Return to Oz: The Emerald City of Oz by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2014 (contents: 2013-2014)
Acquired and read September 2016

The Emerald City Oz
Adapted from the book by L. Frank Baum 

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Writer: Eric Shanower

Artist: Skottie Young
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

Emerald City is, as I recall, one of the weaker Oz novels, and this adaptation is thus kind of boring in itself, though it's not aided by the fact that while volumes 1-4 of the Marvel Oz comics each comprised eight issues, this one is only five. I'm sure there were good sales-related reasons for this, but I feel like it must have been a negative feedback loop: low sales lead to fewer issues leads to lower quality leads to lower sales. This awkward hodgepodge of a novel was probably never going to be great, but only about 100 pages to cover it makes it worse. There are two parallel stories: the Nome King plots an invasion of Oz while Dorothy travels to random places for no real reason. The characters are saved through luck and happenstance, while Dorothy's journeys are even more aimless than most, and she seems somewhat crueler than in Wonderful Wizard, with a very relaxed attitude towards causing damage, and a poor track record with respecting others. (She was politer when she was younger.)

from The Emerald City of Oz #1

Anyway, Shanower and Young do their best with the story they're given and the space they have-- one feels like Aunt Em vs. the Cowardly Lion would have got a whole page in the old days, but here it just nets three panels, alas. The creepy creatures General Guph visits during his recruiting drive are probably the best part, and it is nice to see Young get to draw almost everyone who's appeared in the series before one last time.

from The Emerald City of Oz #5

The real problem with this book is that it was the last one, and I'll never get to see Skottie Young draw my absolute favorite of Baum's original fourteen, The Patchwork Girl of Oz. That they could even have covered all of Baum's novels was always improbable, but surely they could have stretched to just one more. I have no doubt that Skottie and Scraps would have been a match made in heaven. Actually, he must have agreed, because he snuck Scraps into a variant cover for Road to Oz #1.

Next Week: Eric Shanower and Skottie Young might be done with Oz, but I'm not-- Trot and Cap'n Bill visit The Sea Fairies!

Return to Oz: Road to Oz by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2013 (contents: 2012-13)
Acquired and read September 2016

Road to Oz
Adapted from the book by L. Frank Baum 

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Writer: Eric Shanower

Artist: Skottie Young
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

Sometimes an adaptation reveals hidden depths in the source material. At other times, it reveals just how thin the source material really was. Road to Oz does the latter to Baum's The Road to Oz: this is the dullest of journey narratives, completely lacking the sense of urgency and darkness that propelled Dorothy and the Wizard. In Road, Dorothy and company (she is joined by the Shaggy Man, Button-Bright, Polychrome, and Toto) simply shuffle from place to place... and the places just aren't that interesting. I mean, Skottie Young draws nice fox people, and I absolutely love his reinterpretations of Button-Bright and Polychrome, but there's no there there, and it feels like half the book is set beyond the danger anyway, with the characters just partying in Oz. I don't remember the original book being this bad, but to be honest, I didn't remember anything about it at all except for the guy with the sandboat, which was probably a bad sign.

from Road to Oz #2

Next Week: The whole family goes to Oz, in The Emerald City of Oz!

Return to Oz: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2011-12)
Acquired September 2012
Read September 2016

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
Adapted from the book by L. Frank Baum 

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Writer: Eric Shanower

Artist: Skottie Young
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

Dorothy and the Wizard is probably my favorite of the original six Oz novels, partly I suspect, because it's the only one of those I owned as a kid in an edition with high-quality reproductions of the original illustrations: my others were either low-quality Del Rey editions without color (Ozma and Emerald City), poorly re-illustrated versions (Wizard and Marvellous Land), or just had no illustrations at all (Road)! So to me, the underground world of Dorothy and the Wizard has always seemed particularly lavish and detailed-- and, as a result, alien. This means it's, as always, well-suited to the illustration talents of Skottie Young.

from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz #3

Dorothy and the Wizard is probably the darkest of the original six Oz novels. In the others, most of the people Dorothy meets are reasonably nice, and/or are evil thanks to external influence, and/or there's a clear end goal. For the most part, Dorothy and the Wizard lacks any of these: almost every environment Dorothy and her friends encounter is somewhere between actively hostile and completely indifferent, and there's no obvious destination for the group. There's no route to Oz that they're following, they're just trying to stay alive by moving onwards from each terrible place to another, hopefully-but-not-actually less terrible place. I wouldn't like it if every Oz novel was like this, but this one does what it does well.

from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz #5

Its terrifying Mangaboos and Gargoyles give Young so much to work with, but as I came to realize when reviewing Ozma, he best shines with the "normal" animals, this one having Eureka, Dorothy's conceited kitten (but then, aren't they all?), and the Wizard's nine tiny piglets. Because of this, Shanower and Young even manage to rescue the book's extended coda about Eureka being on trial for murder. It drags in prose, but put Young's amazing rendering of Eureka at the center, and every moment of her attitude is a joy. Plus, Shanower even uses the opportunity to smooth over some hiccups in Baum's improvised history of Oz. Another Shanower and Young triumph.

from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz #8

Next Week: Dorothy goes back to Oz, yet again in Road to Oz!

