Jan-ken-pon – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz #4 review

    
_{Please view my reviews of the previous issues for my thoughts on them, and general overview fluffery that comes with looking at installments of anything that deal with concepts and characters that have any amount of history. You may also want to see my interview with series writer Eric Shanower.}

We are talking about worldbuilding in the forums today, and with that in mind I’m just struck by how much I enjoy my new monthly ventures to OZ, and savoring them as I wait for the next chapters. What’s to come isn’t a thematic or narrative surprise, there are no bushwhacks, no highwayman on the yellow brick road in this issue– indeed you find a family that offers hospitality to wary travelers. The very first words of dialogue in the issue are a statement of joy, a happiness to see friends, and to continue a journey. In being alive. This issue picks up right after the previous, as the Lion awakes from his poppy-induced slumber, and the adventurers are back on the path to see the Wizard. We get to the gate of the city and we have what was for me the first of those fictional doormen that I’d come to see in my life. From Jabba’s palace, the Mouth of Saruon, the Blackfish, Zuul, or Ende’s Engywook and Urgl — we rarely find our gates to new explorations unguarded. So many personal firsts being reexperienced via an aware and reverent writer in Shanower, and an artist’s pencils that are often times chimerical, but always given balance and grounded by a little girl and her dog. Each of the companions gain audience with the Wizard and are given the same task of killing the Wicked Witch of the West. It is here where the story takes this ominous, almost horrific twist. Dorothy is a little girl. She’s not Judy Garland, and though Baum does not reveal her age, it is quite clear that she is a child. I don’t mean the crazy kids of today either; we are talking about a turn of the century 1900’s writer in Baum. It is an intriguing development that’s rationale comes perhaps too naturally to our modern sensibilities, but it has to be viewed in context as an incredibly macabre turn. When Dorothy asks the Wizard, “Why?” – he simply replies, “I don’t know – but that is my answer?” A great moment that Shanower chooses to highlight is a scene Toto. In our journey thus far we have seen animals that have the ability to talk, yet Toto does not. We find out in later books that he certainly can speak, but simply chooses not to. Shanower depicts him as answering a direct question by “merely wagging his tail”. In an adaptation like this it is always very interesting to see what choices the writer makes. Is he mailing it or delivering moments relevant too all level of OZ fandom? Scenes like this are why a Shanower is writing the title. He adds weight to the fluid art without slowing the visual journey down. These are the decisions of a writer who has relived these moments enough times to discern what must be highlighted. Toto not speaking is one of those.

The art remains magical. The difference in this issue is that we see more than lush landscapes, agrarian beauty, and of Young’s ability to sell us a field as an Oz field; a simple cottage or hamlet, as a home or community not of Kansas. In this issue we find that within Young’s heart one may find gears and motors. We see an artist who seems to revel in constructing a makeshift wooden wheel chair of the make we might see described in a William Ashbless poem. In this issue, Young displays to us hints of a love of Steampunk. The Emerald City is where the Wizard dwells, a place of enchantment, but classic description and illustration of the land of OZ reveals a land of technology and invention. As we find ourselves in The Emerald City, Young is able to show us where perhaps many adventure/companion readers met the first inkling of the urban fantasists in them. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz continues to be a book that is ready to stamp itself into childhood memory.

Most significant, is that in a title like this that we are familiar with, you must hook the reader at the end. It’s not as easy as one would think, but again it is Young’s cover of the next issue that seems perfectly timed. From traditional fantasy to steampunk and urban devices, next it looks like were are getting the horror – umbrella and all.

. . .and monkeys, lots of monkeys. Winged ones.

    
- Jay Tomio

_{Jan-ken-pon is the time traveling, force-walking, multiverse crossing column of Jay Tomio, owner of 1/3 of everything you see currently on screen, and the editor of Heliotrope. He sells supersoaker Witch killers. Some call him the Bodhisattva.}

About Jay Tomio

...Jay Tomio is the co-owner of BSCreview and BSCkids. You should probably become his disciple through twitter @JayTomio. More fun awaits at Gestalt Mash, Vogue Immunity, and The Malazan Ascendancy.