Friday, January 8, 2010

Comic Review: Dorothy Gale-Journey To Oz

Freefall Entertainment has been puting out a new series of mini-comic books titled Dorothy Gale-Journey To Oz by Shane Kirshenblatt. Acting as a modern day retake of the original Oz books, this starts out with young orphan Dorothy Gale living on a farm in Kansas with her adopted aunt and uncle. She keeps having strange dreams of another world and keeps a journal with drawings she's taken from them. Her best friend Thomas(aka: "Toto")takes her out for a walk where they run across a peddler named Edward who tries to sell them some used items. Toto makes off with what he thinks is a towel as a birthday present for Dorothy, but it turns out to be a map, and Edward comes after the two of them for stealing it. They all end up going down into a cellar which somehow leads them to the other world of Oz. Once there, they befriend some of the rowdy Munchkins who are under attack by the an army of zombie Scarecrows that work for the evil Wizard. Edward had apparently gotten the special map that the Wizard wants, and he sends his evil cronies, the pumpkinheaded Jack and the mechanical Tik-Tok to get it. Dorothy grabs a sword and helps free some of the Munchkins from the Scarecrows, but is suprised to see one of them looks exactly like herself. After the doppleganger goes missing, Dorothy, Toto, and Edward are ambushed by giant snakes, but a giant Tin Man chops them down. The axe-wielding metal man then seems to come after them, but they are saved by the Dorothy double, who is really her twin sister, Ozma. She believes Edward made off with Dorothy to our world when she was a baby, is responsible for what happened to their mother. Ozma is about to lay some revenge on him, but Dorothy convinces her to stop. Elsewhere, the Tin Man tracks them down, all while the evil Wizard sends more forces out to get the stolen map. This comic has some deep overtones to it, so its not really for the kiddies. But the gothic backgrounds and grim atmosphere in this even darker than normal view of Oz make for an interesting spinn on the story. The series was originally printed as two seperate volumes(#2 is actually twice the length of #1), and then both put online along with Volume #3. Copies of the first two books are still available for sale, with future issues in the works.

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