Oz in Jeopardy!

The October 20 edition of the game proved to be particularly interesting. How so? Why, just look at this $600 clue in the category Jeopardy on the Movie Marquee, in which all of the clues are movie titles with one key word replaced with "Jeopardy":

Allison, the challenger on the right, rang in first and correctly responded, "What is Oz the Great and Powerful?" And normally, that would be it. But this was not a normal game! Towards the end of the show, when the Final Jeopardy! category of 20th Century Novels was revealed, I didn't think much about it. But then the clue was revealed:

Let's just say I knew it was another Oz clue, but did the contestants?

(A side note here: I wasn't sure about the date, as I thought it was a few years earlier then that. I checked, though, and sure enough, it's from 1995. And now back to the game!)

After the following thirty seconds ticked down:

...each contestant's response was revealed (and here, I am including their wagers). First was Allison, who wrote:

She went in with $7200, so her final score was $14,300. Next was Dean, the defending champion, who wrote:

She already had $12,000, so she doubled her score with $24,000. Finally, going into Final Jeopardy! with $13,000 was Robert, the challenger at the middle lectern, and to nobody's surprise, he wrote:

His total, therefore, was $25,500, and he became the new Jeopardy! champion.

The Latest Oz Reading

When Oz the Great and Powerful came out a couple of years ago, I tried to grab up as many books tied into it as I could, and have been spreading them through my reading since then. I've come to the end of that, but I clearly saved the best for last as well. The Art of Oz the Great and Powerful by Grant Curtis is a pretty thorough behind-the-scenes look at how the movie was made. Don't let the title fool you, it's not just about the art, although art is the main focus. But since art includes sets (real and virtual), props, costumes, special effects, and just about everything else in a movie, everything gets touched on. This book helped me realize what an accomplishment it was to have Finley and China Girl in the movie, for instance, and those two characters called for the development of new filmmaking techniques. There are lots of great behind-the-scenes pictures, and anecdotes about the production. I especially appreciate all the material about Baum, Denslow, Neill, and the influence of earlier Disney productions on the look of the film. (There was not as much attention given to earlier dramatizations of Oz, but considering the bad blood between Warner Bros. and Disney over this film, that's probably for the best.) If you enjoyed the movie, you'll probably want to track this book down.

The Latest Oz Reading: The Short Stuff

These are the books I got through in my recent Oz reading that were pretty short.

• Sail Away to Oz by Marcus Méb&egave;s. An epic poem about a young man sailing off into an adventure in Oz. This is actually the second edition of this book, as an earlier edition came out in the '90s. This limited edition is handbound and richly illustrated.
• The Way of a Lion by Jared Davis. This is an expanded book edition of a story that originally appeared in Oziana and won the fiction award for the Oz Club's research table. This is an origin story of the Cowardly Lion, as it relates how he was orphaned as a cub and never got to learn much of what it means to be a lion from his parents.
• Oz the Great and Powerful: The Witches of Oz and Oz the Great and Powerful: A Magical Sticker Set, both tie-in books to the 2013 movie. The first is a pretty basic retelling of the events of the movie for very young readers. It has nice reproductions of stills from the movie. The sticker set is just that, stickers that you can stick onto pages of the book, or probably other places as well. Unlike the sticker books I had as a kid, these claim to be reusable.
• And finally, The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. This is not, however, the book, but Baum's scenario for a dramatic version of the story. No, despite his success as an author and the failure of many of his plays, Baum never lost his love for the theater, and this was at one point going to be his fourth Oz play. However, it eventually morphed into his first movie instead. But before getting there, he wrote this scenario to interest potential backers. Only one original copy is known to exist. This is also the last (so far) small-press hand bound book from Michael O. Riley's Pamami Press, and thus a treasure in and of itself. I have all of Riley's other Pamami books, so I wasn't going to pass this one up!

Oz in Jeopardy!

