Wrapping Up the Winkie Convention, part 1

I’ve rarely updated this blog over the past several weeks, though not because I didn’t find topics I wanted to write about. Rather, I didn’t have the time to gather and express my thoughts because I was helping to organize the daytime programming at this year’s Winkie Convention in San Diego. “Winkie” as in the western part of the land of Oz—this convention was originally organized for Oz fans in the western USA.

The 2014 Winkie Convention was the 50th annual, as well as falling during the 75th anniversary of MGM’s Wizard of Oz. Retiring chairman David Maxine was determined to make it one of the busiest Oz events ever. He also wanted to serve the local children’s-writing community with some publishing workshops and panels. And that’s how I first got drawn in from afar.

As the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, the convention took place this past weekend. And it feels like a rousing success: nearly 400 people attending, a delightfully sung performance of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz presented in the city for the first time in a century, and the first-ever meetings of the authors and illustrators of three Oz books. Most people were pleased, and some pleasantly surprised, by how lively the panel discussions were.

We were adjusting the convention schedule up to the last minutes, so for the historical record I decided to compile what actually happened and who was involved, starting with the convention events for Friday, 8 August.

Friday, 7:30 am
Trot & Cap’n Bill’s La Jolla Kayak Tour at La Jolla Kayak

Friday, 10:00 am
So This Is Your First Winkie Convention with volunteers Eric Shanower, J. L. Bell, and Lee Speth
What to See in Coronado with local arts officials Heidi Wilson and Kelly Purvis

Friday, 11:00 am
Golden Age of Hollywood Costumes with researchers and collectors Christian Esquevin, Michael Siewert, and Aljean Harmetz
Creating Oz Comics with creators and publishers Anna Warren Cebrian, Mark Anthony Masterson, and Eric Shanower
Walking Tour of Coronado with the Coronado Historical Association
Oz Research Table, Art Show, and Swap Table Opens

Friday, 12:00 noon
Oz Show-and-Tell moderated by collector Freddy Fogarty
A Career in Fantasy Illustration with artist William Stout
Display of Judy Garland’s Movie Costumes with Michael Siewert
Dealers’ Room Opens

Friday, 1:00 pm
A. Arnold Gillespie: The Wizard of Special Effects with biographer Robert A. Welch
Fashioning Nonfiction that Fascinates Kids with authors Kathleen Krull, Paul Brewer, Edward Einhorn, and Angelica Carpenter
The Wizard’s Workshop: Arts and Crafts Activities led by Margaret Koontz

Friday, 2:00 pm
Fifty Years of the Winkie Con with longtime attendees Peter Hanff, Edith Hollister, Nathan Hollister, Lee Speth, and Susan Hall
“The Making of ‘The Wizard of Oz’” Documentary with movie historian Aljean Harmetz—shown publicly for the first time since the early 1980s
Conversation with Author Sherwood Smith with interviewer J. L. Bell

Friday, 3:00 pm
Emerald City, Suffragette City with writers Caroline Spector, Angelica Carpenter, Rachael Anderson, Miriam Esther Goldman, and Gita Morena
Meet the Wicked Witch! with performer Kurt Raymond

Friday, 4:00 pm
Speedy’s Adventures in Masculinity with blogger J. L. Bell
Conversation with Author Edward Einhorn with interviewer Michael Cart

Friday, 5:00 pm
Professor Marvel’s Hot Dog & Burger Cook-out with dancing by Moreton Bay Fig Morris

Friday, 7:30 pm
Welcome from convention chairman David Maxine
Video Welcome from MGM Munchkin Jerry Maren
Conversation with the Wicked Witch of the West with performer Kurt Raymond and interviewer Batton Lash
The Making of The Making of “The Wizard of Oz” with movie historian Aljean Harmetz
L. Frank Baum and the San Diego Connections with scholar Atticus Gannaway

And then came the big day.

Dorothy Gale, Who Are You Wearing?

Oz author and theatrical empresario Edward Einhorn interviewed Oz and Trojan War illustrator Eric Shanower at the Theater of Ideas blog. Eric illustrated Edward's books Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz, as well as his own Oz comics and novel and many stories by other writers (including, I'm happy to say, one of mine).

Among the topics they covered was how Eric chose to depict Dorothy Gale:

One conscious progression I’ve made is in the clothing Dorothy wears. This is on display front and center in Adventures in Oz. Over the forty years John R. Neill illustrated Oz books, he always dressed Dorothy in clothing of the time, so I believe it’s part of her character to dress that way.

In my earliest professional Oz illustration, I didn’t want to make a radical break with the last of Neill’s Oz books in the 1940s, so I put Dorothy in dresses that could have been from the 1940s or from the 1980s. But as soon as I could, I found excuses to put her into pants.

In Ice King she wears a parka and snow pants for most of the book. And in Forgotten Forest she’s in pajamas. I reverted to a skirt in Blue Witch, just because I still didn’t think anyone was ready for Dorothy in blue jeans, but since then I’ve illustrated entire books with Dorothy in shorts. I think shorts are visually close enough to skirts that it’s not jarring.

But people still complain. I don’t know why they do. Dorothy always wears what girls in the Great Outside World wear. Not that girls don’t wear skirts and dresses today, but they don’t wear them to go off on adventures full of strenuous walking and climbing.

I was among the readers a little startled to see Dorothy in a T-shirt and shorts on Eric's cover for The Giant Garden of Oz. The stylistic changes Neill made between 1907, when he first drew his Dorothy, to 1943, when he died, seem less significant at our distance. Furthermore, the three artists who illustrated Reilly & Lee Oz books after Neill--Frank Kramer, Dirk Gringhuis, and Dick Martin--put her in pre-war skirts so readers could recognize her.

But Eric's depictions and argument have brought me around--to an extent. I now imagine Dorothy dressing in practical clothing when she expects to have an adventure. But for court visits, I still imagine her choosing to wear a dress from the first half of the last century. I figure her tastes in fashion were formed as a girl on a Kansas farm around 1900.

Edward's interview also gets into the Wizard of Oz adaptation that Eric has scripted for Marvel Comics, now being drawn by Skottie Young. Earlier this month Young posted his cover for issue two, when Dorothy meets the Cowardly Lion. Earlier previews here, here, here, here, and here.

Oz novelists of the new generation

To celebrate L. Frank Baum's birthday this week, the Books of Wonder bookstore in Manhattan is hosting a book-signing that features two friends whose Oz novels I've enjoyed:

• Atticus Gannaway, author of The Silver Sorceress of Oz
• Edward Einhorn, author of The Living House of Oz

The signing takes place from 5:00 to 7:00 on Thursday, 18 May.

Both these books explore the blurry lines between good and wicked in the tradition of L. Frank Baum, eschewing the easy distinction of evil that many fantasies depend on. As Baum wrote in The Lost Princess of Oz--

A curious thing about Ugu the Shoemaker was that he didn't suspect, in the least, that he was wicked. He wanted to be powerful and great and he hoped to make himself master of all the Land of Oz, that he might compel everyone in that fairy country to obey him. His ambition blinded him to the rights of others and he imagined anyone else would act just as he did if anyone else happened to be as clever as himself.