Customer Reviews

The Forgotten Forest of Oz (First Comics Graphic Novel #16)

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In this, the fourth volume of a five volume series of graphic novels, "founded on and continuing the famous Oz stories of L. Frank Baum," Eric Shanower tells us the story of Nelanthe, one of the wood-nymphs of the Forest of Burzee. Burzee with its wood-nymphs is one of the most magical places ever imagined by L. Frank Baum. And Eric Shanower exceeds all his other work to bring this forest to us in all its primordial majesty. His artwork also breathes life into the underground kingdom of the trolls as the trolls and the wood-nymphs go into battle over Nelanthe. When Dorothy and the Scarecrow are drawn into the drama, they help save the day with the help of the Wooden Sawhorse. Oz doesn't get any better than this!

Eric Shanower manages to capture the magic of Baum's creation, and to keep the simplicity, yet the stories are also fresh and interesting. Shanower gives us new characters to read about. This book is about the forest of Burzee (written of first in Baum's non-Oz "Adventures of Santa Claus," a very good book) and the wood-nymphs who live there, focusing on one who is thrown out for kissing a mortal. This wood-numph joins up with the trolls, becomes their queen, and plans an attack on Burzee. The writing on occasion gets a little too melodramatic, to the point of being silly - but this is, after all, a comic book.