It was an exciting spring for Jeopardy! this season, as the show celebrated the thirtieth season of its revival, with Alex Trebek as host, with a big Battle of the Decades. Three weeks of preliminaries with contestants from the '80s, '90s, and 2000s got the field narrowed down to fifteen, and then the fun really began! Each of the quarterfinal matches pitted contestants from each of the three decades, and the first one (as shown on the May 5 episode) had Roger Craig, the all-time leading scorer in a single game, from season 27 and representing the 2000s; Robin Carroll, one of the earliest great women to play Jeopardy! and first to win the Tournament of Champions, from season 16 representing the '90s; and Leszek Pawlowicz, a great player and another Tournament of Champions winner from season 8, representing the '80s. In the Double Jeopardy! round, one of the categories was An Odd Cast of Characters, in which players had to identify the movie based on a list of characters. Under $800, the players found this clue (and once again, I must apologize for the technical glitch that prevents me from showing you a screen grab this time):

2013: FINLEY, EVANORA,
GLINDA

Leszek rang in first, and responded, "What is Oz the Magnificent?" That was wrong, of course. Roger then rang in, and said, "What is Oz the Powerful?" That, too, was wrong. Robin probably very wisely didn't try, so this clue is officially a triple stumper. Alex then told hen that the correct response should have been, "What is Oz the Great and Powerful?" This is, I believe, the first time that movie has appeared on Jeopardy!. Ironically, both of the players who rang in went on in the tournament, even though they missed this clue. Roger went on to win the game, while Keszek would advance to the semifinals as a wild car player. Roger even went on to the final, where he was thoroughly trounced by the two single greatest players in Jeopardy! history, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings.

The Latest Oz Reading

Yup, more to tell you about!

• This weekend's short story, another from Oz Reimagined, is "Dorothy Dreams" by Simon R. Green. After the elaborate world-building and taut storylines of the previous books in this collection, this slight little number came as a disappointment, as it's little more than an aged Dorothy finding herself back in Oz, and that Oz isn't really Oz in the first place. Yes, it's Oz as metaphor. I won't tell you much more, so as not to spoil what little surprise there is, but it just rang hollow for me. It also totally ignores every Oz book except The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. There is a nice little nod to other children's literature classics, however.
• The Land of Oz (not to be confused with the second Oz book) is a tie-in book to Oz the Great and Powerful, designed for beginning readers. It's a pretty simple retelling of the story of the movie, told in short words in large type. It's not terribly expensive, and a nice way to get some screen grabs in color, but for the most part unremarkable.
• Finally, the book that's gotten so many Oz fans riled up, Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story by Evan I. Schwartz. I must admit, I was not expecting a lot from this book, which is probably a good thing, since I found myself enjoying it — but probably not for the reasons Schwartz would want me to. It kept reminding me of Katharine M. Roger's L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz, in that Schwartz also did a lot of research into what else was going on around Baum during his life, and not just the personal highlights. And like Rogers, he tries to shoehorn a lot of those events into the creation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It rarely works well. Like a terrier with a rat, once Schwartz latches on to an idea of how history influenced Oz, he never lets it go. He's not able to back many ideas up, however, and creates scenarios when it suits his narrative. His ultimate goal is to show how his life influenced the writing of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which means anything else after that was not important. He even admits in the endnotes that he moved a few events from later in his life up to tie into his thesis. And how could he so easily misspell the name of John R. Neill? He also manages to nail the anti-Native American editorials Baum wrote in South Dakota into the wood a few too many times, bringing them up over and over again in a way that I very much doubt Baum or his family ever thought of. And he attributes a lot of bits from The Movie to Baum, even though it was made twenty years after Baum died. (The story of Maud and the Bismarks becoming Aunt Em's crullers is just ridiculous.) The one intriguingly new bit of information I got from this book was Maud's background and her time at Cornell, but to be honest, with the amount of speculation that Schwartz takes part in here, that must be taken with a grain of salt as well.

