Assessing the Ultimate Oz Universe for the Baum Bugle

The spring 2026 issue of The Baum Bugle contains my review of The Lost Lands, the first volume of the Ultimate Oz Universe graphic retelling of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books.

There’s a big team behind this comic, some of them having worked for years to develop this version of Oz for various media. But the main creators of what we see on the book’s pages are the writers Cullen Blum and Larry King and the artist Mike Deodato, Jr.

My bottom line is that The Lost Lands is interesting to sample as an alternate version of Oz and often visually striking, but sadly not as original as it presents itself.

Firstly, there have been many “dark” adaptations of the Oz books in comics form over the years. The Ultimate Oz Universe is far from the first to recast Dorothy as a teenager, the Tin Woodman as a robot, the Scarecrow as truly scary, and so on.

Second, this graphic novel is a streamlined retelling of The Marvelous Land of Oz. Nothing wrong with that, but the project also draws without acknowledgment on work still under copyright, including later books and the syncretic maps created by James E. Haff and Dick Martin for the Oz Club.

Third, Deodato’s art is notable not only for its dramatic hyperrealism and solid comic-page design but its inconsistency on the details. I spent two paragraphs listing examples, such as:

Over one action sequence, Glinda’s sleeves grow from being short and off-the-shoulder to long and puffy. Mrs. Yoop’s shoes have straps in one panel but not the next. On a single spread, the Cowardly Lion’s belt takes on three separate designs.

Based on such discrepancies, other comics artists have accused Deodato of using AI imagery. He’s denied doing that. (Using AI should have been disclosed during the book’s Kickstarter campaign.) I don’t have hard evidence on that question, so I wrote simply about sloppiness in the visual details.

The overall lack of originality limits how compelling this volume can be. Fans of the Oz books already know the twist at the end of The Marvelous Land of Oz. Seeing the same basic story play out with a teen-aged Tip, a bipedal Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger, and other changes doesn’t make it a different story.

Other articles in thus Bugle issue cover the release of Wicked: For Good, a detailed analysis of the art of John R. Neill, a tour of the Hotel del Coronado, and a look at the Australian textile artist Raquel Caballero’s Ozzy work (showcased with eight pages of color), as well as many other reviews.

A Mystery Tale from the Early Emerald City

Oziana is the International Wizard of Oz Club’s creative magazine for fiction and art inspired by the Oz books. It’s been published annually for about half a century now.

The latest issue, printed at the end of last year, includes my short story “The Soldier with the Green Whiskers and the Guardian of the Gates,” delightfully illustrated by Rob Lauer.

This story is set shortly after the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Wizard has flown away, leaving the Emerald City under the rule of the now-brainy Scarecrow. And then the Scarecrow departed to escort his friend Dorothy to the castle of Glinda the Good. So the soldier and the guardian are the highest-ranking officials in town when Winged Monkeys start tearing a hole in the city wall.

I wrote the first version of this story when I was in junior high or high school, but was never fully satisfied with it. A few years ago I realized that it fit into a couple of trends in my newer Oz writing:

• It was a mystery, and could be a better one.
• It paired two recurring characters, a form L. Frank Baum used in his Little Wizard Stories of Oz and which I’ve been using to springboard other tales.

I wrote the story again from scratch, hopefully better. At the time I didn’t have a copy of the first version. Since then I came across an old photocopy, but I haven’t dared to read it, lest it be so much worse or even a tiny bit better.

If you care to read “The Soldier with the Green Whiskers and the Guardian of the Gates,” plus six more stories about the early history of Oz, all illustrated, and a closing poem, please order Oziana 2024 from Lulu.

Maps and More in the Fall 2024 Baum Bugle

The latest triennial issue of the International Wizard of Oz Club’s Baum Bugle is the 200th. It’s arriving, wrapped in seasonal colors, at club members’ houses now.

I’m honored to be one of the contributors to this issue, in the midst of many Oz experts I like and admire:

• Ruth Berman on the launch of the club and its journal.
• Scott Cummings on a stage show that would have reunited L. Frank Baum with his first illustrator, the since-famous artist Maxfield Parrish.
• Peter Hanff on the work of longtime Bugle editor and art director Dick Martin, with more samples of Martin’s work from David Maxine.
• Memories of editing the Bugle in different periods from Bill Stillman, Michael Gessell, and John Fricke.

