The Wizard of Balboa Park

The San Diego Civic Light Opera Association was founded in 1945. Its first show was Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in the Wegeforth Bowl at the San Diego Zoo.

Because of San Diego’s ideal weather, the organization staged its shows outside. It soon took on the name of the Starlight Opera.

On July 29, 1946, the San Diego Union and Daily Bee said: “If the new Starlight Opera company becomes any more popular it will have to move to Ford Bowl.” That was the amphitheater in Balboa Park built for a 1935 expo.

Indeed, the Starlight Opera Company was soon using that larger space. Around 1950 the amphitheater became known as the Starlight Bowl. (An amphitheater in Burbank was using the same name at that time, confusing matters.)

The Light Opera Association also widened its repertoire to include new, popular shows and operated under the same of Starlight Musical Theatre.

Because the amphitheater was right under the main flight path to Lindbergh Field, performers learned to freeze when a loud plane passed overhead. Starlight Musical Theatre’s old website called this “One of the most artistic innovations of productions at the Starlight Bowl.”

In 1962 the Starlight company planned a summer season of The Music Man, Can-Can, The Wizard of Oz, and Bye Bye Birdie.

About the third show the 7 Apr 1962 San Diego Evening Tribune explained:

“The Wizard of Oz,” was adapted originally for the stage by L. Frank Baum from his classic children’s story. It was first presented in 1903, starring the team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery. Their leading lady was Anna Laughlin, the mother of singer Lucy Monroe.

The version of “Wizard” which Starlight is using has been updated by Frank Gabrielson, and features the songs of Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, composed for the highly successful 1939 movie.

That adaptation had originally been commissioned by the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1942 and is therefore known as “the MUNY Version.” As the licensor says, it “features characters and events not seen in the MGM film”—and it also leaves out several characters and events.

The 1962 San Diego Evening Tribune article was headlined “Little Munchkins Needed for Starlight ‘Wizard of Oz’,” and its main news was:

Casting for Starlight’s production of “The Wizard of Oz” will be held for three days, instead of the usual two, due to the large number of children needed in the cast. . . .

The youngsters will be used for the Wizard of Oz’s “army,” composed of one private and 24 generals. They will also be used as munchkins—the little people enslaved by the Wicked Witch of the East and freed by Dorothy. . . .

Roles open for adults include that of the Scarecrow—which also requires dancing ability; the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. The leading role of Dorothy, calls for a teenage soprano with acting experience, age 18 at the maximum.

In 2010, after more than sixty straight years of productions, the San Diego Civic Light Opera Association went out of business. There’s now a Save Starlight campaign to fix up the abandoned amphitheater and stage new concerts and shows there.

TOMORROW: Crossing the streams.

Baum’s Contradictory Characters

In my Characters of Oz essay “A Good Man but a Bad Wizard?: The Shifting Moral Character of the Wizard of Oz,” I took the opportunity to talk about L. Frank Baum’s successful characterizations in general:

Baum built most of his best characters around contradictions. Ozma looks and plays like a young girl, but she is a dedicated monarch and, later books say, a powerful fairy. The Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girls are literally dummies made of cloth, straw, and cotton, yet they are among the most intelligent people in Oz. The Tin Woodman is metallic but warm-hearted. The Shaggy Man is a hobo proud of his ragged appearance. Jack Pumpkinhead is a tall man with the mind of a child. Tik-Tok the robot is utterly reliable and liable to run down at any moment. Even Dorothy is a paradox, a simple little girl who spends most of the first books in the series deposing one ruler after another like Napoleon sweeping through Europe.

Resolving those paradoxes, Baum came to understand, rendered the characters far less interesting. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz settled the contradiction inherent in the personality of the Cowardly Lion by dosing him with courage, leaving him as a stereotypically brave lion ruling the forest. That character was no longer as compelling, and he had no role in the next book. When Baum brought the Lion back in Ozma of Oz, the first thing the character says is to assure Dorothy and readers that he’s “As cowardly as ever.”

(That’s my original text. The printed page says, “Tik-Tok the robot is utterly unreliable,” shifting the contradictory fulcrum within the sentence by a couple of words. I’d never want to call Tik-Tok that when he could hear me—i.e., when he’s wound up. It’s not his fault that other people neglect to wind him.)

