The Visitors from Oz

This is an oddity - and I knew it would be an oddity, even when I started. The Visitors from Oz is the latest in a succession of attempts by fans to take the material from L. Frank Baum's 1905 comic pages (collectively known as Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz) and make it into something more readable. The first twenty-six "chapters" of this book are, verbatim, the text of Baum's weekly comic adventures, while Chapter Twenty-Seven is made up of the considerably longer text of The Woggle-Bug Book, which was released the same year. All of it was basically to support The Woggle-Bug, a stage extravaganza that totally flopped, and its forebear, 1904's novel The Marvelous Land of Oz. This isn't so much a book, therefore, as a show more collection of publicity materials. It's hardly Baum's best work, and the Woggle-Bug Book material in particular sees him going for the most populist jokes and the laziest ethnic stereotypes (which usually don't show up in his books).

Now, all that said, there is some charm to be found here. The Woggle-Bug Book material (sorry, "Chapter Twenty-Seven") is low comedy, but Baum probably gives more character to the Wogglebug himself than he did in any of the Oz books. The final episode, where he enters a topsy-turvy animal kingdom ruled by a cigar-smoking weasel, is probably the best material in the book. And once you get past the first eighteen or so "chapters" - all of which are designed to revolve around the little mystery of "What did the Wogglebug say?" (a weekly competition for the newspaper) - you actually get some nice little vignette stories: the Tin Woodman magnetized by lightning; Jack Pumpkinhead attempting to pawn the Sawhorse; the Ozians encountering Santa Claus. Additionally, following the "book," we are treated to the publicity announcements that ran in the North American newspaper before the comic pages began - which, wonderfully, find the Gump and his passengers traveling past Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and other celestial bodies on their way to Earth! The whole volume is ably supported by new art by Eric Shanower in the John R. Neill style.

Is it a terribly engaging read as a whole? Well, no, and the content was never intended to be. David Maxine's afterword - which I think really should have been a foreword - puts it all in context, which is very helpful. It's also nice to have Baum's text for these two rarity ventures in a truly accessible form; I have the recent Queer Visitors volume, which reprints the comic pages exactly as they appeared in 1905, but it is enormous and hard to handle. Similarly, previous reproductions of The Woggle-Bug Book have relied on photostat and are hard to read (although you can see Ike Morgan's lovely illustrations). The Visitors from Oz, then, fulfills a very specific and useful function, and anyone with a serious interest in Baum's Oz and Oz-related writings should probably have it. Just don't expect the satisfying entertainment you would get from one of Baum's novels. show less

An odd book, not part of the main Oz series but apparently genuinely written by Baum after the first 2 books (Wizard of Oz and Land of Oz) chiefly involving characters from Land of Oz coming to the United States by means of the flying gump.