The latest Oz reading

Yup, I'm at it again! (You see, I don't read just Oz books, so I have several different cycles that I read in chunks. The Oz cycle has come up again.) I bought the hardcover collection of the Eric Shanower/Skottie Young comic adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz not long ago, and got a chance to take a look. I didn't read the whole thing, as I've already read it through the individual issues, but I'm glad I have this one. There isn't a lot of new material, of course. The contents of the sketchbook are reproduced as extras in the back, as are all of the covers. The one new item is an introduction by Shanower where he puts the blame for Oz — Dorothy going there, the success it brought L. Frank Baum, the whole series, the movies, the other stuff — squarely where it belongs: on Toto. You see, if Toto hadn't crawled under that bed, I wouldn't be here typing about Oz at all now.

As for the book itself, even if you have the comics, I highly recommend this book. The page size is larger, and the paper of a higher quality, than the comics. It's also hardbound (although I gather a paperback is coming out later) and wrapped in a jacket, so it looks and feels more like a "real" book. And it helps to not have to stop reading the story after 20-some pages and wait a month for the next issue. So yes, I wholeheartedly and definitively recommend this book.