Of course, in the essay I then had to tackle why Baum resolved the interesting contradiction he originally built into the character of the humbug wizard by making him a real wizard. And does that make the Wizard uninteresting?

Art for “The Axman’s Arm”

At Skookworks, David Lee Ingersoll has just shared his illustrations from the 2006 issue of Oziana magazine, which I edited and produced for the International Wizard of Oz Club.

David created the art for a story I wrote called “The Axman’s Arm,” a horror tale exploring what happened to the Tin Woodman’s left arm after it was chopped off in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That arm wasn’t around for the assembly of the character of Chopfyt, introduced in The Tin Woodman of Oz—so where did it go?

I rarely tell horror stories, but the Oz books’ premise that people and animals can survive being sliced up leads inevitably to that mode.

For that issue of Oziana, David also illustrated Adrian Korpel’s poem “Rivals” with pictures of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion looking bitter and angry—and yet completely recognizable. I’d seen some of the pictures David drew for the Oz Squad project, so I knew he could do a great job with that challenge. I don’t view those poems as “canonical,” but they offered an interesting alternative view of favorite characters.

“It was gingham, with checks of white and blue”

Yesterday Bonhams sold a dress for $1,565,000. It was made for a Kansas farmgirl in the early 20th century.

Now that sum’s only about half of the price of the Cowardly Lion costume Bonhams sold last year, but it’s still high enough to place this outfit fourth on this list of most expensive Hollywood costumes.

Two other garments on that list are also dresses made for Dorothy Gale, one used for only a couple of weeks of filming before the director was replaced.

This dress had an excellent provenance, starting with labels inside that identify its wearer as “Judy Garland” rather than a stand-in. As for after it left the studio, “This blouse and pinafore were retained by Kent Warner, the costume collector employed by David Weisz Co. to help organize the 1970 MGM Auction who subsequently cherry-picked many of the best pieces for himself.” It was last sold at a Christie’s New York auction in 1981.

The Return of the Cowardly Lion

On 24 November, the Bonham’s auction house will offer a collection of Hollywood memorabilia that includes Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion costume from the 1939 MGM Wizard of Oz.

The auction house says:

For famed MGM costume designer Gilbert Adrian, the only option for creating a realistic lion costume in 1938 was to fashion it out of actual lion hides. He was challenged with locating several that visually matched each other so a few costumes could be made and used interchangeably throughout filming. Adrian soon discovered, however, that every available lion hide had very distinctive colors, hair patterns and scars, so he had no choice but to dress Lahr in a single costume for much of the filming.

An auction house expert told the Los Angeles Daily News states:

“According to various histories of the film, Lahr’s costume was drenched with sweat at the end of every day, and so (it) was removed and placed in drying bins overnight so it could be used again the next (day),” Williamson says.

She added that another lion costume survives which Lahr probably wore for publicity stills, and there was at least one for Lahr’s double or stand-in as well. But only this one matches the details in scenes throughout the movie.

Back in 2006, the Profiles in History company sold that other Cowardly Lion costume for over $800,000. In 2011 the owner of this costume also offered it through Profiles in History with an estimated price of $2 to $3 million. Evidently bids didn’t meet the reserve because it’s available once again, in the movie’s 75th-anniversary year.

Breakfast in Oz

Perhaps L. Frank Baum’s biggest strength (and occasional weakness) as a writer was in how he exhibited all of his characters’ different outlooks and habits—usually without judgment.

For example, here’s a moment from The Lost Princess of Oz, as Scraps the Patchwork Girl, who doesn’t have to sleep, explains what she’s found in the night, and other characters eat their morning meals:

“The Sawhorse and I made a journey in the dark, while you were all asleep, and we found over there a bigger city than Thi. . . . It isn’t far to the city. We can reach it in two hours after you’ve had your breakfasts.”

Trot went back and, finding the other girls now awake, told them what Scraps had said. So they hurriedly ate some fruit—there were plenty of plums and fijoas in this part of the orchard—and then they mounted the animals and set out upon the journey to the strange city. Hank the Mule had breakfasted on grass and the Lion had stolen away and found a breakfast to his liking; he never told what it was, but Dorothy hoped the little rabbits and the field mice had kept out of his way. She warned Toto not to chase birds and gave the dog some apple, with which he was quite content. The Woozy was as fond of fruit as of any other food, except honey, and the Sawhorse never ate at all.