My article is about the maps of Oz and its neighbors published in Tik-Tok of Oz in 1914—how they came about and how they affected Baum’s storytelling in the novels that followed. Up until that book, Baum had never mentioned any maps. Afterwards, every book alluded to the map of Oz in one way or another.

That essay owed a lot to two studies of Oz and its representations. First, Michael O. Riley’s Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum (University Press of Kansas, 1997) snapped me out of the childhood habit of thinking of Oz as a stable place that the books gradually revealed and empowered me to think of Baum making it up as he went along. To be sure, by the time I read that book I’d studied literature in college, edited books for a decade, and even published my own fiction. But old habits stick around. Now I find it more interesting to analyze the fairyland from multiple perspectives.

Starting in 2012, David Maxine has shared a series of essays about the maps of Oz through the Hungry Tiger Press blog. This analysis starts with the earliest map, made for a theatrical presentation and now lost, and has worked its way to the Oz Club’s 1960s publication of maps that incorporated locations from the whole series and other Baum books as well.

Like other Oz fans, I enjoyed looking at the 1914 maps I first saw in Michael Patrick Hearn’s The Annotated Wizard of Oz. I had the Oz Club’s maps pinned on the bulletin board in my room for years. As many other fantasy authors and publishers discovered after Baum, there’s nothing like a map to make a fairyland seem more real.

On the Road to CharlOz, Sept. 26–29

On September 26-29, 2024, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina; the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and other local and national organizations will host CharlOz, a stretching over four days to explore the Oz mythos and its cultural legacy.

I’ll be there, speaking at two events on the schedule for Friday, 27 September:

• a panel discussion of the new essay collection The Characters of Oz, featuring editor Dina Massachi and fellow contributors Mark West, Katharine Kittredge, Walter Squire, Paige Gray, Angelica Shirley Carpenter, and Gita Dorothy Morena.
• a talk later that afternoon titled “‘My! what a lot of Kings and Queens!’: The Meanings of Monarchy in L. Frank Baum’s Fantasies.”

The schedule of CharlOz events includes many other speakers and presentations, including:

• an opening keynote speech by novelist Gregory Maguire.
• presentations by comics artists Eric Shanower and Janet R. Lee, puppeteer and director James Ortiz, and film restorer Nate Barlow.
• talks by scholars Ryan Bunch, Angelica Shirley Carpenter, Atticus Gannaway, Judy Bieber, Anastasia Rose Hyden, Brady Schwind, Paige Gray, Katharine Kittredge, and many more.
• a Saturday full of family programming.
• theatrical, cinematic, and gallery interpretations of Oz.

The International Wizard of Oz Club will also have its national convention in Charlotte coinciding with this festival.

“Dorothy the Conqueror” Now Online

Back in 2005, the International Wizard of Oz Club’s journal, The Baum Bugle, published my article “Dorothy the Conqueror.”

It discussed the character of Dorothy Gale as L. Frank Baum developed her, from a little girl who called herself “small and meek” into a bold adventurer. That boldness had always been part of her character, but after her first trip to Oz she knew it. By the end of Baum’s series, she was happy to set out for unknown parts of Oz because “all excitement is fun.”

The article also points out ways that the MGM movie’s treatment of Dorothy doesn’t reflect that character, especially in her baffling speeches at the end.

The Oz Club has now made the text of “Dorothy the Conqueror” available for anyone to read through this webpage. It even comes with citations in both Chicago and MLA style.

Looking Back on Return to Oz after 35 Years

When Return to Oz came out in 1985, I was just the wrong age for it.

I was at the end of my teens, busy with college and summer jobs. Even though I still considered myself an Oz fan, I didn’t find time to spare for an Oz movie that lots of early reviews called a dark disappointment.

If I’d been five years younger—and maybe even if I’d been five years older—I’d have gone to Return to Oz that first year. But I was at a crest of being intellectually serious, and was among the many who stayed away.

Return to Oz wasn’t a success at the box office or with most critics, but some of its first viewers loved it. And more fans developed through the VHS releases and repeated showings on the Disney Channel. Now, thirty-five years after the movie’s release, it’s considered a cult favorite. Furthermore, the intervening years have brought more Oz adaptations to make it look good.

This year the International Wizard of Oz Club was due to hold its national convention this upcoming weekend. Then came the pandemic. The in-person gathering had to be canceled, and organizers turned their energy into creating a virtual convention titled “To Oz? To Oz!” It will run from the afternoon of Friday, 14 August, through Sunday, 16 August, and registration is free.

