Happy Birthday, Rachel!

Reshared December 11, 2025

on what would have been Rachel's 103rd Birthday!

Edward Einhorn, Eric Shanower, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, & David Maxine.

Today would have been Rachel Cosgrove Payes's 93rd Birthday. She is, of course, the author of Hidden Valley of Oz (1951). I began corresponding with her in the late 1970s, and we finally met for a visit in 1985. But in the early 1990's Rachel became a much bigger part of Eric Shanower's and my lives. Eric had begun work illustrating Rachel's second Oz book The Wicked Witch of Oz (1993), and she began attending the Munchkin Conventions on the east coast. Soon after Wicked Witch came out Eric and I moved to New Jersey and I began Hungry Tiger Press. I asked Rachel for a new Oz story for the premiere issue of Oz-Story Magazine and she wrote one for me!

Eric and I had Oz-story publication parties and Rachel and her husband Norman would attend, always bringing a bottle of wine, maybe some cookies, and usually Rachel would make us an elaborate greeting card.  She also gave us a "Statue of David" refrigerator magnet that still adorns our fridge. The photo at the top of this blog post is from the Oz-Story No. 3 Party in 1997.

Rachel R. Cosgrove - 1942

In thinking about what I might share with you on Rachel's special day, I realized I had never seen a youthful picture of Rachel, so I hit up my genealogical resources and located a few. Here she is at nineteen, in the 1942 West Virginia Wesleyan College yearbook (she graduated in 1943).

I recognized Rachel immediately without having to go to the name index on the photo spread. She has the same wonderfully friendly but very determined look I so well remember her for.

There were a few other images in the yearbook, too. I especially like the image below showing Rachel relaxing on the campus lawn. The photo, presented in the fore-matter of the year book, is captioned: "And Rachel finally gets some E's . . ." Alas, I have no idea at all what that means!

Rachel R. Cosgrove at West Virginia Wesleyan College, 1942.

She can also be seen in the Sigma Alpha Sigma photo. Rachel is in the upper left.

Rachel died October 10, 1998. She was only seventy-five.

You can read quite a few other blog posts about Rachel and her books by clicking here.

Happy birthday, Kiddo!

Hungry Tiger Press has acquired all of the remaining copies of The Wicked Witch of Oz and this wickedly funny Oz book is beautifully illustrated by Eric Shanower - who will be signing each copy purchased thru our website. 

Come take a look!

And check out our other NEW RELEASES, too!

Copyright© 2016, 2025 David Maxine. All rights reserved.

Moebius 1938 - 2012

French edition of ELSEWHERE PRINCE

The comics world has suffered another important loss with the death of French cartoonist Jean Giraud - better known to most Americans as Moebius. Best known in the United States for his Western series Blueberry, Arzach, The Airtight Garage, and work on such films as Alien, Tron, Willow, and The Fifth Element. You can learn a bit more about his long and fascinating career by clicking here.

In the late 1980s Eric Shanower worked with Moebius on a six-issue comics series called The Elsewhere Prince, published in the US by Epic/Marvel. It was published simultaneously in France by Les Humanoides. Moebius had written the plot/storyline, the dialogue was written by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier, and Eric drew it.

In 1989 Eric and I went to Europe for the first time and while we were in France we took the opportunity to visit Moebius in his apartment in Paris. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Eric Shanower and Moebius (1989)

I have a small association with Moebius myself. When I was editing Oz-story I had the nerve to ask him for a cover drawing. He supplied a pen-and ink drawing of a young man gazing at a huge gemstone. It was suggested that it could be an emerald (as in the Emerald City), and I knew at once that this would give me the Ozzy Moebius cover I had wanted. Moebius was not free to paint the sketch so the task fell on me - making the cover of Oz-story No. 3 a Moebius/Maxine collaboration.

So long, Jean.

Horsing Around with John R. Neill

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.

Dickin' Around

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!

Oz Connection Connected

Thanks to all of you who submitted answers to this installment of Oz Connection. None of your responses were the connections I had in mind, but that's just fine! There is no single correct way to connect someone to Oz!

Bill Lee

I've now posted all of the Connection threads that were sent in - so go back one blog and read the comments section to see how our readers' minds work. Okay, here's how I'm connecting these three gentlemen to Oz.

