm sure the city wall doesn't run through it.

A different solution would be to assume Neill accidentally labeled the outer wall as Banana Boulevard. If the map's Banana Boulevard becomes the outer city wall, then Banana Boulevard would have to move closer to Ozma's Castle, and so Jenny's shop becomes more correctly placed. This puts Pumpkin Park outside the city and the Yellow Road ends at the city wall as it should. This solution makes the most sense to me and solves the majority of problems with the map.

Revision showing Neill's outer circle as the city wall with a new Banana Blvd.

Scalawagons features a second full page map, too.

Glinda's castle seems much too close to the Emerald City, and the position of the "hump" of the Mifkits territory has been adjusted further to the right than it seems to be on the main Oz map. Thus this is an assortment of accurate locales condensed together to show the action of the story in the space allotted. Despite the detail shown in the Emerald City, in many ways these are not true "maps" but diagrams showing the action of the story.

Note, too, that Neill follows the Thompson era compass directions where the Munchkins are west and the Winkies are east. Even though I feel these maps function more like diagrams than actual maps, it does seem like Neill's Oz is a much smaller place than the Baum/Thompson Oz. Neill's Oz almost feels like a gigantic theme park!

In the 1950s, Oz scholar Robert R. Pattrick began merging all of the details from the Oz series and Neill's drawings into a map of the Emerald City. He died in 1960 before completing his map. But Judy Pike took on the project and next week we will look at the Pattrick/Pike map of the Emerald City.

Click here for the next Oz Map blog post.

Finishing the Hat

It's always nice when something new gets to be hung on the walls of the Tiger Den - and this lovely drawing by John R. Neill is the newest arrival to the aforesaid walls.

Click to enlarge

In actuality Eric and I have owned the piece for several years but only recently got around to having it framed. It measures about 12" x 15". John R. Neill drew the illustration for a short story in the February 1926 issue of Pictorial Review called "An Actor's Love Story" by Richard Connell. Soon after we got the original drawing I tracked down a copy of the magazine in which it was printed.

In the magazine the illustration is reproduced less than 6" across - a little over a third the size of the original. It's kind of amazing how large Neill worked, given the size of reproduction. As you can see, there is another Neill illustration on this page, the one at lower left, similar in technique to the one we own. The little square vignette at the top is signed "W" and seems not to be Neill's work.

There is another lovely Neill drawing reproduced on the first page of the story (see below).

Click to enlarge.

I really like it and would love to have it as a companion piece to the one we have. Alas, I've no certain knowledge the original survives. John R. Neill sure does draw handsome young men really well, doesn't he? That's it for today!

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!

Map of Oz Monday - The Ozoplaning Map

Well, dear readers - I am still swamped with chores and such for the Winkie Convention later next month and Comic con which is only a few weeks away - thus blog posting has suffered. But enough of that, let's take a look at the next map!

This map was published as the end-sheets of Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz in 1939. It's interesting as it's the first map giving a sort of "realistic" bird's eye view of Oz. Sadly it's not very detailed. Many elements of Ozoplaning were created to help attract new reader's exposed to the MGM film which was released the same year: the title includes the words "Wizard of Oz," Dorothy and her three best known friends play an important part in the plot; the book begins with a party celebrating the anniversary of Dorothy's first journey to Oz which included a cake featuring a model of her Kansas farmhouse. So I suspect the map of Oz endpapers were also considered a good "introduction" to our favorite literary fairyland.

When I first saw this map it did make me wonder what Oz would look like if it were photographed from a high-altitude. Would the color of the vegetation be apparent enough to delineate borders to a viewer from on-high?  When I have a little time perhaps I'll try to make one in Photoshop. Someday ... someday ...

Boys' Life

Today we go exploring with John R. Neill and a beautiful cover painting he did for the May, 1930 issue of Boys' Life.

This exotic image has always felt kind of Ozzy - as if it's an image from an unrecorded visit Captain Salt and the Crescent Moon paid to ... well ... a tropical island of some sort. The cover image seems to have no connection to any particular story in the magazine.

