Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The latest Oz reading

As promised, I reread The Royal Historian of Oz now that the comic book series has been collected into a graphic novel. Yup, it still works in a collection. In fact, I think it works much better if you can read it all at once (or over a couple of days like I did) instead of having to wait a month for each chapter, as I did when the series first came out (and then had to figure out how to read issue #5 on my computer, delaying the ending even more). The extras are great, too, including a complimentary introduction by Eric Shanower, and David Maxine's interview with writer Tommy Kovac at this year's Winkie Convention (to be sure, I was at that interview, anyway, but having a record of it, in the context of the book, is great). Ah, but perhaps the best part is an excerpt from Jasper Fizzle's Oz novel, Nervous Nelly in Oz. There are an awful lot of current Oz "writers" who need to read this and take it to heart as the way to not write Oz — or just about anything else, for that matter! No wonder the Official Oz Society wanted to stop him from publishing new books!

2 comments:

Jay said...

Not gonna lie, I wish there WAS an "Official Oz Society." Maybe not as cruel as in "Royal Historian," but at least a seal of approval that could be added to a cover of an Oz book letting you know this is a GOOD Oz book.

That would be awesome, even if it meant they'd shoot down my Oz stories.

David Lee Ingersoll said...

I'd put "Not approved by the Official Oz Society" on my books. The lure of the forbidden is good marketing :)