Christopher Plummer is best known for his starring role in the movie version of The Sound of Music. In the film, Plummer's singing was dubbed by Bill Lee who did a lot of voiceover work, much of it for Walt Disney. Bill Lee provided the singing voice for Woot the Wanderer in Walt Disney's 1970 children's story book recording of The Tin Woodman of Oz. Lee, as Woot, sings a love duet with Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter, called, "I Found My True Love." In the Disney recording Woot and Poly get hitched!

I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald might be too easy because of his very direct Oz Connection. He wrote a short-story called "Outside the Cabinet-Makers" in which a father entertains his daughter by making up a fairytale about the people they see on the street. The father describes all sorts of things, including an ogre, who is "transformed like Mombi in The Land of Oz." The story was originally published in the December 1928 issue of The Century Magazine. I reprinted the piece in Oz-story No. 1.

Last but not least, we come to Ludwig van Beethoven. The most direct connection is that the "Ode to Joy," choral section of the Ninth Symphony also served as the tune to The Seekers' 1967 recording "Emerald City." It's a good song and surprisingly unknown among most Oz enthusiasts. The song lyrics were written by Kim Fowley and Keith Potger (under the name of John Martin). You can listen to "Emerald City" from the YouTube link below:

Jack Snow and The Magic Sled

A couple days ago Jared Davis's Oz blog featured a free on-line recording of Jack Snow's Christmas short story, The Magic Sled. I encourage you to go check it out. Listen to The Magic Sled here!

Original 1955 appearance of THE MAGIC SLED

Snow of course was the author of The Magical Mimics in Oz, The Shaggy Man of Oz, and Who's Who in Oz. After Snow lost his job working at NBC he was hired as a staff writer for the Associated Hospital Service of New York and he edited their in-house newsletter, Inside AHS. It is very probably that Snow named the newsletter himself, as the AHS initials in the title could well be pronounced as "Oz". Jack Snow wrote The Magic Sled for the December 1955 issue of Inside AHS.

The illustration (at left)  is signed Richard Rodriguez. There is some very circumstantial evidence to suggest the illustration might be the work of one of Jack Snow's boyfriends. Yes, Snow was gay in case you hadn't heard. The original AHS printing of the story includes a very brief introduction by Snow, too. If you click on either of these images they will expand to a much more readable size.

Hungry Tiger Press reprinted The Magic Sled in Oz-story No. 5 where it was newly illustrated by Eric Shanower (see below).

Happy Sledding!

The Oz Toy Book - Vol. 2

The very first book produced by Hungry Tiger Press (way back in 1994) was The Oz Toy Book Volume 2, a book of Ozzy cut-outs drawn by Eric Shanower. The original Oz Toy Book was a similar cut-out book drawn by John R. Neill. It was published by The Reilly and Britton Co. of Chicago in 1916. That original Oz Toy Book is a super-rarity of which only a handful of copies are known to survive.

Anyway, back in 1994, while Eric Shanower and I were pondering a good book to start our fledgling publishing company with, we came up with the idea of creating a sequel to the original Oz Toy Book. It would include Baum's Oz characters that were created after 1916 as well as some favorites from the later Oz books of Ruth Plumly Thompson and Jack Snow. We also added one page of supporting characters from The Wizard of Oz that Neill had not included, as that book was not in Reilly and Britton's catalog.

Eric Shanower drew over forty characters spread onto 14 pages, which we had printed on card stock and bound with a cover printed in blue. The book sold very well and those sales helped fund our first serious project, Oz-story Magazine.

Our Oz Toy Book has been out of print for more than a dozen years. However, while going through some old boxes here in the Tiger Den, I recently found a stash of unbound pages from the book. Thinking it might make a nice curiosity for our booth at Comic Con, I collated all the pages and made a new cover using Eric's original hand-drawn color separation. Eric had originally designed the cover to be printed in yellow and blue. But our printer in 1994 couldn't handle the job and we eliminated the yellow from the final design. So these two dozen Comic Con specials are the first to feature Shanower's cover as originally imagined!

So now I had a couple dozen unbound "portfolio style" copies of The Oz Toy Book Volume 2 and I took them with us to Comic Con this last weekend. As it turns out I have a VERY FEW copies left. If you are interested in having one these last copies, they are now available (until supplies run out) in our on-line store. Here's your chance for some Ozzy fun.

Click Here to order The Oz Toy Book Volume 2 "The Portfolio Edition"