As part of OzCon International’s contribution to that Oz Club online event, I just finished chatting with three people who were just the right age to appreciate Return to Oz in the 1980s and to view it with new eyes today.

First I hosted an online panel with Sarah Crotzer, professor of English and Film and editor-in-chief of The Baum Bugle, and Eliza Wren, a filmmaker and musician who composed her own rock score to Return to Oz. Our topic was “Return to Oz at 35.”

Then I chatted with Freddy Fogarty about how Return to Oz made him an Oz fan and about some of his favorite movie memorabilia. Freddy’s collection was one of the bases for the El Segundo Museum of Art’s terrific Oz display last year.

The recording of those conversations is scheduled to premiere in the “To Oz? To Oz!” lineup on Saturday afternoon. As at any good fan convention, there are plenty of other things happening, too. To view the videos and live events this weekend, one has to be registered in advance, but I believe that eventually all this 2020 content will be available online.

Art for “The Axman’s Arm”

At Skookworks, David Lee Ingersoll has just shared his illustrations from the 2006 issue of Oziana magazine, which I edited and produced for the International Wizard of Oz Club.

David created the art for a story I wrote called “The Axman’s Arm,” a horror tale exploring what happened to the Tin Woodman’s left arm after it was chopped off in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That arm wasn’t around for the assembly of the character of Chopfyt, introduced in The Tin Woodman of Oz—so where did it go?

I rarely tell horror stories, but the Oz books’ premise that people and animals can survive being sliced up leads inevitably to that mode.

For that issue of Oziana, David also illustrated Adrian Korpel’s poem “Rivals” with pictures of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion looking bitter and angry—and yet completely recognizable. I’d seen some of the pictures David drew for the Oz Squad project, so I knew he could do a great job with that challenge. I don’t view those poems as “canonical,” but they offered an interesting alternative view of favorite characters.

Slice of Life

At the Hungry Tiger Talk blog, David Maxine has written about the one-of-a-kind Oz-related item that was part of our first meeting, when we were teenagers. This is my side of the story.

Back in 1979, at the age of thirteen, I attended my first International Wizard of Oz Club convention. This was the Munchkin Convention, meaning it drew Oz fans from the eastern part of the United States. In the books, you see, the Munchkins live in the eastern part of Oz. (In most of the books. It’s a long story, which David summarized here.)

That year the Munchkin Convention was in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a reasonably short car ride from my grandparents’ home in suburban Philadelphia. I’d already done some air travel by myself, so I felt confident flying down to visit Grandpa and Grandma.

I wasn’t so confident about meeting the Munchkin conventioneers. I was a shy kid, and I’d never been at that sort of gathering before, much less on my own. It turned out to be a milestone event because it was the first time adult strangers treated me as a peer. For that, I’ll always be grateful to the Oz Club.

There were other teenagers there as well, or at least one: Judy Bieber. But she intimidated me. I was thirteen, and she was (and remains) a couple of years older, which felt like an incredibly significant gap. She was also smart, pretty, and seemingly very much at home in Munchkinland. She created the quiz about the Oz books for that year. She and her father Herm were selling older Oz editions. She appeared to have everything.

To the surprise of the room, and the astonishment of myself, I won Judy’s quiz. The Oz books were the first field of knowledge I really tried to master, and my brain is good at retaining trivial information. And, though I didn’t know it at the time, previous winners were probably sitting out that event. The prize that Judy supplied was an abridged “Junior” edition of Rinkitink in Oz with some John R. Neill color plates. I’m sure that was the first time I’d ever seen one of those abridgments. It may have been the first time I ever knew about them.

By the end of that day, while I was waiting for my grandmother to pick me up, I was already worrying about my responsibilities for the following year. The winner of each year’s quiz had to write the next year’s quiz and supply the prize. I remember another attendee congratulating me on winning and asking if I was already thinking about new questions, and me replying that I was already thinking about the prize.

Making the quiz was fun. I decided to base it on Neill’s pictures and books, and I had fun laying it out. But for a prize? I didn’t have much money to spend, I didn’t know the range of possibilities, and I wasn’t linked into collectors’ networks. I also wasn’t good at asking for help (I’m still not). I wanted to solve this problem on my own—since I was acting as an adult, and all that.

