Now Playing: The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

I am listening to a new LP, a birthday gift for John from his sister (my Aunt Lorrie!)...


...and Marshall and Shelly are watching the movie version.



Bully is listening to Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd (Harvest/Capitol, 1973),
and Marshall and Shelly are watching The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939), directed by Victor Fleming

Today in Comics History, January 24: A third helping of pumpkin pie? Don't mind if I do!

from The Road to Oz #5 (Marvel, April 2013), script by Eric Shanower, pencils and inks by Skottie Young, colors by Jean-François Beaulieu, letters by Jeff Eckleberry

Today in Comics History, October 2: Maybe you oughta shellac those things, Jack

from The Road to Oz #5 (Marvel, April 2013), script by Eric Shanower, pencils and inks by Skottie Young, colors by Jean-François Beaulieu, letters by Jeff Eckleberry

Today in Comics History, December 24: Dorothy Gale files a restraining order on Santa Claus

from The Road to Oz #6 (Marvel, May 2013), script by Eric Shanower based on the novel by L. Frank Baum, pencils and inks by Skottie Young, colors by Jean-Francois Beaulieu, letters by Jeff Eckleberry

Archie's Generic Celebrities Month, Day 8: Not Actually Judy Garland

Panel from "Theme Dream" in Archie Double Digest #230 (August 2012), script by George Gladir, pencils and inks by Rex Lindsey

Bear Attack! Month 2014, Day 20: Eagles and elephants and bears, oh my

Panels from The Road to Oz #1 (November 2012), script by Eric Shanower based on the book by L. Frank Baum, pencils and inks by Skottie Young, colors by Jean-Francois Beaulieu, letters by Jeff Eckleberry
What? you say that's only a story about an Oz bear attack?

Okay! Here's a real Oz bear attack!


Panels from The Road to Oz #1 (November 2012), script by Eric Shanower based on the book by L. Frank Baum, pencils and inks by Skottie Young, colors by Jean-Francois Beaulieu, letters by Jeff Eckleberry
You may note that I have included for good value an eagle and elephant attack as well. Actually, those are Phanfasms, shape-shifting creatures who are planning to attack Oz but who are completely out of their depth against the wiles of Ozma of Oz.

I like to think the Phanfasms are Skrulls who have been marooned in their mountainous land south of the Nome Country and north of the Kingdom of Dreams, banished there by the Ancient One, Doctor Strange's mentor...but we'll never know for sure.

Today in Comics History, April 9: Delicious pumpkin pie is enjoyed by all

from The Road to Oz #5 (Marvel, April 2013), script by Eric Shanower, pencils and inks by Skottie Young, colors by Jean-François Beaulieu, letters by Jeff Eckleberry

Ten Fourteen of a Kind and Today in Comics History, May 15: It seems the artichoke is steamed

On this very day in 1856, 155 years ago, long before me or you were born (well, me at least), was born L. Frank Baum, the very first (but never the last) Royal Historian of Oz. Presenting the premiere Oz adventure in 1900 with the classic The Wizard of Oz, Baum produced 14 Oz novels plus several dozen other books, poems, stories, and plays, as well as becoming a movie studio owner, producer, and screenwriter. You may never have heard of Gerald Winston Bey, Louise Merrick, Elizabeth De Graf, and Patsy Doyle, Phil and Phoebe Daring, King Bud, Rob Joslyn, or Prince Zingle, all characters from his non-Oz books—but you probably know Dorothy Gale, her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion, the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the Good Witch, and the humbug Wizard of Oz. You might not know the Gump, Professor Wogglebug, the Hungry Tiger, Tik-Tok, the Woozy, Button-Bright, the Nome King, the Frogman, Cap'n Bill and Trot, Bungle the Glass Cat, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, the Shaggy Man, Billina the Hen, or Professor H. M. Woggle-Bug, T.E.—all characters created by Baum in later Oz novels, among some of the great fantasy characters of childrens' literature. Baum wrote fourteen Oz books (other authors continue the series from 1920 through today)—set's celebrate Baum's Oziversary with a Ten of a Kind that features fourteen comic book covers referencing, celebrating, or homaging that magical, rectangular, five-colored country called Oz.





























