Into the Archives: Well, That Was An Adventure

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain Hardcover – January 1, 1957 by Mark Twain (Author), Charles Neider (Editor)

1957. 676 pages.

Hollywood Anecdotes – August 12, 1988 by Paul F. Boller Jr. and Ronald L. Davis

Authentic and apocryphal anecdotes about the American movie industry and various aspects of American filmmaking. 460 pages.

Urban Legends: The Truth Behind All Those Deliciously Entertaining Myths That Are Absolutely, Positively, 100% Not True  – January 1, 1999 by Richard Roeper (Author)

Recounts dozens of stories that have become part of contemporary folklore even though they have no basis in fact, and reveals the truth behind each legend. 285 Pages.

The Grand Miracle: Daily Reflections for the Season of Advent

This full-color, 64-page booklet features the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald, and others, with daily reflections penned by modern influencers.

The Giant Garden of Oz Hardcover by Eric Shanower (Author) 178 pages.

As fans of L. Frank Baum's Oz books know, Dorothy not only returned to Oz but eventually brought her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em back to live there. Now they have a little farm miles from the Emerald City, but one night when Dorothy stops to visit the farm isn't little anymore -- overnight everything growing in the garden grows to immense size. With an also growing Henry and Em trapped in their home Dorothy has to find her way through the giant garden for help, but things get even worse when the unfriendly cause of this calamity appears. – Mark R. Hunter

A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts Paperback – April 14, 1990 by Robert Bolt (Author). 163 pages.

Consciences of Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII are poles apart in the religious conflict over the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn.

The Uses of Enchantment - The meaning and importance of fairy tales, by Bruno Bettelheim. 323 pages.

The great child psychologist [since disgraced] gives us a moving revelation of the enormous and irreplaceable value of fairy tales - how they educate, support and liberate the emotions of children.

Letters To Young Churches by J. B. Phillips 1960 with Introduction C.S Lewis. 225 pages.

A translation of the New Testament Epistles with introduction by C.S. Lewis. 

I got a couple of nice monetary gifts for Christmas, and I asked my brother John to squire me around town so I could put some of it to good use. He suggested we look up a new bookstore in Geronimo, a little town not far away, and I agreed. It is called Second Chance Books, and is in a sort of industrial-style strip mall. It was very basic; they sell books for $2 per pound, and there is an automatic checkout with a scale. The shelves and warehouse are very basic; in fact it is the closest place to Yesterday's Warehouse I've been to in years. No frills, and the selection seems to be made of the dross of library and bookstore closeouts, with the detritus of decades of once popular 'hottus shittus' publishing on shabby display. I find this very exciting; there is about one grain of gold to 999 grains of sand, and the hunt for that gold is what makes the search exciting. As you can see, I found a trove, as did John, and I left volumes behind that were marginal, but so cheap I was tempted. And there were shelves I was too tired to search. So for the first time in a while I have a nearby bookstore to whet my appetite, and have 'at least one interesting tomorrow to look forward to.' I got copies of two books I had sold before and several volumes connected to the Inklings, including Letters to Young Churches (the copy I found was in much better condition). I've wanted to get that Eric Shanower Oz book for years; finding it there was the surprise gem of the haul.

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. 

Graphic Novels, Mainly Oz

Items from the Wish List: Graphic Novels and Comics

Baking With Kafka

by Tom Gauld

Monster of Frankenstein Vol. 1

by Mike Ploog, John Buscema

Gahan Wilson 50 years of Playboy Cartoons

by Gahan Wilson

The Giant Garden of Oz

by Eric Shanower

Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland Deluxe Edition

by Eric Shanower, Gabriel Rodriguez

The Wizard of Id: Daily and Sunday Strips, 1973

by Brant Parker, Johnny Hart 

Sunday 'Comics' Part Two

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, Adapted by Eric Shanower and Drawn by Skottie Young A graphic novel adaptation from Marvel. Eric Shanower had long been writing Oz graphic novels of his own continuing stories; here he worked on adapting Baum’s original novels. This was more or less my introduction to the art of Skottie Young, which has sneakily grown on me. So much so, that I would like to see him do a version of “A Grave on Deacon’s Peak”. Together these two have done six of the fourteen Baum books; this one is by far the longest and fullest. Ranking: Essential. File Code: Graphic Novel. Adaptation. Softcover.

The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Adapted by Eric Shanower and Drawn by Skottie Young A graphic adaptation of the second book in Baum’s Oz series. I will have a lot more to say about “The Marvelous Land of Oz” when I get to the Scholastic edition. Right now, suffice it to say that this is a good visioning. It includes some “bridging” and expansions not included in the original book, but these are few and engaging, and not intrusive; Shanower sticks to the style and intent of Baum while dramatizing some events for the comic book pacing. Ranking: Essential. File Code: Graphic Novel. Adaptation. Softcover.

Ozma of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Adapted by Eric Shanower and Drawn by Skottie Young. Book 3 in the Marvel graphic adaptations of Baum’s books. I was never as fond of the rest of the Oz books after the first two, perhaps because I didn’t read them until I was 16 or 17, and out of the first flush of enthusiasm. Skottie Young does a good job, however, of reproducing, in his concept of Billina, that mad wall-eyed look that some chickens have. Ranking: Enthusiasm fading, fading, fading … File Code: Graphic Novel. Adaptation. Softcover.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Adapted by Eric Shanower and Drawn by Skottie Young. Dorothy and the Wizard are reunited and travel (in a roundabout way – they are swallowed by an earthquake and journey through several underground realms before Ozma fetches them) back to Oz. Episodic rather than one united tale with a goal, and introducing mainly forgettable characters. Still, it’s part of the run. Ranking: Fading, fading … File Code: Graphic Novel. Adaptation. Softcover.

Road to Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Adapted by Eric Shanower and Drawn by Skottie Young. Dorothy once more is lost and gathers an odd troop to travel through strange lands, winding back up in Oz. By this time the formula is growing a bit tedious, and the new characters are growing less and less memorable. One gets the feeling that Baum (and perhaps Shanower and Young) are beginning to feel the fatigue but must continue the money grab. Ranking: Fading … File Code: Graphic Novel. Adaptation. Softcover.

The Emerald City of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Adapted by Eric Shanower and Drawn by Skottie Young. Dorothy, Uncle Henry, and Aunt Em at last move permanently to Oz. Most of the story is a tour of strange corners in the fairyland, with a subplot of the Nome King planning to conquer all the kingdom. Baum intended at first for this to be the end of the stories, and with I can only imagine were dwindling returns, so did Marvel, producing no more in the series. Most annoyingly, this volume is a different size from all the others. Ranking: And gone. File Code: Graphic Novel. Adaptation. Softcover.