Age of Bronze

Monday, May 31, 2021

The Disney-Oz Connection

For its 2015 convention, OzCon International, the longest-running annual Oz event, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company's 1985 feature film Return to Oz. I presented the theme-related program "The Disney-Oz Connection." I discussed all the Oz and Oz-related projects the Disney company has worked on during its history, whether an individual project came to fruition or not.

Five years passed. The world found itself in the grip of an epidemic. OzCon 2020 was held virtually because of Covid. The convention chairman, Colin Ayres, asked whether I'd record my Disney-Oz presentation as a feature for the virtual convention. Sure, I said. I revised and updated the presentation for 2020. You can watch it for free on OzCon's YouTube channel, the OzConnection. "The Disney-Oz Connection" is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cib_gArPPoM

I don't know how it occurred, but the presentation has a mistake. The second slide goes by too fast. In the online version, the narration for the second slide consists of only one sentence. The missing narration isn't vital to the presentation, but it sets the stage for Walt Disney's interest in Oz. Here's the full text I wrote and recorded for that slide:

Any discussion of Oz and Disney starts with Walt Disney himself. Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 5, 1901. Whether he was familiar with the Oz books when he was a child is unknown, but I think the chances are that he was. As a young child he listened while his mother read him fairy tales. As he grew older he became a voracious reader. He devoured the works of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, and as a teenager he loved the adventure stories of Jimmie Dale, alias the Gray Seal.

OzCon for 2021 will be virtual again. I'll be presenting a program or two, if you're interested. Here's the link to more info on the OzCon website:

http://www.ozconinternational.com/

Monday, May 17, 2021

All the Stooges Minus One

I drew the cover for the forthcoming Three Stooges Thru the Ages #1. It features Stooges stalwarts Moe and Larry, plus Curly, Shemp, and Curly Joe. But no Joe Besser.

I was told not to draw Joe Besser on this cover. I guess Three Stooges fans don't like Joe Besser.

The issue with my cover is currently on sale
from publisher American Mythology. Or order from your favorite comics shop.

Monday, May 10, 2021

Mail Voting

On July 4, 1876, one hundred years after the United States of America declared its independence from Great Britain, more than half the population could still not vote in a federal election. White male landowners had the vote from the beginning of the country. In 1870 the Constitution granted black men the right to vote. But all women were still denied voting rights.

At the great centennial celebration of the USA in Philadelphia, the National Woman Suffrage Association was denied the right to speak. So Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake, and Phoebe W. Couzins stormed the podium during the proceedings to present the Declaration of the Rights of Women of the United States. The women were shooed from the stage. Another fifty-five years passed before women in the USA could vote in federal elections.

Syracuse Cultural Workers issued a postcard commemorating the July 1876 issuance of the women's rights declaration. I drew the artwork for it and Laura Martin colored it. I originally drew it for a short comics biography of Matilda Joslyn Gage, perhaps the most fascinating figure in the women's rights movement of her time. I highly recommend her book Woman, Church, and State first published in the 1890s. I suspect it will never go out of style.

If you're interested in ordering the postcard with my drawing of Matilda and her compatriots, it's available here: https://www.syracuseculturalworkers.com/products/postcard-protesting-inequality-at-us-centennial-1876

Monday, May 3, 2021

The Royalest Book of Oz

The Royal Book of Oz was the first entry in the Oz book series written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, the writer who took over the Oz books after L. Frank Baum, creator of Oz, died. In an attempt to get readers to accept a new Oz author, the publisher slapped Baum's name on the book as author, despite Thompson's complete and original authorship of the text of The Royal Book of Oz.

Ruth Plumly Thompson went on to add eighteen more books to the official Oz series (as well as two unofficial Oz books, a slew of poems, a short story, and a play). Her authorship of The Royal Book of Oz has been public knowledge since the 1950s, and Thompson herself never tried to conceal the fact that she wrote the book, but some ignorant publishers continue to issue editions of The Royal Book of Oz that credit L. Frank Baum as author.

Clover Press is not one of those publishers and issued a new edition of The Royal Book of Oz about a year ago. One of Clover's reasons for the new edition was to proudly credit Ruth Plumly Thompson as author. But this new edition features much more than that.