Whoa, wait just one yellow-bricked minute there! I haven't ever seen a Marvel Treasury version of Ozma of Oz...and neither have you? It was never published, although it was advertised in Marvel's adaptation of the second Oz book, The Land of Oz:



This book, sadly, belongs, like Jack Kirby's The New Gods #12-300, 'Mazing Man #13-50, NextWave: Agents of H.A.T.E. #13-200, The All-New Atom #26-1,000,000, or Thor the Mighty Avenger #9-12, to the Pantheon of Comics Cancelled Before Their Time. You can find the story behind the cancellation of the fully-completed Ozma of Oz in an Oz discussion forum with contributions by good Bully-Pal Eric Gjovaag and some authoritative discussion by Oz scholar, artist, and writer Eric Shanower.

What? You want more Oz-related comic booky goodness? Well, then check your common sense and canon at the door (don't lose your claim ticket!) and cast your peepers at the The World's Greatest Super Friends stranded on "The Planet of Oz"!



The World's Greatest Super Friends "The Planet of Oz" (November 10, 1979), written by Jeffrey Scott

Oooooooookay. Anyway, Happy Birthday to the very first Royal Historian of Oz, Mr. L. Frank Baum! And may your journeys always end with a happy return home!




Want more posts about Oz? Sure, we all do! See this one about Captain Carrot in Oz. And here's a page of Eric Shanower's Oz-Pastiches of famous comic book illustrators! And wouldja believe...Ben Grimm in Oz?


(More Ten of a Kind here.)

Hello Yellow Brick Road

Hey, comics fans? How well do you know your Oz! No, no, not the land down under, where women glow and men plunder, cool as that sounds. I'm talking about L. Frank Baum's Marvelous Land of Oz, which coincidentally has just been released as a graphic novel in Marvel's new Oz series written by Eric Shanower with art by Skottie Young.

Shanower's actually been an Oz creator for many years: he's scripted and drawn original Oz graphic novels, and he's written and illustrated several brand new Oz novels in the manner of Baum but in his own inimitable style, continuing the adventures told by each generation's Royal Historian of Oz. (I highly recommend Paradox in Oz by Edward Einhorn with illustrations by Shanower—it's basically Crisis on Infinite Ozes, with a wonderful two-page illustration of Ozma encountering every other version of her Her Royal Self throughout reality!



And speaking of other Ozian realities, check out this cartoon by Eric Shanower from the beautiful and very-much-missed Oz journal Oz-story. It's a piece that asks the musical question (altho' not to the tune of "Over the Rainbow") "What If™...Comics' Biggest Names Drew Oz?" How about it...how many can you guess? (aw, c'mon, take a guess!)


"If Six Cartoonists Had Drawn Oz Comics!" by Eric Shanower from Oz-story #2 (May 1996)

Leave your answers and guesses in the comments; don't cheat by looking at anyone else's comments, and remember, there is no money in Oz, so no wagering!

Sunday Morning Silents: The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914), directed by J. Farrell MacDonald and featuring Harold Lloyd as a (uncredited) Tottenhot!

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 284, What If? Week, Day 8

What If...we gave "What If Week" just...




Panel from What If? v.2 #100 (September 1997), script by Robert Piotrowski, pencils by Rurik Tyler, inks by Harry Candelario, colors by Glynis Oliver, letters by Chris Eliopoulos

Oh...oh dear. It's Earth-97103. "What If..." no, no, bear with me here... "What If..." ...wait for it... "What If The Fantastic Four landed in Oz. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

A year after this, What If? was cancelled. Coincidence? You make the call!

Still, it did give us this classic panel:

Today in Comics History, May 15: Lions and tigers and bunnies, oh my!

Today is May 15th, and on this day in 1856, Mr. L. Frank Baum, the creator and author of the fourteen original Oz books, was born in Chittenango, New York. We here at Comics Oughta Be Fun were raised on the Oz books, one of the original shared-fantasy-universe concepts (Baum populated his Oz books with characters from his other novels and vice-versa), thus providing us comic book fans with a springboard for the fantastic and the magic, not to mention your little dog, too. So sit back, put on your silver slippers, raise a glass of Oz-chohol and let's salute Baum through the magic of our favorite medium: comic books. There's certainly been no scarcity of comics based on the Oz characters and stories, some more faithful to the source material than others...


