The final story from the 2018 issue of Oziana is "Himself" by David Tallman, with illustrations by Brian Russell. This is a much smaller scale story than the other two in this issue, and it serves mainly to fill in some of the plot holes from Handy Mandy in Oz. Mandy summons Himself the Elf just to talk, and find out more about how he accomplished all that he set out to do in that book. It seems Himself really had a lot more to do with setting things into motion and stopping Wutz than previously revealed. In the process, Himself also confides in Mandy some of his worries about how far Ozma is getting from her true nature as a pacifist, and the little ways he's subverting that. I know not everyone is a fan of the later Thompson books and how she treats some of the characters, so this does some backpedaling and gives Ozma, the readers, and future writers an out to do things differently in the future. So, now that I write this, it seems to be a bigger story than I realized. Still, it was nice to get a little more time with Mandy and Himself (and a little bit of Nox, too).
As this is the last (and shortest) story of the issue, I will also look at the non-story elements of the rest of this particular volume:
- The front cover, also by Brian Russell, shows Omby Amby doing a Scottish sword dance, complete with kilt and sporran, for his friends. Since Russell is from Scotland, this makes a lot of sense.
- Momina Arif, probably Oziana's first ever contributor from Pakistan, contributes a poem, "The Brains, the Heart, the Courage and Home", that appears to be told, at differing points, from all four of the main characters in the first Oz story.
- And Kim McFarland's back cover shows his versions of the Frogman, Polychrome, and a Kalidah.
Next week, I get to start rereading the penultimate (so far) issue of the magazine!
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