The Wizard of Oz as a manga

Venue: Oz the Manga by David Hutchison is available as dead treeware from the publisher, Antarctic Press of San Antonio, Texas. There are nine individual comic books priced at $3 apiece. Since Oz the Manga was published in 2005, I would call or email Antarctic Press to see if they had any paper copies left. Oz the Manga is also available as a free download from Wowio.com. Wowio's website rules don't allow you to download more than three ebooks a day, so it would take you 3 days to download all nine issues.

Art: It's the Wizard of Oz done in Japanese manga style. If you don't know what the term "manga" means, manga is the Japanese word for graphic novels. Here in North America, we call them comic books whether the content is funny or not. That's because of the rather absurd attitude in this part of the world that "comic books" are really just frivolous illustrated stories for children, hence the name reflects the attitude. Manga style is immediately identifiable with its exaggerated big eyes and round faces for kids, use of specific pictorial symbols to convey visual clues in the plot (stylized nose drip while sleeping, bead of sweat for anxiety/nervousness, etc.) and more realistic body types with a tendency toward proportionally bigger heads (as opposed to American comic book style
with proportionally smaller heads on anatomically-exaggerated bodies).

So anyway, Oz the Manga is drawn manga style, and it's very good manga style too, done in black at white like most manga. I just love the picture of Dorothy and her friends on the very last page of issue 6. This is a mature version of Dorothy who has been through a lot, who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to ask for what she's due. There's some lovely drawing in Oz the Manga, but that last frame in issue 6 is the one that really sticks with me.

Age Groups: You can safely give this manga to kids of any age. I suspect older kids might be bored, especially since TV has usurped the place of the book in kids' lives these days.

Publishing Frequency: the series was originally a monthly comic book. The entire series was finished in 2005 so now you can get all nine issues all at the same time.

Story: Oz the Manga is a faithful retelling of Baum's original 1900 book with a handful of episodes left out of the main story line for the sake of continuity. Most of those skipped episodes like the country of china doll people become flashbacks in the ninth issue, which is labeled as the epilogue issue. There are isolated spots in the series where the action jumps into the next scene without a good scene transition, like the jump from the post-Wicked Witch of the West audience of Dorothy's group with the Wizard and the meetings afterward that the Wizard has individually with the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. The poor transitions are jarring but they are thankfully few.

The portrayal of Dorothy is not the semi-hapless, fortunate-through-accident, girly-girl Judy Garland version of the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie. This is the Dorothy of Baum's books: honest, forthright, kind and brave - the apotheosis of the self-reliant Midwest farm girl. This Dorothy is more like Harold Gray's original Little Orphan Annie than anything else. Dorothy doesn't sing and there aren't any rainbows. This is the real Dorothy Gale, not the Hollywood version.

Setting: Can you say "good ol'fashioned family values"? I knew you could. Dorothy Gale is a great kid and a great role model. Glinda the Good's short appearance at the end of the story is an example of noblesse oblige, especially toward the flying monkeys. The Wizard of Oz himself may be a "humbug" but he is forgivably so due to his very frank admission of his faults to Dorothy and her friends. Giving up his life as ruler of Oz in order to try to take Dorothy home is generous in the extreme, especially given what he has to give up in order to keep his promise to her.

To be totally truthful, Baum wrote very strong female characters all the way around and was known as an advocate of womens' suffrage, which was one of the largest womens' issues of his day. Critics and scholars of his books often see his views about suffrage reflected in the Oz books and other books by Baum.

Baum's Oz books have been occasionally banned or censored, sometimes on the grounds that Baum has "good witch" characters who use magic. Some of his Oz books have also been labeled as racist because he used late 19th C. stereotypes of black people in them. While Hutchison's faithful adaptation of Oz as a manga can certainly be painted with the former brush regarding the biblical knee-jerk reaction of some fundamentalists over witches in fiction, the former is not a factor at all in Baum's first book and its manga adaptation under discussion here.

Other Comments: Get these for your kids if they are still available on dead treeware or download them and share. This graphic novel adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is first-rate and a good example of just how good "comic books" can be.

Antarctic Press is a little comics company based in San Antonio. A bunch of small comics ventures started up in the 1980s. Most folded, Antarctic didn't so they've got to be doing something right. I've not been partial to a lot of their stuff over the years since much of it feels like it's targeted at the American male adolescent market and all that entails (stupid costumes, 2D characters and plots, etc.). Oz the Manga shows that Antarctic is breaking out of their old mold and maturing as a comics company, which is nice to see. To be truthful, I wouldn't mind at all if the author, Hutchison, did some more manga adaptations of L. Frank Baum's books. I would certainly pick them up if he did.