...including more than a few that take the Oz concept into decidedly non-kid-lit directions...


But one of my favorite series of Oz comics of all time is DC's 1986 miniseries, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! In The Oz-Wonderland War Trilogy. Whew! That's quite a mouthful, so let's just call it The Oz-Wonderland War from now, on shall we?


The concept's simple, fast, and fun: it merges characters and plots from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and L. Frank Baum's first three Oz books (the only ones in the public domain at the time the comic was produced) and mixing in DC's funny animal superheroes Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew (whose own book had been cancelled a couple years back). Rodney Rabbit (the mild-mannered cartoonist alter-ego of Captain Carrot) is visited by the Cheshire Cat, who calls for the Zoo Crew's help in defeating the evil Nome King (the villainous underground monarch Baum created in Ozma of Oz). Nomes live in the darkness of caverns and mine precious jewels, and are as tough and ancient as the hills themselves. Their only weakness: eggs are deadly to them. Too bad one of the Zoo Crew isn't a chicken!


from The Oz-Wonderland War #1-3 (DC, January-March 1986), script by E. Nelson Bridwell, script by Joey Cavalieri, art and additional dialogue by Carol Lay, lettering by Carl Gafford
At a council of war led by Oz's Professor H.M. Wogglebug, T.E. (Highly Magnified, Thoroughly Educated), the Zoo Crew join characters from Wonderland and Oz to plot a strategy against the Nome King, who had kidnapped many of Oz's denizens and turned them into knick-knacks (a plot first used by the Nome King in Ozma of Oz as well).


Carol Lay's beautifully detailed artwork is a delight: the Oz characters are portrayed in the same style in which they appear in the classic Oz book illustrations by John R. Neill, and the Wonderland folk are patterned after the artwork of John Tenniel. It's a credit to Lay's skill and design sense that not only do the two styles mesh wonderfully, they also work dynamically in the same panels as Captain Carrot and his band of animal heroes.


The story gives Bridwell a chance to write (and Lay a chance to portray) some of the most famous Oz characters like the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, but also some unfamiliar to you if your only exposure to Oz is the Judy Garland movie. Here, Yankee Poodle teams up with Tik-Tok, the mechanical man and Professor Wogglebug to battle Baum's giant hammering robot from Ozma of Oz:


Like all Oz authors after Baum, Bridwell also takes an opportunity to add new creations to the mythos: in this case a quartet of magically-mutated Nomes whose appearance and powers are probably more than familiar to most comic book readers:


Four super-powered Nomes? Unbeatable! Unless, of course, you gather the most amazing heroes ever to wiggle their fluffy tails! Captain Carrot is magicked away to fight these Nomish villains, along with the greatest rabbits in fantasy fiction: Hoppy the Marvel Bunny and Millie; Diana Prance, Wonder Wabbit; the Easter Bunny, the White Rabbit of Wonderland, the March Hare, Bo Bunny (from DC's comic book Funny Stuff), a rabbit from Walt Kelly's Pogo, and there's even a jackalope skulking around the edges. (Hey, where's Bugs?)


Desperate times require Captain Carrot to team up with the World's Mightiest Mammal! Chosen from among all others by the immortal elders—Salamander, Hogules, Antlers, Zebreus, Abalone and Monkury—Hoppy the Marvel Bunny travels the burrows and warrens of the land on a never ending mission: to right wrongs, to develop understanding, and to seek justice for all! In time of dire need, young Hoppy has been granted the power by the immortals to summon awesome forces at the utterance of a single word...SHAZAM!:


As the story progresses, our heroes gradually discover the enchanted artifacts that were once the leading lights of Oz....


...encountering the big names of the canon (Scarecrow! Tin Woodsman!) as well the lesser-known but still beloved, like the patchwork flying creature known as the Gump:


Finally, in the ultimate face-off against the Nome King, all appears to be lost...until Captain Carrot unveils the ultimate weapon of mass destruction: an egg. Wonderland's Humpty Dumpty, to be precise!