So I decided to use my time in woodworking class to make a prize. A pair of O and Z bookends didn’t work out, but I grabbed a piece of mahogany and figured out a design for a cheese board that incorporated Neill’s OZ symbol in its handle. I didn’t do a great job with the carving, but it was a one-of-a-kind Oz-related trophy. And its real value was symbolic, right?

As David guessed, during the 1980 Munchkin Convention I decided to augment that cheese board with an edition of The Wizard of Oz autographed by Margaret Hamilton, who was there. So now I can also say that I had a brief conversation with her. Very brief.

The person who won my quiz was David Maxine, who had come from out west all the way to Cherry Hill. He was also a teenager. But, like Judy, he was (and is) a couple of years older than me. The difference is minuscule now—we’re all part of what I called the “white cover generation” of Oz fans. But back then David was also daunting.

Looking back, I realize that my thinking at thirteen was skewed by the universal adolescent assumption that every other teen is having more fun than you. To me David seemed like an old hand at Oz conventions and collecting and life. I should have perceived that this was his first time at the Munchkins, and he had no idea I was at just my second gathering. We had more in common than I realized.

If I’d known the winner of my quiz was going to be another teen, I probably wouldn’t have made a kitchen implement. If I’d had the boldness to befriend Judy the year before, I could probably have asked her and Herm to snatch up one of those abridged editions for the 1980 prize. But I couldn’t see any of those possibilities at the time.

I also couldn’t see that David and I would reconnect in something called “online” almost twenty years later. During some Ozzy conversation he mentioned that he still had the cheese board, which was both astonishing and gratifying. (As he’s pointed out, it’s compact and almost impossible to break.) And now that we’re both adults and have had online exchanges about such things as Swiss chard, a kitchen implement turns out to have been more appropriate than we knew. It’s come to symbolize a real-world friendship rooted in Oz.

Did The Economist Solve a Winkie Con Mystery?

The Prospero blog on The Economist’s website filed a report on this month’s Winkie Convention last month, taking note of the extensive schedule of panel discussions that I helped to put together and other activities.

This year, propelled by the publicity for the anniversary of the MGM film, Winkie Con moved from the mid-California Monterey peninsula down to San Diego. The relocation was due in part to San Diego’s proximity to neighbouring resort town, Coronado, where [L. Frank] Baum wintered and wrote several novels. It was also the first year the usually humble Winkie Con expanded to offer a broad conference-style schedule, with concurrent panels discussing subjects such as the strong feminist characters in Baum's books and the rise of fantasy and sci-fi fan culture. Attendance spiked to over 350; many attendees were newer fans, who had found their way down the yellow brick road via the musical "Wicked" or "Oz the Great and Powerful", the new Oz film released in 2013.

Prospero, a first-time festivalgoer, was shown plenty of “ozpitality” and welcomed into many exclusive but never exclusionary events. On the opening day, Aljean Harmetz, a journalist and historian whose mother worked in the MGM costume department for 20 years, screened "The Wizardry of Oz", a 1979 documentary follow-up to her exhaustively detailed book, "The Making of the Wizard of Oz". On the second afternoon, a tightly packed audience strained to hear a Q&A with Priscilla Montgomery Clark, one of the munchkins in the MGM film, who is now in her 80s. A family reunion-style slideshow gave regular Winkie Con organisers and participants a chance to reminisce about the years of lighter programming and more intimate festivities. “There’s Dan again,” someone murmured as the slides shuttered past. “He was a marvellous Dorothy.”

Nearly two-dozen of Baum’s The Wizard of Oz books are in the public domain in America, as is the 1925 film. This makes for a rich ecosystem of Oz-related fan culture that continues to snatch up new graphic novels and support reinterpretations of the original characters. At the swap table, a Winkie Con tradition, one could pick up or drop off gently used books and artwork, or borrow stapled short stories from a stack of unpublished fan-fiction.

Oh ho! In fact, one was not supposed to borrow those short stories but to read them in that room. My story “Post-Transformative Stress” disappeared for several hours during the convention, prompting some anxious “no questions asked” announcements. Eventually it reappeared on the table with no questions answered. Had Prospero mistakenly taken it for a closer read?

No harm done. This year’s contest judges had already done their work and chosen which essays, stories, and artwork should win prizes. “Post-Transformative Stress” came away with one. It throws together Dr. Pipt from Baum’s Patchwork Girl of Oz (shown above) and Iva the kitchen boy from Ruth Plumly Thompson’s The Wishing Horse of Oz. No wonder it might have been so compelling.