There seems to be so much story potential in the image! Why are the pontoon boats approaching the sailing vessel? What are they doing with the parrots? Offering them as a trade? A warning to stay away? Note there is another boat-full of boys approaching the starboard side of the ship. As far as I know the original painting no longer survives - but if it should turn up I'd certainly be pleased to have it here in the Tiger Den.

Click to Enlarge

In case you missed the announcement we will be auctioning off a piece of original John R. Neill artwork at the 2012 Winkie Convention this July. Click here for details.

Map of Oz Monday - the 1921 Game Board Map

Last week we looked at Reilly & Lee's 1920 promotional Oz map. Since I am trying to tackle the various Oz maps in chronological order, we've come to a very unusual map - perhaps not even a map at all in the big scheme of things. Yet it offers some points of interest - and it's very beautiful, too.

The Wonderful Game of Oz Map (1921) - Click to Enlarge

This is the board game for Parker Brothers' 1921 Wonderful Game of Oz. At first I didn't think I'd have much to say about this map, but there are a few things to point out. Most obviously this map presents Oz as a squarish country - much like the 1909 Fairylogue map - but I am fairly certain that Oz has gone square simply to accommodate the traditional shape of this sort of game-board. The shapes of the countries are clearly based on the shapes from the 1914 Oz maps (note the phallic pan handle of the Gillikin Country).

But there is a huge adjustment to this map that I'd not really considered before. The Munchkin and Winkie countries have been flipped to reflect traditional east/west positions. Both the 1914 map and the 1920 map show the Munchkins on the left (though of course those two maps disagree about where east is located on the compass). The game designer clearly knew that the Munchkins should be in the east as Baum always stated, and the designer made it so. Perhaps a brave choice, since it flew in the face of the 1920 map issued by the Oz book publisher only the previous year.

The map is also the first to show locations from almost all of Baum's Oz books. The only book not represented on the map is Glinda of Oz - there are no Skeezers or Flatheads, even though there is plenty of room for them. This makes me question when the game was being designed. Perhaps the project was begun before the publication of Glinda in the fall of 1920? I don't really know how long games were in the publication pipeline back then. Of course the Skeezers were on the 1914 map - one of the locations Baum had added to the map that he had not yet written about. So this is in fact an omission. So whether the game designer had never seen a copy of Glinda or the game was designed before Glinda's publication, we will likely never know.

Several of the locales on the map are of interest because they show us things seldom pictured in the actual Oz books - such as this full color view of the Tin Woodman's all-tin castle. This is an adaptation of Neill's drawing of the castle from The Road to Oz (1909), but I think it's neat to see it in color

The Tin Woodman's Tin Castle.

Below is a rare view of Professor Woggle-Bug's Royal Athletic College. Note the imposing statue of the esteemed insect on the point of the roof! And I love the giant mortar-board on the large dome, too.

The Royal College of Athletic Arts and Sciences.

The game-board also offered the best view we ever had of Glinda's Castle until Eric Shanower's Blue Witch of Oz.

The Castle of Glinda the Good.

There are many neat spots to explore on this game-board map. It shows so much care and love for the Oz books that I find it impossible that the designer was not a HUGE Oz fan. I wish we knew who he or she was. Another interesting point is that this map unifies the Oz series. It features the locales from The Wizard of Oz which my readers know was published by a different publisher than the rest of the Oz books. Note the Denslow-like Hammerhead to the left of Glinda's castle.

Here's one more curious spot. On the edge of the lake there is an imposing pink structure not referenced in the Oz books. I wonder what it was supposed to be? The pointy end of the lake and the anthropomorphized big tower almost look like a face and word-balloon.

That's about it for this week's map blog. But if you find this game-board intriguing and would like a chance to play The Wonderful Game of Oz, why not join us at the 2012 Winkie Convention, July 27-29 in Pacific Grove, California? Because we have a gigantic version of the game set up for your playing pleasure!

You can read all about our giant version of the game at the Winkie Convention on this previous blog post. It's a lot of fun! OK, that's it for this week. Next week we'll be looking at the 1927 Coloring Contest map.

(Click here for the next Oz Map blog post.)