Customer Reviews

Dorothy, Volume I

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Told through computer-altered photography in a computer-generated world, "Dorothy" blends the look of reality and fantasy so clearly, it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Dorothy (modeled by Catie Fisher) lives in a gray environment, with little besides her green eyes, red lips, jewelry and hair dye to set her apart from the surrounding drabness. Oz, of course, is bursting with color, but there's a great deal of danger, too -- making itself known first through the attack of a vicious flying monkey. But this Dorothy is no shrinking violet, and her grim matter-of-factness seems to get her through tough situations more easily than a "golly gee" attitude would do.

Creator Mark Masterson has taken Dorothy someplace new. It's not over the rainbow, for sure, but I'm very curious to see where this path leads.

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.NET editor

This is a photographic comic book retelling of the Oz story. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Wayne

This is a modern-day dark retelling of the original Wizard Of Oz book. As a fumetti(photo comic), it features actual actors and models matted in with CGI backgrounds. In it, Dorothy Gale is a goth-looking teenager in Kansas who decides to run away from her aunt and uncle's farm. When taking off on in a pickup truck, she is carried away by a hurricane to Oz. Once there, runs into a small robot dog she names Toto, and a dying old woman who gives her a magic necklace with a green jewel in it. She is told to head to the Munchkins who will help her. Although along the way, she runs into a giant dragon underground(a wink to the Time Dragon from Wicked?), and sidetracks by freeing a living Scarecrow from his perch. Once finally at Munchkinland, Dorothy is told that Oz is ruled by the Witch Queen who has taken over all of Oz except for the Emerald City where the powerful Wizard is hold up as the Witch's forces continue to try and breach it. The Witch wants Dorothy's necklace, so she sends out a brutal beast after her. Dorothy then treks for the Emerald City, but she and Scarecrow uncover a robot which she manages to reactivate and join her. They then run into the China Country where the beast tries to attack them, but Dorothy reveals his cowardly nature. The beast then joins them in their quest.

I've never really been a comic-book reader, until Dorothy came along that is. The strong and funny (and deeply-flawed) lead character in this tale is highly compelling, and the revamped land of Oz that she finds herself in is the dark kind of magical place that would make the Brothers Grimm nervous. Oz is racked by civil war and overrun with spies and killer robots, and Mz Gale travels through this Technicolor war-zone with brash defiance that only thinly masks the fact the she hasn't got a clue as to what is going on. ("If this was a theme park, I'd sue!" she exclaims at one point.) This mix of personality traits makes our heroine far more innocent than Judy Garland surrounded by lollipops, and much more satisfying than the two-dimensional babes that annoy me in so many other comic books. Rock on, team Dorothy!

The folks making this comic have clearly invested a lot of themselves into their art. It's a truly astounding piece of work.

I can't recommend this enough to fans of the comics medium in general, fans of mythical retellings, or fans of the Oz mythology in specific.

It's works like this one that make me want to create art myself.

There are a lot of reworked versions of Frank L Baum's WIZARD OF OZ, but Illusive Arts' DOROTHY blows them all away! A 21st century teenaged Dorothy, living with aunt and uncle in Kansas, runs away from boredom taking their truck and ignoring the radio's tornado warnings. She's carried up in a funnel and dropped in Oz. She encounters vicious flying monkeys, a wizard and eventually a scarecrow who is at once a wonderfully funny and tragic character. There's a sense of a mythic cycle at work when some of the players understand that, somehow, this has happened before. Dorothy is acerbic but not overbearing, an appealing character humorously out of her element at first ("Munchkins? Yeah, I could use some little donuts!"). Wise and innocent she deftly adapts to her new reality and is soon confronting dragons and gearing up for the Evil Queen. Fumetti, using retouched photos instead of art, is not a new form in comics but rarely used in the US, and even more rarely as stunning as what's presented here. It helps to have as attractive and talented an actress/model as Catie Fisher. Think how challenging it must be to act a role in a series of still pictures! I promised to avoid the obvious comparison of writer Mark Masterson to Neil Gaiman, so I'll just say that if
you enjoy Gaiman you will love DOROTHY.

This is not your mother's "Wizard of Oz"! It's a combination of photography and graphics that builds into a chilling story that kept me turning pages straight through and I am so looking forward to seeing what the next book brings. Illusive Arts Entertainment has done a great job with this story and I recommend it highly.

This is a great book. The combination of artwork and photography is beautifully done. This modern retelling of Frank L. Baum's creation is an entertaining if not dark departure from the MGM version we all are used to seeing. I also recommend visiting the website: [...] where you'll find great information and a chance to interact with the people behind the scenes.

This version of OZ is absolutely incredible. Mr. Masterson has a great insight into the mind of a teenage girl searching for her own reality. The photography and graphics are outstanding. just all around fantastic!!!