It all sounds very pleasant, except for those little rabbits and field mice Dorothy is worried about. But nobody says nothing.

The Lion’s Panels and Mine

Back in November I shared this image of a medal-bearing lion, drawn by Denise Ortakales as a symbol of the New England conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators on 2-4 May 2014.

The full image has now appeared on the web, and I was right in seeing a link to the Cowardly Lion. Look at the wall behind the award-winning feline artist, and you’ll see a comics page depicting a fight between a lion and a vested Winged Monkey.

The full SCBWI New England Conference schedule is on the same page. I’m leading a workshop on “Building Narrative Momentum” and moderating panels on “Publishing Bravely” and “Hybrid Publishing.” (I think I’m also moderating “Publishing In and Out of New York” on Sunday.)

Creating Bravely with SCBWI New England in May

This proud lion adorns the announcement of SCBWI New England’s 2014 conference in Springfield, Massachusetts, on 2-4 May. A “Save the Date” postcard just went out to members in the region. Registration will open on 5 February.

That conference has the theme “Create Bravely: Make Your Mark,” hence the lion’s medal and the pencil and paint brush in his mane. I’m scheduled to make my mark there by leading one workshop and handling some other duties.

This fine feline was drawn by artist Denise Ortakales, who normally works in cut-paper sculptures. Check out her website for lots of lovely work.

Bert Lahr and That Certain Air

This is an illustration by Glen Orbik, who specializes in old-fashioned “pulp”-style covers for books and magazines. Orbik portrays MGM’s Cowardly Lion getting spiffed up to visit the Wizard, though I don’t remember his attendants showing so much cleavage. A giclée print of this image is available through the Wildsville Gallery.

In the MGM movie, this scene ends with the Cowardly Lion having his mane in ringlets with a ribbon at one side. (W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill also drew the Lion with a ribbon, at the top of his head, but of course he was always undeniably a real lion.) He happily sings about “The certain air of savoir faire” with his paw extended.

As Patrick Healy reported in the New York Times, playwright Douglas Carter Beane sees Bert Lahr’s portrayal of the Lion as arising from the burlesque tradition of “the nance,” a comically effeminate type of second banana. Indeed, Lahr was a burlesque comedian whose first big break came in 1925 when a scout sent Florenz Ziegfeld a telegram that said:

SAW THIS AFTERNOON THE FUNNIEST WHITE MAN I HAVE SEEN IN YEARS BERT LAHR THINK HE'D BE WONDERFUL FOR YOUR NEXT FOLLIES IF HE EVER COMES AROUND NEW YORK SEE HIM HE PLAYS A NANCE COP…

(That telegram was printed in Stage magazine ten years later.)

Given the MGM movie’s accumulated audience, Lahr’s Lion might be the most watched burlesque “nance” performance of all time.

“He wasn’t so much of a Wizard as he might have been.”

This is how Tip, the young hero of L. Frank Baum’s second Oz book, explains the first to his creation Jack Pumpkinhead:

“Where are we going?” asked Jack, when they had resumed their journey.

“I’m not exactly sure,” said the boy; “but I believe we are headed South, and that will bring us, sooner or later, to the Emerald City.”

“What city is that?” enquired the Pumpkinhead.

“Why, it’s the center of the Land of Oz, and the biggest town in all the country. I’ve never been there, myself, but I’ve heard all about its history. It was built by a mighty and wonderful Wizard named Oz, and everything there is of a green color. . . And in the Country of the Munchkins, over at the East, everything is blue; and in the South country of the Quadlings everything is red; and in the West country of the Winkies, where the Tin Woodman rules, everything is yellow.”

“Oh!” said Jack. Then, after a pause, he asked: “Did you say a Tin Woodman rules the Winkies?”

“Yes; he was one of those who helped Dorothy to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Winkies were so grateful that they invited him to become their ruler,—just as the people of the Emerald City invited the Scarecrow to rule them.”

“Dear me!” said Jack. “I’m getting confused with all this history. Who is the Scarecrow?”