Return to Oz: Ozma of Oz by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2011 (contents: 2011)
Acquired August 2012
Read September 2016

Ozma of Oz
Adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum 

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Writer: Eric Shanower

Artist: Skottie Young
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

Ozma of Oz is a bit of an oddity in the first six Oz novels: moreso than Marvelous Land, even, it's driven by plot, eschewing Baum's usual rambling journey narrative. After some independent misadventures in Ev (where she meets Billina and Tik-Tok), Dorothy links up with Ozma and sets off with her Royal Army on a mission to rescue the Royal Family of Ev from the Nome King. The book is one of Baum's better ones, and it's even better, I would argue, in the hands of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young, as like Marvelous Land, it introduces a whole new set of strange-looking characters for Skottie Young to draw the hell out of: his Tik-Tok is stalwart, his Wheelers are terrifying, his Nomes are wispy.

from Ozma of Oz #1

My favorite, though, was Billina-- Young always does a good job with the characters who are conventional animals (like the Cowardly Lion in Wonderful Wizard or Eureka in Dorothy and the Wizard), I think partially because we all know what, say, a chicken looks like, so he can get more expressive in the design in a way that he can't with a woggle-bug. His Billina is wonderfully sardonic, annoyed and unimpressed by the world she travels through and the company she is forced to keep.

from Ozma of Oz #7

I also like how Young handles Ozma: it's easy to forget in the novels that Ozma is a kid, and one only recently come into her true identity as royalty at that. Young makes sure you remember this: when she shouts, it looks like a kid trying to get her way. She's no less a princess, but it injects a certain amount of realism, even if via Young's cartoony style.

from Ozma of Oz #4

Next Week: Dorothy meets an old friend and makes some terrifying acquaintances in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz!

Return to Oz: The Marvelous Land of Oz by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2010)
Acquired August 2012
Read September 2016

The Marvelous Land of Oz
Adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum 

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Writer: Eric Shanower

Artist: Skottie Young
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

Like I said in my review of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the pleasure of these Marvel Oz adaptations is in getting the familiar and the new all at once: the L. Frank Baum plots I remember from childhood, coupled with dynamic new Skottie Young illustrations. In that regard, The Marvelous Land of Oz is probably the most successful of all the Marvel Oz comics. Marvelous Land has a decent plot, less meandering than some of Baum's travel narratives, with a real antagonist (or pair of antagonists, General Jinjur and Mombi) and set of goals for our heroes (restore the throne of Oz). Tip is a fun protagonist, too, an easygoing young boy with a good fairytale backstory (oppressed servant of an evil witch, though of course it turns out to be more complicated than that). There's some random traveling, too, of course (the bit where they end up flying over the desert has always seemed a bit arbitrary to me), but moreso than many other Oz novels, this one is about overcoming a specific problem.

What Marvelous Land has in spades are visually interesting characters: the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman return, of course, and then Baum adds Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, the Gump, and H. M. Wogglebug T.E. Each of these gives Young something to work with-- I love, for example, the way he draws the Sawhorse, as a sleek single piece of wood with these deep eyes and slightly ajar mouth that make him look like a loyal dog:

from The Marvelous Land of Oz #2

The weirdness of its characters is fundamental to my enjoyment of the Oz books:

from The Marvelous Land of Oz #6

These are books where the weird and misfits are the exalted and the clever, and in none of them is that better depicted than in Marvelous Land, and Skottie Young captures that perfectly. (Plus I love the way he draws Mombi.)

from The Marvelous Land of Oz #8

Next Week: Dorothy returns to Oz and meets a whole new crew of weirdos in Ozma of Oz!

Return to Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09) 
Acquired August 2012
Read September 2016

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum 

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Writer: Eric Shanower

Artist: Skottie Young
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

I got this to write a paper about it a few years ago, but never sat down and read it properly until I was recovering from surgery last year-- it was a good choice for that. It's a really interesting kind of adaptation, and one you can only do in comics, in that it is simultaneously completely faithful to the original and wildly divergent. The marketing material and Shanower's preface and afterword explain how the adaptation honors the original text, and indeed it does, down to including (a shortened version of) Baum's own introduction to the novel before the story begins properly:

This establishes the book firmly as the work of L. Frank Baum from the first page, as does the cover, which privileges his name significantly over those of the two people who actually made it!