Kaliko Vision

In L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz, Roquat the Nome King is served by a Nome introduced this way:

Meantime the King ordered refreshments to be served to those waiting, and at his command a rudely shaped Nome entered, bearing a tray. This Nome was not unlike the others that Dorothy had seen, but he wore a heavy gold chain around his neck to show that he was the Chief Steward of the Nome King, and he assumed an air of much importance, and even told his majesty not to eat too much cake late at night, or he would be ill.

Later, thinking himself out of the hearing of the guests, the Chief Steward tells the king, “You are a fool to waste so much time upon these people” from Oz.

Baum next visited the Nomes in The Emerald City of Oz, and in that book stated that the king’s steward was named Kaliko. He’s “frightened” by his master, “trembling and white with fear.” Baum offers this exchange:

“Fetch my pipe!” yelled the King.

“Your pipe is already here, your Majesty,” replied Kaliko.

“Then get my tobacco!” roared the King.

“The tobacco is in your pipe, your Majesty,” returned the Steward.

“Then bring a live coal from the furnace!” commanded the King.

“The tobacco is lighted, and your Majesty is already smoking your pipe,” answered the Steward.

“Why, so I am!” said the King, who had forgotten this fact; “but you are very rude to remind me of it.”

“I am a lowborn, miserable villain,” declared the Chief Steward, humbly.

Obviously that exchange shows a interpersonal dynamic very different from the earlier one.

In Who’s Who in Oz, Jack Snow stated that Kaliko first appeared in Ozma—in other words, that he was the Chief Steward in that book as well as the later one. As a young reader, I adopted that interpretation without question. It suggests that the Nome King’s anger over losing his Magic Belt in the earlier book makes it much more dangerous to talk back to him in the later.

More recently, however, such Oz scholars as David Hulan convinced me that might be too much of an assumption. What if the Nome King got rid of the first Chief Steward between the two books? In that case, Kaliko didn’t change his behavior drastically; rather, he could be obsequious enough to manage the angry monarch. What happened to the earlier Chief Steward? Based on what the Nome King orders for some Nome army officers in Emerald City, it would be nothing good.

The Marvel Comics adaptation of Ozma of Oz comes down firmly on the first interpretation, with the Chief Steward being named “Kaliko.” Scripter Eric Shanower’s choice makes for a smaller, more unified cast of characters for the series, and there’s certainly tradition behind it.

Artist Skottie Young also makes an interesting choice in how he designed the Nomes. His Nome King looks much like John R. Neill’s, with a human face, hair, and beard; five-fingered hands; and a caricatured but recognizably humanoid body. In contrast, Young draws the rest of the Nomes as little imps, basically isosceles triangles with tiny limbs and snappish personalities. And Kaliko is among them, as the picture below shows.

Looking ahead, will we see this little Kaliko assuming the Nome Kingdom’s throne?

Discovering Illustrator Frank Kramer

The latest issue of The Baum Bugle, the research journal of the International Wizard of Oz Club, is very impressive. Most of the content is former editor Atticus Gannaway’s study of Frank Kramer, illustrator of Jack Snow’s The Magical Mimics in Oz (1946) and The Shaggy Man of Oz (1949).

I won’t deny that this is a specialized topic: the work-for-hire illustrator of two of the least beloved later sequels in the Oz series, whose other art appeared mostly in pulp magazines and sports novels. But Atticus’s research is especially impressive because:

• Very little was documented about Kramer before, even within fan circles. Basically, all the information we had came from Snow’s Who’s Who in Oz; though Snow was in the best position to know about Kramer’s career, he wasn’t thorough or reliable.
• The articles assemble findings from many different approaches: archival research, interviews, analysis of illustrations, round-up of critical commentary. 

I was particularly struck by some behind-the-scenes details about how Kramer worked on his two Oz books. I hadn’t known that Magical Mimics was ready for publication a year or two before it appeared; wartime shortages caused the publisher, Reilly & Lee, to postpone it. That meant it took Snow even longer than I’d thought to finish a sequel (which he eventually did by borrowing a lot from L. Frank Baum’s John Dough and the Cherub, then out of print).

Jack Snow evidently found Kramer through the pulp magazines, a market both men were working. Snow thought Kramer’s line style and experience with out-of-this-world subjects meant he could stand in for longtime Oz illustrator John R. Neill, who had died in 1943. I think Kramer manages some impressive effects in his books (Atticus quotes my praise for one illustration), though I agree he didn’t give Snow’s child heroes any more life than Snow did.

Most surprising, the article shows that Reilly & Lee gave Snow instructions to pass on to Kramer. I’d never heard of a publisher working that way—usually they try to insulate the author and artist from each other. I guess that shows how pitifully Reilly & Lee was scraping along by the late 1940s.

Some people don’t like to know the commercial stories behind their favorite books, any more than they like watching laws or sausage being made. At least in my adulthood, I find that topic almost endlessly fascinating.

Exploring New Themes in Oz

From the Winkie Convention email update comes news of a new Oz comic: The Royal Historian of Oz, by Tommy Kovac and Andy Hirsch. The publisher’s copy:

Frank Fizzle wishes his father would have just a single original idea, instead the Jasper Fizzle sees himself as the new “Royal Historian of Oz” as he insists on writing new Oz stories.

When the failed writer discovers that Oz really exists, he makes an error in judgment that brands him a criminal in two worlds. Frank, may be doomed to pay for the “sins of the father” at the hands of the axe-wielding Tin-Man and the ghost of the Wicked Witch. Can Frank save the day and redeem the Fizzle family name, or will the drizzly ghost of the Wicked Witch of the West destroy them all?

That description suggests this comic will bring a couple of themes to Oz that are notably absent from the original novels. The first is a postmodern discussion of storytelling within the story itself. L. Frank Baum portrayed his fairyland as either a real place or a setting he’d invented to entertain young readers, but not both.

The second is familial tension. Such conflicts drive a lot of old European fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Snow White, and so on. But it’s largely absent from the official Oz series. None of the American children who travel to Oz appears to have any siblings until Twink and Tom in Jack Snow’s The Shaggy Man of Oz (1949), and those twins travel together.

Many of those kids are missing parents, but they appear to have good relationships with the relatives who care for them. (One comes out of an orphanage.) The single possible exception is Baum’s little girl Trot, whose mother when she first appears in Sea Fairies (1912) is a short-tempered scold, but who basically vanishes from the page when Trot enters the Oz series in The Scarecrow of Oz (1915).

Nor are Baum’s young heroes from inside Oz having problems with their parents. They’re orphans or young people out on their own. The one exception to prove this rule is Kiki Aru, antihero of The Magic of Oz (1919), and his biggest problem is that when he’s in an adolescent snit and refuses to attend a community picnic, his parents sigh and leave him at home. (So annoying!)