Mila Kunis Goes to Oz!

It's been a year and a day since Oz the Great and Powerful opened, and I'm ashamed to say that I still haven't written a review! (To be honest, I think that's due in part to my continued conflict as to what I actually think of it!) But as I was thinking about this, I also remembered the first time Mila Kunis went to Oz, in this dream sequence from That '70s Show:

Yes, that's Mila playing Dorothy. What I especially love is that the costumes are very clearly based on the original W. W. Denslow illustrations. I'm sure they did that for legal reasons, so that they wouldn't get into hot water with Warner Bros., but that doesn't make it any less awesome. And that is television's original Nancy Drew, Pamela Sue Martin, playing "Miss Wizard".

The Latest Oz Reading

Inspired by Oz the Great and Powerful, I thought I'd dip into other stories that told about the Wizard's past in my rereadings. (For those who haven't figured it out, I thought I would throw some of my older books, that I've already read once, into my reading mix some time ago. It's been an interesting experiment. But I digress...) The first was How the Wizard Came to Oz by Donald Abbott. This is a pretty straightforward tale that doesn't give us much more than we've already learned from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the rest of Baum's writings about the Wizard. And I did notice one parallel with the recent Oz movie, in that Glinda takes a hand and has a big part in getting the Wizard to where he ended up, even knowing that he's a humbug. However, in this book, she's playing it coy and behind the scenes, as she doesn't want to be seen to be involved at all. I had some issues with the timing in this book, as we get a cameo by the Scarecrow, before he gets his face painted on, while the Wizard is still ruling in the Winkie Country, having overthrown the Wicked Witch of the West (temporarily, as it turns out). But the Scarecrow had only been made a few days earlier in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I'm also not wild about this book perpetuating the idea that the Wicked Witch of the East and West are sisters. In its favor, we see the construction and development of the Emerald City, the origin of the green glasses, and what the Wicked Witch of the East is up to, including her role in the origin of the Tin Woodman. Abbott is also the illustrator, and he very consciously copies W. W. Denslow's style. It's a light, frothy, fun read, but I don't think it should be taken terribly seriously by Oz scholars.

Abbott's next book, which I also reread, was How the Wizard Saved Oz, which also takes place before the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. (You can also still get this book new from Books of Wonder.) The Wizard gets a visit from the Queen of the Field Mice, who seeks his help to find her lost subjects. It turns out that they've all been kidnapped by Mombi to power a machine that will suck all the magic out of Oz. And, oh, yes, the previous king's brother, General Riskitt, wants to get rid of the Wizard so he can rule. Naturally, the general and Mombi team up. Again, it's pretty simple and straightforward, but this time Abbott isn't trying to inject a whole lot of Oz backstory into his tale, which makes for a tighter, better plotted story. And we get to see Abbott's illustration of Mombi (and, in a cameo, Professor Wogglebug), giving a taste of how Denslow might have illustrated The Marvelous Land of Oz. But as I was reading it, I couldn't help thinking, "Wait, what about Ozma?" Fortunately, her disappearance is finally addressed at the end, but it doesn't jibe very well with previously established Oz history. I think Abbott was trying to keep the Wizard out of her story and make him appear to be much more heroic than he really was.

Finally, I reread Oz and the Three Witches by Hugh Pendexter III (also available in the anthology Oz-Story No. 6). This is little more than a novella, and one of the first Oz books I ever bought outside of the Famous Forty and Related Books, way back in the mid-'70s. It was fun revisiting it, but it's also a great story in and of itself. The day after the end of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, the Wizard and Ozma are having breakfast when Glinda comes to call. Glinda is concerned when she hears that the Wizard is staying in Oz, considering the role he had in Ozma's disappearance. So Oscar Diggs tells the story of his arrival and first few weeks in Oz, and how he dealt with the Wicked Witches of the East and West, and Mombi as well. It's a gripping, exciting tale that very neatly ties up all we learned about the Wizard's early history in Oz from the Famous Forty, and yet shows us the Wizard to be the brave, clever but all too human man that we know him to be. I can't recommend this story enough, and I can't believe that I've waited this long before rereading it again.

