Off the Wish List and Into the Archive: The Visitors from Oz (Well, One Iteration)

The Visitors from Oz Hardcover by L. Frank Baum (Author), Eric Shanower (Illustrator) [2005, Hungry Tiger Press]

"This brand-new edition of THE VISITORS FROM OZ includes all 27 episodes of Baum's 1904 "Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz" short stories plus the complete, uncensored text of Baum's 1905 The Wogglebug Book [contained in Chapter 27, ‘The Unique Adventures of the Woggle-Bug]. 

These stories were written more than a hundred years ago, and they reflect the society of their time [i.e., ethnic stereotyping]. This beautiful hardcover volume contains an additional twenty pages of material including Baum's original 1904 "publicity" articles, an informative Afterword by David Maxine, and much more! The 1961 VISITORS FROM OZ picture book by Dick Martin contained heavily rewritten versions of only half of Baum's 1904 originals! 

[The Visitors from Oz, by L. Frank Baum, Pictured by Dick Martin. The first real sequel to Oz I ever saw, and one of the most popular books at McQueeney. “The Visitors from Oz is a 1960 Oz book, containing material originally written by L. Frank Baum and adapted by Jean Kellogg. It was illustrated by Dick Martin, published by Reilly & Lee. Kellogg took 11 of the 26 stories from the newspaper comic strip Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz and recast them into a new form. She also added some material of her own.” – Wikipedia.] 

The stories were next collected in the 1986 volume THE THIRD BOOK OF OZ, but that volume contained a heavily edited version of THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK and altered versions of some of the Visitors stories. This new edition is the absolute FIRST to include ALL of Baum's original unexpurgated text -- and the first ever to be presented in traditional Oz book format! This is the first edition, too, that includes ALL of Eric Shanower's illustrations for these stories! The two previous editions of THE THIRD BOOK OF OZ each contained drawings not included in the other. And Eric Shanower has drawn a number of NEW illustrations just for this definitive edition! – Amazon.

Not to be confused with the unsatisfactory novel Visitors from Oz: The Wild Adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman [1998] by Martin Gardner.

And as of 2009 there is yet another version, Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz: The Complete Comic Strip Saga 1904 -1905, by L. Frank Baum and Others. [Fantagraphics Sunday Press Books, $75]. “At the dawn of the 20th century, L. Frank Baum created a world of wonders that was to hold a permanent place in the culture of America: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Then in 1904, to promote his second book, Baum, along with master cartoonist Walt McDougall, brought his famed characters to Earth in a new medium, the comic strip. Queer Visitors from Marvelous Land of Oz had arrived. At this same time, Oz illustrator W.W. Denslow, offered his own Sunday feature, Scarecrow and the Tinman. Now both of these rare cartoon features are collected for the first time, magnificently restored and presented in full broadsheet size. Join these timeless characters and explore the culture that was America over 100 years ago. You surely won't be in Kansas (or anyplace like it) anymore! Full color illustrations throughout.” – Amazon. Dimensions: 21.5 x 1.4 x 17.3 inches. “The size is life size of the newspapers of their day; now our comics are a little three panel strip, these pages are full size for each story.” – Lee E. Blasingame. Here is the comparison: 

Easy to read and examine the details, I imagine, but probably a witch to shelve.

“Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz is a newspaper comic strip written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Walt McDougall, a political cartoonist for the Philadelphia North American. Queer Visitors appeared in the North American, the Chicago Record-Herald and other newspapers from 28 August 1904 to 26 February 1905. The series chronicles the misadventures of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Woggle-Bug, Jack Pumpkinhead, and the Sawhorse, as the Gump flies them to various cities in the United States. The comic strip in turn produced its own derivation, The Woggle-Bug Book (1905). Queer Visitors was formatted as a series of prose stories surrounded by large illustrations and is therefore not a comic strip in the modern sense. The project was designed to promote the 1904 novel The Marvelous Land of Oz.” – Wikipedia.

In contrast to the illustrations of John R. Neill and Dick Martin, but like the Walt McDougall 'cartoons', the Woggle-bug is shown with all six limbs.