“Another friend of Dorothy’s,” replied Tip.

“And who is Dorothy?”

“She was a girl that came here from Kansas, a place in the big, outside World. She got blown to the Land of Oz by a cyclone, and while she was here the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman accompanied her on her travels.”

“And where is she now?” inquired the Pumpkinhead.

“Glinda the Good, who rules the Quadlings, sent her home again,” said the boy.

“Oh. And what became of the Scarecrow?”

“I told you. He rules the Emerald City,” answered Tip.

“I thought you said it was ruled by a wonderful Wizard,” objected Jack, seeming more and more confused.

“Well, so I did. Now, pay attention, and I’ll explain it,” said Tip, speaking slowly and looking the smiling Pumpkinhead squarely in the eye. “Dorothy went to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard to send her back to Kansas; and the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman went with her. But the Wizard couldn’t send her back, because he wasn’t so much of a Wizard as he might have been. And then they got angry at the Wizard, and threatened to expose him; so the Wizard made a big balloon and escaped in it, and no one has ever seen him since.”

“Now, that is very interesting history,” said Jack, well pleased; “and I understand it perfectly all but the explanation.”

A number of touches show the influence of the Wizard of Oz stage extravaganza that debuted to great crowds in 1902:

• the vaudeville crosstalk of the conversation itself. Baum’s first Oz book has relatively little dialogue, and much of it is straightforward and declaratory. With this sequel he began writing patter. That offered more chance to distinguish his characters, but also more chance to stretch for cheap laughs.
• the omission of the Cowardly Lion as one of Dorothy’s companions, just as Baum omitted him from this book. The big stars of the stage show were the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, and this sequel was designed to give the public more of them. 
• the portrayal of the Wizard as a villainous fraud, as he appeared in the stage show, rather than a good-hearted humbug. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wizard builds a balloon in a sincere attempt to take Dorothy home to Kansas, but he can’t stop it once it’s launched. As Tip retells the story, the Wizard built the balloon simply to escape before Dorothy and her companions could reveal his secrets.

Or is that actually how the people of Oz came to look upon the Emerald City’s former ruler?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the Bechdel Test

Critics of Oz the Great and Powerful have been lauding L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a first-wave feminist fable, but I started to wonder: Does it pass the Bechdel Test? It certainly has more than two female characters, and they certainly do talk to each other. But do they talk about something other than a man? That last question looks a bit iffy for a while.

Dorothy and Aunt Em don’t actually have a conversation in the first chapter. Aunt Em just calls out, “Quick, Dorothy! Run for the cellar!”

The first woman (or character) Dorothy has a long conversation with is the Good Witch of the North, and that conversation eventually focuses on a man: the Wizard.

In her journey to the Emerald City, Dorothy talks with two more female characters: the Queen of the Field Mice and a housewife outside the city. But they both talk about the scary Cowardly Lion.

In the city itself, Dorothy chats with a young maid in the palace; later Baum named this character Jellia Jamb. They discuss clothes and the Wizard.

Dorothy then sets off to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. The Witch captures the little girl with the help of her winged monkeys, and at last there’s an extended exchange of words that’s not about the Wizard or the Lion. So in chapter 12 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz does indeed pass the Bechdel Test. Of course, the conversation between those two female characters is all about shoes. (Way to undermine the stereotype!) And it doesn’t end well for both parties.

In the rest of the book, Dorothy converses again with the Queen of the Field Mice about the Golden Cap. On her journey to the south she talks with the Princess of the China Country. And finally she meets Glinda and has a really substantive conversation about her adventure, who should rule parts of Oz, and how to get home.

By that point in the book, the Wizard is no longer a factor; both his humbug magic and his shaky ballooning skills have come up short. Dorothy has learned to stop relying on that man.

That’s when The Wonderful Wizard of Oz gives up the pretense of revolving about its title character and focuses on its real center: the change Dorothy unleashes everywhere that she and her companions go. That’s one reason I think the book’s final act, which can seem like an anticlimax, are in fact crucial to its tale.

A Darker Dorothy in London

Opening next month at the Immersion Theatre in London, Dorothy in Oz, a “skewed adaptation” of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The troupe promises “a piece unlike anything that has ever been seen on the London fringe circuit.”