The Latest Oz Reading

Yup, the reading continues! Here are the rest of the Oz comics that came in the latest order:

• The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West #9 (for which Big Dog Ink does not appear to have a link to the regular issue, just the con exclusive). Yay, Legend debut of Scraps! Everyone's getting serious about the search for Ozma now, but Jack and the Tin Man have a few issues to work out first. Oh, yeah, and the Wheelers have come after the Scarecrow. Still good stuff, this!
• The Emerald City of Oz #1 (which Marvel doesn't seem to have any information about at all on their website). I knew there would have to be some changes in this one, as Eric, Skottie, and Jean-François only have five issues to tell this story. And sure enough (spoilers ahead, just in case you don't already know the story), the opening chapters about the Nomes are mostly compressed into the front part, from Roquat getting mad (again!) to Guph going off to talk to the Whimsies. The we cut to Kansas, and we see Dorothy get the bad news about the farm, her transportation to Oz (and unlike in the original novel, this time we see her take Eureka as well), bring Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in, and the latter two deciding to accept the fate that's been handed to them. The book wraps up with Guph convincing the Whimsies to help the Nomes conquer Oz. As I suspected, the storytelling feels a little rushed, but so far everything is there, at least. I think the only new thing Skottie Young adds to this book is the Whimsies, who look great. The cross-section showing their true heads inside the pasteboard false ones is a nice touch. And yes, yet again everyone does a bang-up job.
• Not Oz, strictly speaking, but certainly of interest to many Oz fans is Age of Bronze #33. The saga of Troilus and Cressida continues, as Diomedes tries to woo Cressida, while Troilus waits for her every night by the gates of Troy. Something tells me this is not going to end well! Also announced in this issue is the forthcoming publication of the next collection, part 2 of the Betrayal storyline.

Speaking of Eric Shanower, I picked up two of the hardback collections of the Marvel comics a few months ago, and the third at the Winkie Convention, where I also got them all signed (with bonus illustrations!) by Eric. So now I have Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and The Road to Oz, and I'm up to date. I hope Skottie Young is at Emerald City Comic Con again next year so I can get them signed by him as well. Anyway, each of these collections includes an informative introduction by Eric, a cover gallery, and in many cases some of Skottie's development sketches. Two more items before I wrap up:

• The Program Book to this year's Winkie Convention. This is always a treat, and they just seem to get bigger and better every year. This year's book highlights The Patchwork Girl of Oz, which turns one hundred this year, and Merry Go Round in Oz, which is still a sprightly fifty years. I have no idea if any copies are still available, but if they are, I bet David Maxine could be persuaded to part with one for a donation to the convention. If you want to get your hands on next year's edition, here's the information on next year's convention. It's never too late to start planning! (Note to the convention organizers: How about supporting memberships, for those who can't actually be there but want to be a part of the fun anyway? The big incentive for those people would be the program book, and possibly a few other little goodies.)
• Oz the Great and Powerful: The Movie Storybook. Yeesh, and I thought the Junior Novelization was slight. Still, for the audience they're aiming at, this isn't bad. The best part about the storybook is the large colorful pictures, taken right from the movie. There is a definite lack of conversation, however, with major dialogue covered by a few sentences instead. Still, they are writing for a younger audience that they may think can't handle a lot of talking.

Next up are some classic rereadings, inspired by Oz the Great and Powerful.

The Latest Oz Reading — Now with Comics!