Sara Richard newly illustrated the story in color. The new illustrations feature bold new designs of favorite Oz characters. The text has been slightly updated to eliminate several racially denigrating details. And I provided a brand new Afterword to illuminate the history of how Ruth Plumly Thompson was chosen to continue the Oz books and about the writing of The Royal Book of Oz.

You can order The Royal Book of Oz direct from Clover Press here: https://cloverpress.us/products/the-royal-book-of-oz

Ted Adams, publisher of Clover Press, has been an Oz fan since he was young. I know from talking with him that he'd be happy to publish more of Thompson's Oz books for a new generation--as long as this one sells well enough to make such a publishing program feasible. I'd like to see that happen, too.

Monday, April 26, 2021

Betrayal in Color

John Dallaire, the Age of Bronze colorist, has been working hard coloring my black-and-white artwork for Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One. The battle scenes, the crowd scenes, the embroidery on the Trojan costumes--it's all got to be colored. John follows the first two Age of Bronze volumes with the same quality work on the next volume.

I've approved a decent number of pages so far. And the book's getting to a state in which I'm approving pages at a faster pace. It's still not ready to be put on a publication schedule yet, but we'll get there eventually. And I'll let you know here when that time comes.

Until then, however, here's a sneak peek at a finished page of Betrayal Part One in color:

Monday, April 19, 2021

Brinkley Broadcasts Anew

The play The Resistible Rise of J. R. Brinkley by Edward Einhorn debuted in New York City in October 2018 to rave reviews. Now you can listen to an audio performance of the play by podcast. Untitled Theater Company #61 presents it free for your listening pleasure on a variety of platforms. Choose your preference here: http://www.untitledtheater.com/previous-productions/resistible-rise-jr-brinkley.html

Why do I feature this podcast here on my blog? Because I was the scenic artist for the original live production. Clearly the podcast doesn't feature my art, but I think The Resistible Rise of J. R. Brinkley is a super play anyway and I'm glad to have been a part of it, so I recommend it to all of you reading this.

It tells the true story of a 1920s con man who touted the eating of goat testicles as a cure for impotence. That's right, read that previous sentence again if you have to. And people believed him!

I've previously illustrated a couple of playwright and director Edward Einhorn's books (Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz) and a few of his short stories in the past. Edward and I have a project coming up in the future, too. We collaborated on a new Age of Bronze-related project that I'll announce here when it's ready for release. Hint: it's a new version of an old version of a sacrifice.

Monday, April 12, 2021

Quadruple Your Oz Pleasure

Volume Two

Volume Three

Volumes Two and Three of Marvel Comics's Oz: The Complete Collection bring you loads of Ozzy fun and adventure.

Volume Two contains the full comics adaptations of Ozma of Oz and Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz.

Volume Three contains the full comics adaptations of The Road to Oz and The Emerald City of Oz.

I adapted the scripts from L. Frank Baum's classic children's book series. Skottie Young drew all the artwork. Jean-Francois Beaulieu colored it all. And Jeff Eckleberry lettered it all. These four stories were previously published as comic book series and as single volume graphic novels. Oz: The Complete Collection brings you two stories per volume.

Volume One of Oz: The Complete Collection is also still available. I posted about it earlier here.

While Ozma of Oz is perhaps my favorite of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, I want to say that I loved Skottie's and my adaptation of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, the fourth Oz book. While it was the first of our adaptations to not become a best-seller, I felt Skottie brought a renewed energy to the art and to the bizarre and menacing characters that infest the story. Baum wrote an unsettling, surreal journey featuring vegetable people who walk on air and live in a city of glass, a land of invisible killer bears, and silent wooden gargoyles with detachable wings. The creepy weirdness just doesn't stop till Dorothy and friends reach the Emerald City, where all the old familiar Oz weirdos conduct a ridiculous murder trial. Does that sound too odd, even for Oz? Well, you can see it all in glorious full color in Volume Two of Oz: The Complete Collection.

Skottie Young cuts loose with the character design in The Road to Oz, particularly at Ozma's spectacular birthday party. I love Skottie's version of Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter. We stopped with the sixth book, The Emerald City of Oz. If any spot was a logical place to stop adapting the Oz books (if one isn't going to adapt all forty), that one's it. But I still wish we'd been able to continue beyond six books.