Return to Oz: Adventures in Oz by Eric Shanower

Comic trade paperback, 256 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 1986-93) 
Acquired August 2012
Read December 2016

Adventures in Oz

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Writer and Illustrator: Eric Shanower

Calligrapher: Willie Schubert
Painting Assistant: Tom McCraw

Long before he was tapped to write comics adaptations of L. Frank Baum's Oz novels, Eric Shanower wrote and illustrated five original Oz comics, collected here in a single volume by IDW. Shanower's style as an illustrator I've always found very classic Oz, in that it's very John R. Neill: his Dorothy especially is a lot like Neill's. His stories here, too, are very classic Oz in style. There's not a lot of new characters or anything, rather, we have Dorothy going out on adventures in and near Oz, almost always with the Scarecrow at her side-- which of course was the very first Oz protagonist pairing. (But one not utilized much outside of Wonderful Wizard, I don't think.)

However, Shanower delves into the history of Oz in a way that is very un-Baum, as Baum was always pressing forwards, by and large. In these stories we see the tree that is the source of Oz's magic (an idea that doesn't feel very Ozzy to me, to be honest), a new character with a flashback-told link to the Wicked Witch of the West, a story about Zurline and the Forest of Burzee (from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus), and stories that fill in two gaps in the Oz cartography of witches: the Wicked Witch of the South and the Good Witch of the East. I guess what I'm saying is that the book is definitely fannish, in terms of having continuity references to obscure texts, and plugging in gaps, sort of what you might imagine if Big Finish produced original Oz audio dramas or something.

They're also fannish, though, in capturing what makes Oz such an enjoyable place to visit. Each story might have these kind of continuity-driven aspects, but they also feature journeys to strange and interesting places that feel like ones Baum could have come up with. My favorite of the tales was probably "The Secret Island of Oz": Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and Eureka go on a trip to locate an obscure fish for the gardens of the Emerald City. It feels like the kind of adventure hook Baum himself could have used for a post-Emerald City Oz novel, where this simple quest ends up getting the characters embroiled in the problems of one of those weird magical enclaves within Oz. There are strange characters, both good and evil, and some creative problem-solving, and the characters get split up and reunited-- basically it feels like a prototypical Oz adventure in miniature, and that's why I liked it so much.

The other thing to like about this volume-- and where Shanower most departs from a straight Baum pastiche-- is in the deeper emotional content of these stories. It's hard for me to imagine a Baum story where the resolution hinges on a girl re-accepting the living toy she played with as a child but abandoned (as in "Secret Island"), or one where forbidden love leads to an invasion (as in "The Forgotten Forest of Oz"), or one where a domestic dispute plays out over and over again, stuck in time (as in "The Blue Witch of Oz"). This last one was probably the other highlight of the volume for me, a story about a broken family in need of healing, with lost children and spurned love. Shanower's stories are prototypical Oz in some ways, but uniquely his own in others, the ideal balance of adaptation in my mind.

My only complaint is that it wasn't until typing up this review that I learned the hardcover version has stories and content the trade paperback I read lacks. Now I'm going to have to buy it all over again!

Next Week: Back to the beginning, with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!