I've been very busy in my real life of late (new, albeit temporary, job taking up a lot of time, not that I'm complaining at all!), and so my pile of Oz reading has piled up a bit. I should be doing something else right now, but I've decided that this is what I'm going to do for the next few minutes! Here we go:

• I've read three more stories out of Shadows of the Emerald City, and as much as I'm enjoying the book, it only reinforces my opinion that this book is not meant for many Oz fans who want an Oz that's safe for children! First was "The Utility of Love" by David Steffan. This story features a totally alternative origin for the Tin Woodman, who is now and android sent out by the wizard to kill witches. He slowly learns about what it means to be human, however, from Dorothy, and eventually has a reckoning with his maker.
• "The China People of Oz" by T. L. Barrett is the first book in this collection that takes place exclusively in our world, and may be the most accessible to fans of more traditional Oz stories. A little girl who is a big fan of the Oz books and dying of cancer gets her wish to visit Kansas. Her parents are skeptical, but it turns out there are Oz attractions in Wamego, Liberal, and other parts of the state, which she is excited to see. However, it's in a little antique store off a back road in the middle of nowhere that she finds a family of people made of china. Could it be that these were taken from the China Country in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? She's bound and determined to try to get them home if they are! I especially liked that most of the point of view in this story was from the father, and that it touches on so many real Oz sites in Kansas.
• The third (and for now final) story I read from the collection was "Dorothy of Kansas" by J. W. Schnarr. Oz and its citizens are dying, and only the rusted out Tin Woodman and the not-all-there head of the Scarecrow even remember it. So they head out to Kansas to see if they can find Dorothy and get help, only to find that our world is in the same danger, and Dorothy can't even help herself very well. I twigged onto what was happening in this story pretty quickly, but it was still disturbing. So why does the odd timing of this one disturb me so much? (This one clearly takes place during the Cold War, yet the Dorothy of the books would have been long dead, and even Judy Garland's Dorothy might not have been this one. Ah, it's all make believe anyway, isn't it?)
• Next up: Last month's comics order! (Good thing, as this month's came today. Just another reason for me to do this reading catch-up now!) First, Fables #126. With Bufkin's story complete at last, there was no Oz content in this one. So, moving on...
• Marvel's The Road to Oz #5. As you can probably guess by now, I'm a big fan of these books. Eric and Skottie are still hitting them out of the park. This issue covers Dorothy's arrival at the Tin Woodman's new palace (there's even an homage to the famous picture of Neill's Dorothy seeing the Denslow-inspired statue of herself) to the Shaggy Man accepting Ozma's offer to live in the Emerald City. Hmm, so that just means the party left to go in the final issue (which I now have, and may just go off and read once this entry is done).
• The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles: Prelude to Evil #3. Sarah's adventures in Wonderland continue, but by the end she's chosen her own path and finds her way through several other worlds. If this is confusing to you, don't worry; I don't quite get it, either. That's been the problem with these Oz/Wonderland Chronicles series: They not only come out months apart, so it's hard to follow, they also seem to have had several series going at once, which didn't help. However, if I've figured everything out, everything is pretty well tied-up at the moment. But they also promise Sarah's return in Book 3, so I guess the stor will continue some time. Maybe I need to go back and reread these books in the proper order.
• The last comic (this month) is The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West #4 (which Big Dog only seems to have for sale as a limited edition exclusive). This issue focuses mainly on Jinjur. We see a little bit about what she's been doing while ruling the Emerald City, a flashback to her first encounter with the Wizard, and her pursuit of Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and their friends as they continue to head south towards Glinda.
• One book I read in the past few weeks was Fables, Volume 3: Storybook Love, which collects issues 11 through 18 of the comic, and features several shorter stories. There are a couple appearances by Bufkin, but otherwise no Oz. Next!