Wrapping Up the Winkie Convention, part 3

Here’s the final schedule for the final day of the 2014 Winkie Convention in San Diego—Sunday, 10 August.

Sunday, 8:30 am
Ozzy Tai Chi led by grandmaster Parker Linekin
Brunch at the Hotel Del Coronado, where L. Frank Baum wrote several books

Sunday, 10:00 am
“The Making of ‘The Wizard of Oz’” Documentary with movie historian Aljean Harmetz (reprise)
Baum’s Boys with authors Paul Dana, Jared Davis, J. L. Bell, and Michael Gessell

Sunday, 11:00 am
75 Years of the MGM Wizard of Oz with movie experts Aljean Harmetz, Priscilla Montgomery, Robert A. Welch, Steve Cox, and Anthony Tringali
A New Oz Series: A Look Back with The Emerald Wand of Oz and Trouble Under Oz author Sherwood Smith and illustrator William Stout, interviewed by J. L. Bell—the first time Smith and Stout had met
Walking Tour of Coronado with the Coronado Historical Association (reprise)

Sunday, 12:30 pm
The Adventures of Queen Ann in Oz with authors Eric Gjovaag and Karyl Carlson and illustrators Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry—the first time this creative team had met, on the occasion of their book’s republication

Sunday, 1:30 pm
The Tik-Tok Man of Oz Audience Talk-Back with producer Eric Shanower, lighting designer Christopher Boltz, set and costume co-designer David Maxine, and performers Eduard Cao, Taylor Hamilton, Taylor Schwartz, and Laura Bueno

Sunday, 2:30 pm
Upcoming Oz Events and Closing Ceremonies with convention organizers David Maxine, Freddy Fogarty, Eric Gjovaag, and Karyl Carlson

That programming could not have happened without the audiovisual equipment loaned by SanSFiS (more on that group later), the tireless work of SanSFiS volunteer Barney Evans, and the half-dozen presenters who made their laptops available for other sessions.

Wrapping Up the Winkie Convention, part 2

The final, actual Winkie Con 2014 schedule continues with the official events of Saturday, 9 August. This was the biggest day of the convention with the highest attendance and the most events going on at once.

Saturday, 7:30 am
Army of Oogaboo Bootcamp led by the well-traveled Colin Ayres

Saturday, 9:00 am
Costume Contest hosted by Kurt Raymond and Lee Speth

Saturday, 10:00 am
The Winkie Con Quizzes administered by last year’s winners Jared Davis, Miriam Esther Goldman, and Susan Hall
Conversation with Movie Historian Aljean Harmetz with interviewer Anthony Tringali
Oz Collectibles with collectors Freddy Fogarty, Bill Campbell, and Kurt Raymond
Auction Preview
Dealers’ Room Reopens
Oz Research Table, Art Show, and Swap Table Reopen
Display of Judy Garland Movie Costumes Reopens with Michael Siewert

Saturday, 11:00 am
Friends of Dorothy: The LGBT Side of Oz with authors and artists Michael Cart, Dee Michel, Joe Phillips, Rachael Anderson, and Anthony Trujillo
The Oz Books for Beginners: Reading and Collecting with experts Eric Gjovaag and Paul Bienvenue
Mechanical Men and Dinosaurs in Oz with science-fiction fans William R. Lund, Susan Hall, Lee Speth, and Tim Tucker
Walking Tour of Coronado with the Coronado Historical Association (reprise)
Auction Session 1 with auctioneer Bill Thompson

Saturday, 12:00 noon
A. Arnold Gillespie: The Wizard of Special Effects with biographer Robert A. Welch (reprise)
Fictional Worlds and Fandoms: From Oz to Star Trek and Beyond with fandom veterans Bjo and John Trimble, Margaret Koontz, Michael Cart, and Tim Tucker
Soon As I Get Home: An Oz Lunch Concert with singer-songwriter Anthony Whitaker

Saturday, 1:00 pm
Oz and Tarot with publishers Anna Warren Cebrian and Mark Anthony Masterson and reader Gita Morena
Oz and the American Musical with musicologist Ryan Bunch
From Humbug to Hero: Getting to Know the Wizard of Oz with fans Stan Sieler, Atticus Gannaway, Carrie Hedges, John W. Kennedy, and J. L. Bell
Storytelling Workshop: From Character to Comic led by Anthony Nuñez
Auction Session 2 with auctioneer Bill Thompson

