An Unknown Comics Adventure in Oz

Last week as The Wiz was about to air on television, Mark Evanier unspooled his story about being hired to script an adaptation of the 1978 movie version for DC Comics.

It’s most interesting, like a lot of the stories on Evanier’s website, for the backstage look at how comics companies work. (Which is to say, barely.) There are also some nicely crafted lines:

• “Not far enough before the film's scheduled premiere, someone at or around DC Comics got the idea to publish a slick magazine which would be part comic book, part souvenir book for lovers of the movie. This was some time before anyone knew there wouldn't be a lot of lovers of that movie.”
• “I had to sign all sorts of non-disclosure agreements that I would not divulge what I saw to anyone and as I recall, they didn't specify any time limit. I mean, I was supposed to write all these authorized articles about what was in the movie and here I was signing vows that I would never in a million years divulge to anyone what was in the movie. So I may be violating those agreements right now.”
• “I forget what they were going to charge for it but it struck me as a bit too pricey. It also struck me as not my problem.”
• “By far, most of my time went into going up to Universal to see a more-complete version of the movie and then to see an even-more-complete version. I saw it three times but I never saw the final release cut. I felt that the film got better as the holes were filled in…which is not to say I thought it ever got to be really good. The merits it did have were (a) a few of the actors’ performances and (b) some truly dazzling dance numbers. And of course, it did dawn on me that our adaptation would contain neither.”

For the stories of which artist should work on this project, how the 1976 Copyright Act affected things, why no one has ever heard of this comic, and how its obscurity might have helped Evanier and artist Dan Spiegle’s careers, check out Evanier’s recollection.

Yes, I’ve Heard About the New Movie

Soon after I first joined the International Wizard of Oz Club in late 1976, its journal, The Baum Bugle, was full of articles about the making of the The Wiz. How many stars the movie would have! How many costumes had been sewn! How many square miles of yellow linoleum had been laid in New York City to simulate the Yellow Brick Road!

Then the movie came out, a critical and financial disappointment. Bad casting and overproduction not only sank the film but in some ways ended the “blaxploitation” business for years.

A few years later, the journal reported the imminent arrival of Return to Oz, Disney’s first big-budget attempt to use its movie rights to L. Frank Baum’s later Oz books. Again, the technical aspects of the production caught the attention of the press, particularly the appearances of many Baum characters and such feats as filming in a hall of mirrors.

Then the movie came out. As Buzzfeed’s article “The 11 Most Traumatizing Moments from Return to Oz” catalogues, it was a dreary, anxiety-ridden mashup of two of Baum’s most popular novels. The movie has many moments straight from my childhood favorites, all in a tone that made me wonder why they had ever appealed to me so strongly.

That track record is why I haven’t been writing enthusiastically, or even mildly optimistically, about Oz the Great and Powerful, due out this weekend. I’m curious about this new movie, but I’ve been disappointed before.

Newspapers and magazines, needing content to separate one movie studio’s ads from another, have offered many articles this month on the production and the Oz mythos. The New York Times’s contribution on Sunday started out by spelling the name of the Good Witch of the South as “Glenda.” The Boston Globe’s design-driven discussion of Oz’s influence on American culture didn’t even mention Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins. So I’m not becoming any more optimistic.