Tin Man comic preview

Remember a while ago when I mentioned the Tin Man preview comic that someone picked up for me at Comic-Con International? Well, the nice folks at the Sci Fi Channel have sent me electronic versions of the first six pages. So I put them up on a dedicated web page right here. Go ahead, click and take a look. (I want to warn you, however, that the images are huge, so they may take a while to load, especially if you have a dial-up connection.)

Michael-Sensei on Oz

Oz in Japan. Michael-Sensei is a Canadian teaching English in Japan, and here he covers a couple of Oz adaptations. The book he has scans of at the bottom is one that he just sent to Eric and I, along with a translation, to our delight!

Hmmmm. I wonder if Michael-Sensei could find the anime adaptation of L. Frank Baum's Life and Adventures of Santa Claus? It was a series called Shounen Santa no Daibôken ("Young Santa's Adventures") in 1994. I've been hunting for it, in Japanese OR English, without success for many years.

Josh Olson and Todd McFarlane on Oz

Everyone is talking about Todd McFarlane's take on Oz.

Some of them are definitely getting basic facts wrong, as well. *sigh*

Today's Oz comic

It's fanfic week at Over the Hedge (yes, the strip they made into a movie), and... Oh, just go take a look already. As usual, this should be up for thirty days or so, so snag it now!

Happy birthday, Ozma!

Once again, our fair queen is celebrating her birthday today. Let's all raise a glass of lacasa and toast her. I'd wish her many more, but I know she's going to anyway. Laura and I are going to celebrate with a little cake and ice cream this evening.

Small Wizard of Oz Sighting

August 13th 2007, The Colbert Report. Threat Down. Number Two.

"Last week a marmoset was found hiding underneath a man's hat on a flight from Florida to New York. This comes as no surprise, folks, it's well documented that monkeys have an affinity for men in hats (picture of Curious George) and for flying (this image)."

Tintinabulations

A couple of items of note for Tin fans. First, thanks to Bully (and his human John), I now have several copies of the Tin Man mini-comic from the San Diego Comic Con. It's small and short, and it's just a prelude to the mini-series (coming in December to the Sci-Fi Channel!), but it's nice to have. If nothing else, it's another nice item to add to my ever-growing Oz comic book collection. It was published by Virgin Comics, so maybe we'll see a bigger, more extensive comic book adaptation.

The other bit of news is this video that Laura discovered. I gather it's part of this year's Nicktoons Animation Festival. Here it is, starring our own galvinized friend:

Today's Oz comic

Actually, it's for the last couple of days, and it's only a name check for Toto, but check out Red and Rover from yesterday and today. If Toto pops up again this week, I'll post those, too. (Remember, like most online comics, these will probably only be online for thirty days.)

My latest Oz readings

Just got through the latest wave of Oz books (that have been sitting in my to-read pile for over a year...), plus a couple of recent acquisitions from the comic shop. So here's what I've now read:

Hollywood's Child: Dancing Through Oz by Caren Marsh-Doll is a quick, breezy read through the life of this fascinating woman. She grew up in Hollywood in the '20s, and so entered the movie business at a pretty young age. She recounts her adventures working on all kinds of pictures, as well as her later careers on Broadway, as a dance teacher, and as a wife, mother, grandmother, and now great-grandmother. She also survived one of the worst airplane crashes ever in California! But I wanted to read this book for her encounters with Judy Garland, including being Judy's stand-in for The Wizard of Oz. Caren doesn't actually appear in the finished film, but because she was similiar in build and color to Judy Garland, she got to stand in while the technical jiggery-pokery was going on around her and Judy was with her tutor, then step out of the way so Judy could do the actual take. Because of that connection, Caren Marsh-Doll has found a new career on the Oz Festival circuit!

Forever in Oz by Melody Grandy, who really needs to write more Oz books! This book is a follow-up to some of the events of The Tin Woodman of Oz, as the Tin Woodman, the Tin Soldier, Chopfyt, and the Tin Woodman's former head (!) all get together to figure out who is who and who gets what. Then there's the question of Nimmie Amee's daughter, Forever. Who's really her father? This is all worked out in a satisfactorily Ozzy way, thanks in part to Zim Greenleaf, the Wizard of the East and Melody Grandy's greatest creation. To be sure, at the end, the status quo will never be the same, which will probably preclude this book from ever being considered part of the main Oz canon (not that that's easy to figure out these days, anyway). Perhaps that's one reason this book was privately printed. Well, if you want a copy, you can e-mail the publisher at this address.

Dorothy Meets Alice, or The Wizard of Wonderland, a short play script about Alice and Dorothy crossing paths in the Tulgey Wood, where Oz and Wonderland meet, thanks to the dream of Judson, who still has to write a book report by morning. The Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion meet up with the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and the Dormouse, while the Queen of Hearts and the Wicked Witch of the West discover a connection. It's all fun, and the characters are well handled. I gather that there's also a musical version, so I'll have to get that sometime, too, and see how it translates.

Speaking of Dorothy meeting Alice, issue #2 of The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles came the other day. This has been a fun comic book series that I wish came out more often. These guys know their Oz, as there are references to many of Baum's books beyond The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and many favorite characters from later in the series show up — although I think Tik-Tok looks too much like his appearance in Return to Oz. In this issue, now that Dorothy's back, she's the highest ranking member of the court available, and so must take charge of the war effort against the nomes. But even with advice from Alice, she's not sure if she can handle things. There's also an interesting back-up story featuring Cap'n Bill dealing with mermaids in a Chicago fountain. I suspect this is setting something up.

Finally, a quick shout-out for another comic, Abigail & Rox in the Land of Enchantment. Neither Laura nor I were quite sure why we ordered it, until I read it. It very much reads like an Alice in Wonderland pastiche, with a few shades of (among other stories) Lions, Tigers, and Bears and Abadazad. It's a lot of fun, and there are previews in the back of Oz characters appearing in the next issue in the art in the back. So if you're interested, go check to see if your local comic shop has it, or can order it for you.