Saturday, 2:00 pm
Oz Tabletop Roleplaying Game led by Stephen Koontz
Toto of Oz, a Great and Powerful Film Career with Patricia Watson
Today’s Publishing Options with authors Henry Herz, Paul Dana, Edward Einhorn, and Kevin Gerard
Tarot Readings by Gita Morena

Saturday, 3:00 pm
Conversation with Bjo and John Trimble with interviewer Jack Plummer
Storytelling in Someone Else’s Sandbox with authors Melissa Wiley, Caroline Spector, Edward Einhorn, and Gina Wickwar

Saturday, 4:00 pm
Conversation with Priscilla Montgomery, an MGM Munchkin, with interviewer Anthony Tringali
Crafting Oz with artists Dave Kelleher, Karyl Carlson, and Bill Campbell
The Baum Bugle: Meet the Editors! with Craig Noble and Jared Davis

Saturday, 6:00 pm
The Grand Winkie Banquet and awards ceremony

Saturday, 8:00 pm
The Tik-Tok Man of Oz Musical Play directed by Chrissy Burns

Saturday, 11:00 pm
Tik-Tok’s Robotic Ragtime Revelry after-party with the Heliotrope Ragtime Ensemble

The image above is sheet music from The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, produced in 1913. That musical extravaganza was L. Frank Baum’s attempt to recreate the huge success he’d enjoyed with the 1902 stage version of The Wizard of Oz. What we saw on Saturday night was a game attempt to produce a coherent drama from the fragmentary surviving scripts and songs. Always lively, full of delights, and produced for just the right audience.

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.

Kick-star-ter for Tik-Tok

This week I pledged in a Kickstarter campaign for a production of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, first shown in 1913-14, at this summer’s Winkie Convention in San Diego.

I’m attending that convention (in fact, I’m helping with the daytime programming), so I’m already going to reap the benefit of this production. But I admired producer Eric Shanower’s theatricality in a bare-bones ballet adaptation of The Road to Oz a few years back, so I thought this show would be worth a real ticket price.

As a celebrated artist, Eric had the ability to offer a very rare incentive for a large pledge: a “20"x24" original painting by Eric Shanower of 30 major Oz characters.” Having just one person sign up for that reward would have brought the campaign two-thirds of the way to its goal. I assumed that was the sort of pie-in-the-sky level that Kickstarter campaigns offer people in order to make the next level down seem less expensive.

Instead, two people have signed up for that grand reward, putting the campaign over the top and producing an unusual pattern in the pledges. Recent Kickstarter campaigns for a documentary film titled “Who Stole the Ruby Slippers?” (still ongoing) and a “Shadow of Oz” tarot deck (which just made its goal) seem to have a more common distribution, with most people pledging in the low and middle tiers and nobody offering four-figure sums.

The demand indicated by this pledge pattern for Tik-Tok Man would make me seriously think about doing nothing but original paintings of 30 major Oz characters.

Oz Comes to Kansas

This 1906 postcard shows a scene from the popular stage extravaganza based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. The producers made such cards available at the end of each performance in the hopes that people would recommend the show to their friends—as “Will” did with this one.

The Cowardly Lion is at the left, Imogene the Cow (the show’s more-easily-performed substitute for Toto) at the far right. The Tin Woodman stands above the word “funny” and the Scarecrow above the W in “Will.” Dorothy kneels near the center. The figure upstage in the center with striped sleeves is the Good Witch, bringing on a snowstorm to counteract the effect of the Poppy Field—a plot point invented for this show and then reused in the 1939 MGM movie.

This postcard is from the University of Kansas library’s new “Magic of Oz” exhibit, featuring documents and artifacts from the collection of alumna Jane Albright. Jane’s been very active in the International Wizard of Oz Club for many years, especially in organizing events.

Unfortunately, the opening of this exhibit has coincided with a health crisis in Jane’s family, so she’s been unable to visit it herself. Everyone in the Oz fan community wishes Jane’s husband a swift and full recovery so they can enjoy sharing her impressive collection with folks in Kansas.

Spotting a Familiar Name

A few months back there were a lot of pictures of Damian Wayne with Death from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, but I don’t recall having seen this one in my feeds. (Of course, there were a lot.)

