My Latest Oz Acquisitions

I have been reading and/or acquiring a lot of new (and old) Oz things lately, so now that I have a little free time, I figured I may as well start talking about them. Most of them are books, so I'll give short reviews and/or reactions, but I thought I'd start with all the playing cards. Yes, you heard me, playing cards. For some reason, three new sets of Oz playing cards are out this year, and I have two of them. (The third one is part of a subscription service, and decided the cost to both become a member and then buy the cards was just too steep.) So, let's jump in:

• The Shadow of Oz Tarot Deck. Okay, not playing cards, but a reissue of a set Illusive Comics and Games did many years ago. This is a huge improvement! Bigger, stiffer cards, a beautiful new silver-accented back, and a very nice box to keep them all in. And all the cards are represented by Oz characters. Nice!
• Adventures in Oz Collector's Poker Deck. Double Critical put these out before their current Kickstarter project, the Adventures in Oz 5e roleplaying campaign books (yes, I backed it), and these are gorgeous! A lovely metallic green design on the back, the Jokers are flying monkeys, and the face cards are all familiar Oz characters. The Kings are Dorothy and her friends, the Queens are the witches, and the Jacks are supporting characters. Naturally, one of those is Jack Pumpkinhead! But I think these guys made two mistakes. As cool as the monkeys are, wouldn't Mr. Joker the china clown be more appropriate? However, he's not a well-known and recognizable character, so I can see why they wouldn't use him. But there's no excuse for not having the Tin Woodman be the King of Hearts! But for some reason, he's the King of Diamonds, and the Scarecrow is the King of Hearts. Oh, well. (If I were to actually use these for a game of some sort, I would have house rules that the Kings of Hearts and Diamonds swap.)
• Fig 23's Animated Flip Deck. Another successful Kickstarter campaign, with a very similar model to the Double Critical deck. These guys, however, use W. W. Denslow's original art from The Wonderful Wiard of Oz. Again, one of the Jokers is the Flying Monkeys, the Jacks are supporting characters, the Queens are the Witches (but the Wicked Witch of the East is replaced by, appropriately, the Queen of the Field Mice), and the Kings are Dorothy and her friends. And they got it wrong again! Here, the Tin Woodman is the King of Clubs, and the Lion is King of Hearts! Again, were I to play with this deck, house rule of swapped Kings! This deck has a bonus in that, if you line them up in the right order and rifle through them, you get a little animation of the house flying through the cyclone.

The famed Oz illustrator and researcher, Dick Martin, was also a playing card aficionado and collector. Somehow, I suspect he'd approve of this trend. But he might also design his own deck with the Tin Woodman representing the proper suit.

My Oz collection superlatives: Addendum

A while ago, I blogged about the results of my collection's inventory, including the biggest, smallest, longest, and shortest books I own. Scott Cummings, the new editor of The Baum Bugle, wanted to know what the heaviest book I own is. Don't laugh, there's an actual good research reason he asked. He wanted to know if the recent collection of Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz is the heaviest Oz book ever published. I pulled it down and some other likely candidates, and took them to the kitchen to use the scales there. Sure enough, based on what I own, it is. It weighs in at four pounds, twelve and a half ounces.

It is not, however, the heaviest book in my collection. Strictly speaking, although it has Oz content, Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art and Anecdote by my friend John Fricke is not an Oz book. But it was too heavy to register on my kitchen scale, which maxes out at five pounds. So I got a less precise measure using my bathroom scale, and I had to hold it and subtract my own weight. It's about five and a half pounds, but I suspect the ink John added to the book when he added the long inscription on the front free endpaper added a few ounces.

HOW many Oz books???

I've had enough down time the past few weeks that I've finally gotten around to opening some of my Oz boxes for the first time since we moved here, and started sorting things out and figuring out where to put them. My major focus has been on the books, and while I was at it, I updated and revised my inventory.

I now have over 1,000 — yes, that's one thousand — Oz and Oz-related books. They range from Abducted to Oz to The Zen of Oz, from 2 1/2 inches tall (the miniature version of The Musical Fantasies of L. Frank Baum) to 22 inches tall (a Wizard of Oz poster coloring book), from two pages (Wizard of Oz Tattoos) to 760 (a compilation of all fifteen Baum Oz books, including The Little Wizard Stories of Oz, in one volume). The oldest books I believe I own are the bound editions of St. Nicholas magazine in which Queen Zixi of Ix were first published, and the most recent is one I just got from the publisher yesterday that I will review later. It's official publication date isn't for two more weeks! Most are in English, but I also have books in French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Spanish, and Welsh. I also have books originally published in French, Japanese, Russian, and Korean that have been translated into English. Most have been professionally published in some form, either for the general public or for a smaller niche audience, but some of my books have been privately printed, and some are (officially, at least) unpublished. Quite a few have been autographed, some have been given to me, and some I have paid more for than I probably should have. They are fiction, non-fiction, metafictional, or something in between, and some are just pictures. Three of the books I put in my inventory have now gone missing or otherwise unaccounted for (one just this week, after dealing with the inventory, so it couldn't have gone far). And on the shelves alone, I have out eighty-nine different editions of The Wizard of Oz.

I am truly surprised and impressed with my collection. Not bad for thirty-five years worth of work!

Pictures soon, I hope.