• The Denslow Picture Book Treasury by W. W. Denslow (who else could it be?) reprints nine of the classic picture books illustrated, and in many cases written, by W. W. Denslow at the turn of the twentieth century. It's a great collection, and the art looks fabulous. (I suspect some hardcore collectors who have the originals will find flaws in the reproduction, but I don't have the originals to compare them to, so I'm pleased enough.) The Scarecrow even makes a cameo appearance in The House that Jack Built. My only complaint is that the job is only half done, seeing as how Denslow produced eighteen of these. Therefore, I hope this one is successful enough that Dover puts out Volume 2, which would include Denslow's Scarecrow and the Tin Man.
• As you can imagine, a lot of tie-in merchandise has come out for the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, and I'm trying to get my hands on some of it as my funds allow. Since I know it will be available for only a short time, however, I pounced on the Spring 2013 issue of Disney twenty-three magazine. Not only does it have several articles about the movie, it also includes one about other Oz projects Disney has taken on, or tried to present, including Return to Oz and the aborted The Rainbow Road to Oz. But where was The Muppets' Wizard of Oz?
• I also read the Junior Novel. It was a pretty standard, straightforward novelization of the movie, with no real surprises or new revelations — except for Glinda's father's name (no surprise to fans of the books, it's Pastoria). My question is, however, why is there a junior novel, but not a standard novelization for adults? There's a lot that could be expanded upon in a longer book. Oh, well, we may never know.
• I was given a complimentary review copy of The Origin of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Michele Rubatino, but I'm afraid I can't be very complimentary back. This is a very slight little book, which purports to explain how the origins of Oz rest in the King James Bible. Sadly, Rubatino does not do a terribly good job of convincing me. There are an awful lot of very earnest assertions made with little or no citations or other claims to back them up, and the book doesn't even contain a bibliography. What's more, what works that are cited are suspect, or have been superseded. The first edition of The Annotated Wizard of Oz is mentioned a couple of times, but the author seems to be unaware of the superior and much deeper second edition, available since 2000. The only Baum autobiography mentioned is The Read Wizard of Oz by Rebecca Loncraine, but there are enough issues with that book that one or two others would have been excellent additional resources. And Rubatino seems only to be interested in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the maps of Oz as first published in Tik-Tok of Oz, but there is so much more to Oz, and Baum's other writings, that she totally ignores. She assigns a meaning to Noland (or, as she writes it, No Land) that has nothing to do with what happened in Queen Zixi of Ix, for instance. But my biggest gripe is that she continuously refers to a book called The Oz Omnibus and how "omnibus" has special meanings that Baum must have had in mind. The only trouble is, there are now several volumes called The Oz Omnibus (or variations on that theme), all of which collect several books, and none of which were published in Baum's lifetime. Therefore, Baum would never have any reason to associate the word "omnibus" with Oz or the Bible. This book, in short, totally fails to either delve into the breadth of Oz and Oz scholarship that precedes it, nor does it make any compelling arguments in its own right.
• Finally, I managed to get a copy of The Wizard of Oz: An Illustrated Companion to the Timeless Movie Classic by my friend John Fricke and Jonathan Shirshekan. Much of this I already knew from previous books, but this is a nice, well-designed package, and I learned a few new things and saw a few new items I hadn't seen before. Fans of The Movie will want to track this down. But the fact that it was available for so short a time makes me wonder if we're going to get something new next year for The Movie's seventy-fifth (!) anniversary.

This is not all the Oz reading I have set aside in the current Oz reading cycle, but it's a good chunk of it. I still have my classic reread (I'm working on that right now, and it's a book that may surprise you), something by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, and a couple of new stories, so there will be a few more entries here soon.

Okay, Super Bowl is done for me

It's not even halftime yet, but I don't need to watch any more of the game now, as I've already seen this:

Not a lot that appears to be new, it all looks pretty familiar from earlier promos. The big ol' cloud of flying monkeys at the end was pretty cool, though. (Imagine that in 3-D!)

Something to Look Forward to Sunday

Not interested in rooting for the '49ers or the Ravens on Sunday? Well, you may want to watch the big game anyway! It looks like there's going to be a spot for Oz the Great and Powerful! There's even a preview for the spot right here!