Ozma of Oz (Baum)

Ozma of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (1907)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I've read The Wizard of Oz as an ebook in the past few years. I read The Land of Oz as a paperback many, many years ago, and then again more recently as a rather interesting set of graphic novels. Next up in the series is Ozma of Oz. The fact that I was looking for short reads to pad out the year is not exactly coincidental.

Many years ago, I saw the movie Return to Oz when it was first released (at Radio City Music Hall, no less). I recognized a lot of the characters from "Land", except that it had Dorothy, and not Tip. Also, it had different villains, namely the Nome King (an underground rock creature of sorts, not a gnome) and the Wheelers (creatures with wheels for hands and feet, and long arms, too.)

This book starts with Dorothy and Uncle Ben on the boat going to Australia. Dorothy gets washed overboard in a storm and clings to a chicken coop for safety. In the morning, she finds a hen has also survived. The hen's name is Bill, and Dorothy calls her "Billina" instead. She discovers this because the hen is able to talk because they are close a a fairy land. Except that Oz doesn't border any oceans. Instead they wash up on the land of Ev, where their adventure begins.

Ozma and the rest of the gang from Land of Oz (except Pumpkinhead) show up in the second part of the book. They rescue Dorothy, and then take her with them to rescue the royal family of Ev from the Nome King, who has turned them into knickknacks in his palace. The King gives every member of the party (including each soldier) a chance to rescue the royal family -- and each other. If they fail to find anyone, then the searcher will also be turned into a knickknack in the palace.

If I remember the movie, Dorothy discovered the secret to finding the rest of the party. Here, it's Billina who is the King's undoing.

Land of Oz - Manga (Baum)

Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by David Hutchison (2009)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

The first time I read the story of The Land of Oz was the Marvel Treasury of Oz treasury edition comic. It followed the joint DC/Marvel edition of The Wizard of Oz, which told the sotry of the movie, not the original novel.

At some point after that, I'm sure I read the book itself. I know we had a copy in the house. Oddly, despite having a copy of The Wizard of Oz on our bookcase, I never read it. Not until I bought my first Palm Pilot and it was one of the books included. (At the time, people made fun of me for reading on something that small.) And there was the Disney movie Return to Oz with Dorothy, instead of the main character Tip, which covered a lot of the same material and featured quite a few of the same characters.

This version of The Land of Oz is similar to, but inferior to my memory of, the Marvel edition. There's really nothing "manga" about it. The Scarecrow is drawn oddly, and the Tin Woodsman is definitely a manga-type image, but other than that, nothing.

Worse, even though the pages read from the back, the individual pages are read left to right, as usual. And then there are the "splash" pages. the ones that cross two pages in an actual printed book. In these cases, you swipe to go to the next page on the left to see an image that you know should be on the right. This was confusing. Of course, splash pages of this type would be confusing in ebook form regardless.

I'm not summarizing the story because I do that to remember things. There's nothing here I'm likely to forget.

There were 8 or 9 issues and I read them quickly over a few nights. I didn't look to see if Ozma of Oz was available as a comic. I'd probably prefer to read that as a novel first.