This picture comes from Luciano Vecchio, an artist from Argentina. I first saw his work when I was editing the International Wizard of Oz Club’s Oziana fiction magazine, and art director Marcus Mébès recruited him to illustrate some stories. When I contacted him directly a while later, Luciano told me he’d gotten too busy with paying jobs to do more volunteer fan work, and I told him that was the best news an aspiring professional artist could share.

I ran across Luciano’s name in the second collection of comics spun off the Young Justice TV show. He drew a couple of issues of that magazine, as well as cartoon-style comics about the Avengers and Green Lantern. Earlier work includes the Sentinels, about a second-generation superhero team, from Drumfish. Here’s Luciano’s Deviant Art page.

Starting soon, Luciano will be the regular artist on the new Beware the Batman! magazine written by Ivan Cohen, which DC promoted this spring with a free preview comic scripted by Scott Beatty.

“Tottenhots” in the Baum Bugle

The new issue of The Baum Bugle, which arrived today, includes my article “The Troublesome Tottenhots.” It discusses a set of people L. Frank Baum wrote about in The Patchwork Girl of Oz and briefly in Rinkitink in Oz whose name is obviously based on the “Hottentots” of southern Africa.

Most of the article explores how Baum didn’t just play on the Hottentot name but also invoked a centuries-old tradition in British and American thought that cast Hottentots as the lowest form of humanity, perhaps even a separate species. This article is the first time I’ve been able to cross-pollinate my Oz writing with my research on eighteenth-century history.

The last part of the essay discusses how Baum, despite building on racist stereotypes, also provides his Tottenhots with a voice and a place in Oz. I don’t think he was consciously arguing for racial equality and inclusion. Rather, he couldn’t help having his greatest strength as a writer, the ability to portray different points of view sympathetically, come through for the Tottenhots.

Oz the Great and Powerful Impaneled

Yesterday I moderated a panel at the Winkies Convention on Oz the Great and Powerful and its place in the history of Oz movies. The distinguished panelists were:

• Freddy Fogarty, whose review of the movie appears in the new Baum Bugle.
  
• Caroline Spector, author of critical essays and fantasy stories.
  
• Peter Hanff, former president of the International Wizard of Oz Club.

I laid out the topic by noting that Oz the Great and Powerful is the first financially successful cinematic version of Oz since 1939 (and perhaps, depending on how much one interprets Hollywood accounting, ever). Journey Back to Oz, The Wiz, and Return to Oz were all box-office failures, though the last has since won a cult following. But Box Office Mojo says that as of last week Oz the Great and Powerful has taken in nearly $500 million worldwide.

At the same time, Rotten Tomatoes says that both critics and audiences are split on the movie’s merits, with rankings hovering around the 60% approval line that defines the difference between a ripe red tomatoes and a messy green splat.

The discussion was lively, with Caroline pointing out the problematic ways that Oz the Great and Powerful treated its female characters. While working hard not to work blue, she noted how Oz seduced women by giving them cheap music boxes. On the other hand, Caroline said that China Doll was the most appealing character in the film.

Freddy pondered whether Oz the Great and Powerful would eventually gather a following like Return to Oz from people who watch it in childhood and find it speaks to them. But is there enough in the movie about a twentysomething hound dog to appeal to kids? I asked Peter about the visual effects. This is the first Oz movie in the era of CGI—but did the filmmakers put that technology into creating a world as obviously artificial as MGM’s matte paintings?

The audience offered great comments and questions. A lady wearing Theodora’s ruby ring pointed out how the three witches’ powers were color-coordinated with their outfits. Sam Milazzo asked how Theodora’s name related to Dorothy’s, which leads to larger questions of whether the movie’s Emma Gale will become Aunt Em or the Wizard and Glinda will become parents of that Oz’s Ozma. We all pondered whether this movie is a dream that no one’s yet woken up from.

I delayed calling on Carrie Hedges, president of the International Wizard of Oz Club, to ensure that she would have the last word. She spoke about how the many versions of Oz each bring their own fans to the overall mythos. And if the Wizard offered her a music box, Carrie said, she could gladly take it. That brought down the house and closed the convention in a lively way.

Phearse Competition

Last night, the first night of this year’s Winkie/International Wizard of Oz Club Convention, director David Maxine recruited me into being one of the players of the “It’s the Baum!” game show. My team, named the Horners, included Miriam Goldman, Robin Olderman, and Jim Vander Noot. Our opponents were the Hoppers—named in honor of the feuding nations in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, published 100 years ago.

