Customer Reviews

Queer Visitors From the Marvelous Land of Oz

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For those of you that have never heard of this sunday comic a little background. Back in 1904 to promote his newly published sequel to his best selling Wonderful Wizard of Oz L Frank Baum partnered up with comic artist Walt McDougall for a weekly strip featuring the then nationally famous Scarecrow and Tin Woodman together with newly introduced Jack Pumpkinhead and The Wogglebug. The idea was that these 'queer visitors' would leave oz and have mad cap times in the USA. The strip ran a respectable 34 weeks but was no where the hit that Baum had hoped for. The stories are cute and fun. Baum has written better as well as worse tales but these are a nice bunch. The text for these tales has sort of been out and about since the 1960s when a few of them were collected and edited down for a book of the same title. Then in the the late 90s' They were for the most part collected in a book illustrated by Eric Sanower under the title of The Third Book of Oz. Then they were issued again complete and unedited in a book issued by Hungry Tiger Press back in about 2005 called simply Visitors From Oz. This was the best version of the text that we had until now. Here we have an extraordinary volume that gives these little gems the treatment they deserve. Sunday Press has gone back and did a reproduction of the full run of the strip. For the first time since 1904-05 will we be able to see these tales how they were originally presented. The book is HUGE clocking in at about 18x22 inches closed so that when opened it just covers you lap in all it's colorful ozzy goodness. If that weren't enough they gave us a reprinting of the ad artwork, and added in comics by original oz artist W.W. Denslow and Jon R Neil. Truly a great piece to have in any Oz collection.

This book reprints Sunday newspaper comic strips written by Frank Baum and strring his Oz characters. The comics were produced to promote the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and ran from September 1904 to February 1905. The artist was Walt McDougall. This is not Baum's best work, but it is still quite enjoyable. But that's not all! The book also reprints a rival Oz Sunday strip written and illustrated by W.W. Denslow, who was the illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This strip ran from December 1904 to March 1905. These strips are also enjoyable. And best of all, all strips are printed in the huge size that they were originally seen in over 100 years ago.

I received this book for my last birthday and it blew me away. The marvelous cartoons by McDougall and Denslow are glowing with colors. They bring back an era when electricity, motor cars, and slapstick comedy were all great novelties. McDougall's marvelous work is a series of caricatures and gibson like girls. In contrast to McDougall, Denslows cartoons are full of color and funny characters like Billy Bounce who seems to almost be an early super-hero. When both artists show Dorothy, she is obviously based on Dorothy from the 1902 play as she has a strong resemblance to Anna Laughlin, who was the first actress to play Dorothy on stage. Both Baum and Denslow have wonderful Christmas episodes which features Santa Claus but Denslow's story is interesting as the Tin Woodman is dressed as Santa Claus. In a sense Denslow is the better artist than McDougall as McDougalls pictures rely on Caricatures and stereotypes of nearly every race[if we are to be fair, while McDougall's African Americans are like White faces minstrel shows, all the other characters except the OZ characters are also stereotypes of one form or another. Denslow does feature some other racial stereotypes but they look kinder and not as rude looking. The Native Americans in one comic are not too over drawn and look like gentle people. However Mr. Baum's Stories are still the better tales. The visit to Santa Claus stands out as a funny tale as our friends from OZ find they cannot outcreate Santa Claus and they can't beat him in a race. Another great thing about the book is the extensive Histories about Baum, Denslow, and the history of OZ in Comics keeps you turning the pages for more. It is a great work and for me a great birthday surprize

There are two different Kindle versions of this book available. This review is for the one listed as "Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (Illustrated) by L. Frank Baum, ICU Publishing and Walt McDougall (Kindle Edition - Jan 10, 2011)" I never got a chance to read it, despite multiple attempts. Every time I tried to open it on my Kindle, it would freeze up the screen. It took several attempts at restarting and about 10-15 minutes to get it working again. This happened each time I tried to read it, three different times on three different days. I was worried it could be damaging my device, since the screen would go completely blank for the several minutes it took to restart. I had a similar problem when I tried opening it on Kindle for PC. Only the first two pages, the cover and table of contents (the "2%" point), would open. I have no idea what caused this, but I've decided to completely delete this to avoid any potential permanent damage to my Kindle.