Comic Review: The Marvelous Land Of Oz (Marvel Comics)

Eric Shanower and Scottie Young recently completed their run on Marvel Comics' series of The Marvelous Land Of Oz which is an adaptation of the second Oz book. This acts as a direct sequal to the first series they did of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz using the same style and artwork.

The book is pretty much a straight up retelling of the story, which thankfully didn't fall into the what I call DITLOOS, which is "Dorothy In The Land Of Oz Syndrome" where they do a version of Land Of Oz and for no explained reason add Dorothy into the mix. This is apparent in movies like Return To Oz and Journey Back To Oz. Although there seems to be some filling-in-the-blanks of some missing material from the book like more of General Jinjur's dealing with her troops, and Mombi's going to Jinjur for assistance. The treatment of how the characters behaved and moved with the story was also refreshing.

On the art itself, Scottie Young once again outdoes himself. He's brought the layouts and backgrounds of Oz to a much more livelier level, possibly to illustrate that the land is now a little happier since the Wicked Witches got offed. The characters designs for the new characters are fine too, although slightly different. Tip is a young redhead boy with freckles in a standard purple Gillikin outfit. Mombi is also in purple, and looks a little less evil than usual, like a disgruntled Mother Goose. Jack Pumpkinhead has slightly shorter legs and clothes. Jinjur is blonde here, when she's normally shown as a redhead. The Gump's head gives off the appearance of a dog-like creature instead of a moose. Plus, the Wogglebug is a four-legged well-dressed bug that could be easily mistaken for Jiminy Cricket. Ozma looks mostly the same, although she has her more common attire from the rest of the Oz books and not that shown at the end of Land Of Oz. Marvel released this as 8 issues, with 4 covers for issue #1 and 2 for issue #8. It was also recently collected in a single hardcover graphic novel with a cover gallery and character sketches. There will probably be a paperback edition sometime late next year similar to the one they did of WOZ. I'd extremely recommend getting the hardcover though for collector's value, and because its memories will last alot longer.