My Recent Oz Reading: Comics and Magazines

Yup, now that I'm done (for this year) with both school and my other, non-Oz con, I'm free for the next few weeks to catch up on some Oz blogging. Jeopsrdy! clues will be coming soon, but right now, a few Oz things I've read recently:

• The Radioactive Teddy Bear from Hell Destroys Oz. No, really, that's the title of this unusual (to put it mildly), very limited edition comic book. How did I get it? Connections! Why did I get it? The last two letters of the title are O and Z, of course! Pretty much as advertised, an evil radioactive teddy bear comes to Oz to destroy it (and use some very naughty non-Ozzy language while he's at it). But can he be overcome by the power of love? Nah!
• Fables, Volume 6: Homelands. The saga continues. No Oz. Moving on!
• Dunkiton Press #23. Ruth Berman continues her series of reprints of old newspaper items from Oz contributors, notably Ruth Plumly Thompson and John R. Neill. Here, she continues the tales of the Perhappsy Chaps, and even notes the differences between the newspaper and book versions.
• Reader's Digest Commemorative Magazine: The Wizard of Oz and The Official CBS Watch! Collector's Edition: The Wizard of Oz, two magazines that came out last year to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the famous film version of The Wizard of Oz. Both are a lot of fun, and while most of the content I was already familiar with, I did get some new insights. Both have cast and crew profiles, both have short behind-the-scenes features, and both even mention L. Frank Baum and the original book. The CBS magazine has more about Baum and his entire career, however, and a look at all of his Oz books (even part of the map of Oz from the Tik-Tok of Oz endpapers), while Reader's Digest chooses to focus more on subsequent dramatic adaptations of Oz (but forgot Return to Oz for some reason). Both are fun, and nice keepsakes, but I doubt a lot of Oz fans are really going to need them.