The Illustrious Illustrators of Oz

What does Oz look like?

For most people it probably looks like the MGM movie, perhaps with a dash of Broadway’s Wicked thrown in.  And in a few short months, if Hollywood dreams come true, the upcoming Sam Raimi movie might just redefine Oz for a whole new generation.  But those of us who grew up with Baum’s books have a whole different perspective.

Even if you’ve never picked up an edition of The Wizard of Oz, you’ve probably seen some of the original illustrations by William Wallace Denslow.  They’ve appeared on greeting cards, calendars, and stamps; on mugs, keychains, and t-shirts; and they pop up whenever a magazine does an Oz retrospective or analysis (a surprisingly frequent event).  Even though Denslow’s  short, stolid Dorothy is not as ubiquitous as Judy Garland’s, she’s still carved out a niche for herself in popular iconography.  Here’s a random sampling:  http://theworldofoz.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=10624283

In order to get the full Denslow experience, you really need a facsimile of the original edition.  Its highly wrought color scheme and beautiful color plates were something of a sensation in their time and are still impressive now.  Plain black and white editions don’t do them justice.  But even the most cursory Google search will turn up examples of Denslow’s template-setting Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion, as well as his bizarrely pigtailed Wicked Witch of the West.

The fact remains, however, that Denslow illustrated only one Oz book – albeit the most famous.  He and Baum fell out and went their separate ways before anyone realized that Wizard marked the beginning of something big.

Would Denslow have been so quick to go solo if he’d known?  We can’t say.  Go solo he did, though, with the fateful result that a young man called John R. Neill was hired to illustrate the next title, The Marvelous Land of Oz.  http://www.johnrneill.net/intro.html  Neill seems to have had a taste for regular paychecks, because he went on to illustrate twelve more Baum Oz titles (plus several non-Oz Baums), all nineteen of Ruth Plumley Thompson’s, and three more that he wrote himself.  It was and is a genre-defining achievement, by far the greatest and most comprehensive visual exploration of Oz ever, and one that gave us indelible images of such beloved post-Wizard characters as Ozma, the Patchwork Girl, Shaggy Man, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Wogglebug, the Sawhorse, Polychrome, and countless others.  Neill is a rock star.

His style couldn’t have been more different from Denslow’s.  Where Denslow tended toward the short and stubby, Neill tended toward the long and flowing, with strong echoes from the aesthetic movement.  He was more versatile, too.  His non-human characters are endlessly inventive and delightful, and his renderings of Oz architecture are spectacular.  For many Oz book fans, Neill’s Oz is the ultimate Oz, the true Oz – and yet, because he did not illustrate Wizard, he is little known outside the Oz fan world.  It’s a sad irony.

I love my Neill.  There are areas in which I take issue with him, though, not least of which is his tendency to make boys look like chorus girls in drag.  He didn’t start out this way.  Boys figure prominently in Land of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and Sky Island, and they’re perfectly fine.  But starting with Patchwork Girl of Oz, we get a sudden infusion of pretty that’s above and beyond the call of aesthetics.  Scroll down this page http://vovatia.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/everythings-coming-up-ojo/ for a particularly awful color plate of Ojo the Lucky with his friend Button-Bright – who just happen to be the boy heroes of MY stories.  It rankles me!  Nevertheless, Neill is our man and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.  Where would Oz be without him?  Thanks for everything, John R.!