The game required pairs from each team to identify people associated with Oz in some way: characters, creators, adapters, performers, etc. One player saw the person’s name on a screen and gave clues to the other, facing away from the screen. This required both players to recognize the people—or to arrive at the correct answer some other way.

My young mind was wired for trivia, and I retain a lot about the Oz books: the predecessor of King Krewel (King Phearse), whose name begins with the word “high” (High Boy), what young hero of an Oz book shares a name with Batman’s partner (Robin S. Brown).

I haven’t absorbed as much about more recent adaptations, such as who played Glinda in the original Broadway production of The Wiz (Dee Dee Bridgewater). But watching this game played last year showed me the importance of being flexible in how one passed clues to one’s partner. Therefore, when faced with the unfamiliar name of the nerve specialist in Return to Oz, I went with “The professional title of a physician…Comedienne Jo Anne” (Doctor Worley).

Some of the names were even more obscure—to the point that we joked their association with Oz was being the person in history least associated with Oz. At one point my partner and I got the name “Bebopma,” which is a throwaway joke in Jack Snow’s reference book Who’s Who in Oz. Game judge Eric Shanower later told me that he got so frustrated that we didn’t just say “Pass” to such a ridiculous challenge that he sounded the alarm for an illegal clue. But that probably saved us time we put toward earning another point.

Which turned out to be crucial. Our team got off to a good start, thanks in part to my juvenile mind. We added a couple of points in the next round. By the Hoppers’ last turn, we Horners were ahead by seven points.

But then Anil Tambwekar and Glenn Ingersoll pulled off a comeback as exciting as a Ray Allen three-pointer and tied the score. And since there were no tie-breaker questions prepared, everyone won a prize. It was the Baum.

Oz-Stravaganza’s Call for Short Oz Fiction

The Syracuse Post-Standard reports that the International Wizard of Oz Club is co-sponsoring an Oz fiction writing contest as part of the annual Oz-Stravaganza festival in Chittenango, New York, boyhood home of L. Frank Baum.

As the story and contest brochure (PDF) explain, there are four grade categories. The stories from grades 3-8 can be 500 words long, 25% longer than the stories from writers in grades 9-12 and above. But we all know that writing short is harder than writing long.

Entries in each category have to include certain words. For writers in ninth grade and above (including adults), those words are:

1. Magic 2. Forest 3. Courage 4. Hourglass 5. Danger 6. Rescue 7. Castle 8. Home 9. Soldiers 10. Wish 11. Crystal 12. Cyclone 13. Wizard 14. Witch 15. Escape

Entries must be submitted by mail before 8 May. Check out the article and booklet for all the rules and the requisite registration form. First-place winners in each category will be published in the Post-Standard as part of the June festival.

“Online Oz” Panel Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning I’ll moderate a panel at this year’s Winkie Convention titled “Online Oz.” More specifically, we’ll talk about blogging.

The panelists will be:

• Eric Gjovaag of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz Website and Wonderful Blog of Oz.
• Jared Davis of the Royal Blog of Oz.
• David Maxine of Hungry Tiger Press and Hungry Tiger Talk.

In addition, I hope to show off other exemplary Oz blogs and websites:

• Blair Frodelius’s up-to-the-minute Daily Ozmapolitan.
• Bill Campbell’s Oz Enthusiast.
• ilex’s Wannabe Wonderlands.
• Nathan DeHoff’s occasionally Ozzy VoVatia.
• Mari Ness’s Oz reviews and news at Tor.com.
• S. P. Maldonado’s Oz Art.
• The blog promoting Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version of The Wizard of Oz now playing in London.
• Jer Alford’s Emeralds: Hearts in Oz site.
• The International Wizard of Oz Club’s Facebook page. (There are other Oz pages on Facebook, perhaps enough to have a whole session about them, but from one day to the next I don’t understand how Facebook works.)

My experience with presentations is that the more they’re about technology, the more likely the presentation tech will fail. The last time I did a panel on blogging, at the 2009 Organization of American Historians conference, we had to start forty-five minutes late using a laptop borrowed from someone in the audience. No one ever got to see the moderator’s introductory video.

So I’m trying to keep it simple. First step: Putting all the links into an Oz and Ends posting so they’re easy to find.