What does that mean? When playwright James Michael Shoberg directed his own company’s premiere of the drama in 2009, the Pittsburgh City Paper said:

Shoberg, Pittsburgh’s self-styled striver after “darker tastes in art,” usually combines a fixation with sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and dazzling costumes with cumbersome scene changes and sloppy projections. Forcing the often-rambling style of Shoberg and/or his players onto a smaller stage, much closer to the audience, focuses the production. . . .

His Dorothy in Oz includes winking references from various versions of the story—The Wiz as well as generous dollops of the iconic 1939 movie—as he twists the familiar characters and their journey. The new setting is a psychiatric hospital for the unfortunate Dorothy, here named Dottie. . . .

The most fun comes from Carrie L. Shoberg’s glitzy and ditzy portrayal of Glinda, and from the stunning ensemble—costume, props and performance—of Brittany Spinelli as the doctor’s secretary. The three companions are a mixed bag: Chucky Hendershot almost boneless as he wrestles with gravity and a heroin addiction as a Goth “Skarekrow”; Sean Michael Gallaher appropriately loud as the anger-challenged multi-pierced punk “Rusty Tinneman”; and Joseph A. Roots totally smooth as the repulsive “Harry Lyons.” In the title role, Adrienne Fischer is credible and credibly brave, but the character just doesn’t have the fun the others do.

Dorothy in Oz is scheduled to run in London 26 Feb-17 Mar 2013.

Nobody Eats Dogs Here!

Artist Billy Nunez shares his concept sketches for “The Wizard of Oz in China” (which include some touches from other parts of the Pacific’s western rim).

(Hat tip to Bookshelves of Doom and io9.)

Open Heart Surgery on the Yellow Brick Road?

This portrayal of the companions from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is by Sabrina Alberghetti, an artist in Vancouver, via deviantArt. She also shared her sketches for this piece and some other sketches of a hip-hop Scarecrow.

I’m not at all sure what’s going on in this scene, but the characters have a lot of character.

Darkside Is Coming, Now Nothing Is Real

The Morton Report recently featured Bill Baker’s online conversation with artist Tommy Castillo about a book called The Art of The Darkside of Oz. The second capitalized T in that title is the tip-off that this book is a teaser for Castillo’s comics series called The Darkside of Oz.

Most of the drawings shown with the interview have appeared on Castillo’s earlier collections and website, so I’m not completely sure how they represent the ultimate product. Baker writes of Castillo’s plans:

…if the images and ideas he’s slowly begun to reveal are any indication, we’re about to see Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the cowardly Lion and the Tin Man in a whole new twilight.

And Castillo says, among other things:

How do you tell an epic tale of woe and love, desire and greed, wars and betrayals? How do you tell of revenge and have all of it wrapped up in the idea of redemption? And how can you do this all with the highest amount of respect for the creator of Oz, Frank Baum?

To be frank, I’m not impressed with the respect for Baum displayed so far. It’s details like:

• Misspelling Glinda’s name as “Glenda.”
• Using the MGM movie (still protected by copyright and trademark) as the basis of plot comments instead of Baum’s books (in the public domain).
• Promising not to render Dorothy as “some scantily clad teen with giant boobs,” but dressing her in a very short skirt.

Furthermore, the notion that “everything we knew about our beloved Oz was a lie” isn’t that new, especially in comics form. After The Oz Squad, Dark Oz, Woe Is Oz, and so on, it’s no surprise to see Dorothy and her companions panelized in grim and gritty ways. It looks like Castillo will show us another Tin Woodman as a robot with a giant axe, another Scarecrow with a sinister slant to his eyes, another Lion as an anthropomorphic warrior, and so on.

Of course, Castillo could still create a compelling, eye-opening story out of those elements. Gregory Maguire certainly did with Wicked. But it would require knowing Baum’s work deeply, and intervening reinventions as well. Deciding to take a myth in the exact opposite direction may seem revolutionary, but it doesn’t really take as much imagination as digging deeper, or going off at an angle.