The Nome King is defeated, Princess Ozma of Oz is restored, and all is good and right in the Land of Oz, thanks to our stalwart heroes:


End of story? Well, sorta...until Captain Carrot returns home to Earth-C, turning his attention from fighting underground despots to fighting a comic book deadline, only to be interrupted in the final panel by the arrival of Earth-12's Inferior Five, setting us up for the next Captain Carrot mega-crossover...


...which, sadly, never occurred. The good Captain and his Crew remained unseen until their recent appearance in Teen Titans and the apocalyptic miniseries The Final Ark, which is a pity. Cap Carrot remains one of the gleefully delightful and satisfyingly silly characters and concepts of the DC Multiverse, and it's a pity a home couldn't' be found for them on at least one of DC's new 52 Earths. (In the meantime, Cap gets to nuzzle up close to Zatanna, and that's not a bad fate as fates go, after all.) I'm a long-time Oz fan and I'm ever-delighted by comics that don't take their superheroic tropes too seriously, so I've long considered The Oz-Wonderland War to be among The Most Fun Comics Ever. With more kids than ever before reading classic fantasy novels and comics, it's the perfect time to reissue this series in a trade book format. How about it, Johnny DC? Do us Cap Carrot fans a favor, and salute Mister L. Frank Baum (and Mister Lewis Carroll) at the same time. In the meantime, remember that somewhere over the rainbow, there's a magical land where rabbits, dogs, pigs and turtles fight crime. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's not too far, far away—it's waiting for you, in the back issue bins of your local comic book shop.

Happy birthday, L. Frank Baum!

If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow/Why, oh why, can't I?

I bet you know this feeling: sometimes your little head fulla beans just gets a stubborn question stuck in it and you can't get it out. You know, one of the important questions of life and philosophy that have puzzled man- and bullkind down the centuries. Where did Cain get his wife? Who built the pyramids? Who shot J.R.? And of course, the most brain-warping question of them all, one that has had me scratching my head until my hoof was sore: What is Magneto's favorite movie?

You know, you might think that's a pretty easy question to answer right off the bat. "Schindler's List," you might suggest, or "I bet Magneto's favorite flick is The Sorrow and the Pity." Possibly it might occur to you that ol' Buckethead pops in his DVD of Shoah when nobody else is around and has himself a good old cry. Then again, you simply can't deny the appeal of Saturday Night Fever to Mister Lensherr.

Well, we here at BullyLabs, after extensive research and investigation, can finally answer the question that has stymied the great minds of our time. "What is Magneto's favorite movie?" you ask? And I answer, with solid authority, "Why, a certain 1939 musical classic starring Miss Judy Garland, a film that has become a family favorite for almost seventy years, of course!"

Need some proof?


Need some proof that doesn't consist of hastily cobbled-together Photoshop panels? Well, note how a certain iconic scene in that movie...


...is adopted and homaged by slavish fanboy Magneto during his very first terrorist activity upon homo sapiens?:


Come to think of it, wouldn't an X-Men/Oz crossover adventure be the bee's knees? Magneto could ally himself with the Nome King (whom he would ruthlessly betray and threaten with magnetically-levitated eggs), safely crossing the Deadly Desert on magnetic fields to invade Oz. If he invades from the west, he'd certainly have no trouble cutting through Oz's first line of defense, Nick Chopper the Tin Woodsman:


...or mechanical man Tik-Tok:


Why, with those mutant magnetic powers, Magneto would crush Dorothy's Magic Belt and bend the Love Magnet into a pretzel! All would be at its darkest for Ozma and company until the X-Men arrive (the original line-up of five plus Professor X, please) to team up with our favorite Ozians to defeat Magneto in a cunning plan co-conceived by the two Professors: Charles Xavier and H. M. Wogglebug, T.E.

Of course, it should all be drawn by Colleen Coover, doncha think?

Ah well. A little stuffed bull can dream, can't he? Still, whatever you do, never make fun of Magneto's favorite movie: