The Latest Oz Reading

Yes, it's true, I'm actually writing a blog post about something other than comics! Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and turned the world upside down, this was turning into a very weird and busy year for Laura and me as she got very sick, and had a couple of stints in the hospital. (You can read the entire saga, starting from the very beginning), on her personal blog.) I've pretty much spent most of the year playing nursemaid to her. So a lot of Ozzing has gone by the wayside. But now I'm getting back into position to read more short stories and watch more episodes of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz and tell you all about it. But tonight, I'm going to start telling you about some of the Oz and Oz-adjacent things I've been reading lately. Here we go!

• Bibliographia Oziana, revised and expanded 2002 edition. This is the third edition of this book, and it is an essential tool for anyone collecting Oz books, particularly the earliest editions. It has a lot of good, updated information on the publishing history and textual points for all of the Famous Forty Oz books and quite a few FF-adjacent titles as well. But one thing that kept striking me was how much more has already come out about much of this in the past eighteen years. It may be time for an update already!
• If so, maybe the format could be altered to be more like the next book I read, Bibiliographia Baumiana by W. Neal Thompson. This is one of those books that's been in the works for decades, but it's finally out, and it is a major accomplishment. It looks at everything else Baum wrote outside of the Oz series that was published in book form, and gives it the same treatment as Bib Oz, but Thompson does it all one better. The entries are clearer and easier to read, while at the same time more comprehensive and thorough. This was a real eye-opener, and gave me some interesting highlights into Baum's career. (One example: It looks like Baum may have printed more than the ninety-nine copies of By the Candelabra's Glare that the book says he printed.) I can't help but think that if Thompson took the same approach as this book to Bibliographia Oziana, you'd really have a useful pair of books.

Okay, that's all for now. But there will be more very soon, I think I Can safely say.

It's Time to Go Oz Shopping!

Due to a variety of circumstances, the International Wizard of Oz Club has to shut down its online store. So you have until Friday to get stuff from them. Here's the link.

A small family of Oz awards

We managed to finally get all of our Oz awards up on the wall this morning. So, to let you know what they are, at the top is the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award that I'm still not quite sure I won this year, but it was presented to me at the Winkie Convention. Below that, on the left, is the 1997 Winkie Award. The one on the right is Laura's Winkie Award, which she won last year. Now, unless they revive the Ozmopolitan or Munchkin Conventions AND I attend them and win one of those awards, or Laura wins the L. Frank Baum award, that should be it. Since I don't think any of those scenarios are terribly likely (and certainly not in the next decade or so), I think that's going to be it for our family Oz awards.

Oz reading update

I'm getting back into a cycle of Oz reading here again very soon, so I thought I'd peview that with two recent-ish acquisitions.

• First up, we discovered a gap in the comics, so I went ahead and ordered Land of Oz: The Manga #4 straight from the publishers. This issue includes Mr. H. M. Wogglebug, T. E., entering the scene, and the field mice making their entrance (and exit), with the inevitable results. Good stuff here, and I really hope David Hutchison and Antarctic Press go ahead with Ozma of Oz: The Manga, even if it would be competing with Marvel's adaptations. I think there's room for more than one interpretation, and I would buy them both.
  
• The other recent read is the latest issue of The Baum Bugle, the journal of the International Wizard of Oz Club, which arrived yesterday and I finished well before bedtime. This is the Bugle's once-a-decade-on-its-anniversary issue devoted to the famous MGM movie version, and after seventy years they still managed to find new material. (Can I just say, thank goodness that Ogden Nash's version wasn't the version of the script they made?) I'll have details of this on my website's news page soon.
  

The Challenge: Three Months On

Back at the very start of this year, I issued the readers of this blog who are also members of the International Wizard of Oz Club a challenge. It read, in part:

I hope that those of you who are reading this and are Club members will ask what needs to be done and can find a place to help out. Can you write? The Bugle and Oziana always need contributors, and right now the Bugle even needs assistant editors to help out with some sections. Can you draw? Oziana always needs illustrators, or you could contribute to the calendar. You could serve on a committee, help out at the conventions, help recruit new members at Oz events, host a local Oz party in your area, anything you can think of! The Club is only as strong as those who are working behind the scenes, so the more members can help out, the stronger the Club will be.

So now it's been three months. How's it going? Have you offered your help? What are you doing? Feel free to leave a comment here, or check out the thread I started about this on the Oz Club's message board.