Art from Oz

The Australian picture-book artist Ben Wood is aiming to post an Oz illustration every day of this month. Above is his take on Ojo the Lucky, the Munchkin boy at the heart of L. Frank Baum’s The Patchwork Girl of Oz, as well as the Glass Cat. I also particularly like his Cowardly Lion and Wogglebug.

My reading of Ojo is that he’s a bit bipolar. For most of Patchwork Girl, he’s prone to crying jags and complaining about bad luck. In Ojo of Oz (1933), Ruth Plumly Thompson even refers to him at times as “depressed.”

Yet in books where he’s not the star, just one of the crowd, as in Glinda of Oz, Ojo tends to be as chirpy as he appears above. The first mood is a lot easier to make interesting, especially since he also has a habit of overstepping rules that people have specifically warned him about.

In other Oz-art news, Bill Campbell at The Oz Enthusiast has opened a Zazzle store.

“Follow the Yellow Brick Road” as an Earworm

Conversations at the recent Winkie Convention made me resolve to post something Ozzy on every Tuesday, at least, in order to justify this blog’s name.

So this is a detail from a Malaysian advertisement for Penguin audiobooks, featured at Ads of the World and elsewhere.

The artist got the characters of Dorothy’s companions quite right, though they’re marching toward the Gale farmhouse rather than away. Dorothy looks more like Alice than usual.

As for what this version’s road of yellow brick is made of, I don’t want to think about it. (Simren Deogun saw another part of the human anatomy in this campaign.)

Five Observations on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Comic

As Eric Shanower and Skottie Young’s comics adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz continues its sojourn on the hardcover “graphic novels” bestseller list, I’m sharing some miscellaneous thoughts on how it retells Dorothy’s first adventure.

This comic was originally published as eight issues of a magazine, each of which needed its share of satisfying ups and downs to keep readers coming back for more. I read many such comic-book collections, and usually it’s apparent where one installment ends and the next begins (and not just because of a reprinted cover or placeholder page). There’s a shift in rhythm, and often a few panels to catch readers up with the story. I didn’t have that experience this time: the whole book felt seamless. I’m going to have to reread again to figure out how.

The only detail from L. Frank Baum’s book that I missed was how the great and powerful Oz is exposed. In this adaptation, the Lion roars so ferociously he blows open a curtain hiding the little man.

In the book, the Cowardly Lion’s roar is “so fierce and dreadful that Toto jumped away from him in alarm and tipped over the screen” in front of Oz. (In the MGM movie, Toto deliberately pulls open a curtain. Frank Morgan then yanks it back while delivering his immortal “Pay no attention to the man…” line. You can watch Toto get yanked back as well since the curtain was apparently attached to his collar.)

It may seem illogical for Oz to protect his vital secret with a screen so light that a startled terrier can knock it over. Nevertheless, I like the symbolic aspect of that moment: Toto makes things happen for Dorothy.

I saw one addition to this version which seemed to come from the MGM movie. After the Lion’s earlier, solo interview with the Wizard (appearing as a great ball of fire), the frightened beast runs out of the throne room and breaks through a door (“SCRUNCH”!). Quite reminiscent of the candy-pane window that Bert Lahr’s stunt double jumped through. But the book simply says:

The Lion was angry at this speech, but could say nothing in reply, and while he stood silently gazing at the Ball of Fire it became so furiously hot that he turned tail and rushed from the room. He was glad to find his friends waiting for him, and told them of his terrible interview with the Wizard.

There are two double-page spreads in the book, both meaningful. The first comes when Dorothy and her companions are first allowed inside the Emerald City and take in the marvelous capital. Because it’s a walled city, however, the view feels as hemmed-in as it is expansive.

The second spread comes toward the end of the book as the party approach Glinda’s castle. The MGM movie leaves out that entire leg of Dorothy’s journey, and many adaptations treat it as an anticlimax. But that trip is a very important part of the story. It allows Dorothy’s companions to prove their new abilities, and it’s important for her to reach a place of real magic, not humbuggery. Shanower knows that Glinda and her castle remain major centers of power in the Oz saga, and he scripted a grand entrance for them.

Months back, I wrote about how Oz: The Manga used many variations of word balloons for different characters’ speeches. This adaptation is more restrained in that regard. Each of the Wizard’s disguises has a different style of balloon and typography. And the field mice all speak in little letters.