10 Favorite Oz Illustrations by John R. Neill

       

          L. Frank Baum formulated and put Oz into words first. W.W. Denslow did a very respectable job illustrating the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and showing us what this land and its inhabitants look like. If you haven’t checked out what the original version of the book looked like, I suggest you have a gander for yourself over on Gutenberg.org. I’ll even give you a link. There’s nice use of color throughout the book; when Dorothy is in Munchkin Country everything is blue because that’s the dominant color there, then when she goes to the Emerald City and puts on those green spectacles the illustrations go green, and so on. It’s quite pretty.

However, Baum and Denslow ended up having a falling out of sorts, and as a result the next 35 Oz books were illustrated by one man, John R. Neill. Baum had initially planned there to be only 6 books, then financial trouble necessitated him to return for another 8, then he sadly died and the publishers hired Ruth Plumly Thompson to keep the series going. But with Neill’s illustrations as a constant, the transition was at least smoothed over somewhat. No disrespect to Denslow, but I prefer Neill’s artwork. He brought Oz to life in a way no other artist has. He helped teleport readers to Oz and escape their dreary lives. I even prefer his blonde Dorothy to Denslow’s stout, pigtailed redhead Dorothy. After writing even more Oz books than Baum, Thompson finally quit the series, and John R. Neill himself wrote some Oz books. These are something I still need to check out (they’re still under copyright and I’m always broke), but I hear they’re quite trippy, and chaotic. After Neill’s death, various others illustrated the Oz books, usually trying their best to replicate Neill’s style, but never quite duplicating it. Eric Shanower comes really close though.

I mentioned in my second blog post ever that I myself am working on my own Oz book. My plan, at least for the time being, is to try to self-illustrate the novel version. So, I have been studying Neill’s illustrations. I can’t quite draw like him yet; I have to insert something of my own style before it looks decent. Perhaps that’s for the best really, to stick to one’s own style. But I still want to have a go at it. If I completely fail, I suppose I can always hire an illustrator, with money I suppose I’ll have to get from somewhere.

For now, I’m just going to talk about ten illustrations of his I quite admire, but there are way more than just ten good ones. I’ll probably do a sequel blog one day with more.

We’ll start with my favorite picture of Ozma, Princess/Queen and ruler of Oz, which ought to look familiar to you if you caught my previous blog post about Oz. This picture is kind of an extra illustration, that appeared in Kabumpo in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson’s second Oz book. It doesn’t depict an actual scene in the story, it’s just a nice little portrait from the beginning of the book, before the story really starts. Neill can’t always decide how old he wants to make Ozma look in a lot of his illustrations; sometimes she looks like a little kid, sometimes a teen or even a grown woman. But this is the illustration where I think he truly captured what Ozma looks like; the beautiful fairy ruler of Oz with her big earmuff poppies, Oz logo tiara and crown, and flowing dark hair. To me, this is the true Ozma. Baum almost always spared a paragraph or two in his books to describe just how beautiful Ozma is and how much everyone in Oz loves her. You truly see that in this illustration. It’s a pity this portrait just kind of randomly appears in a later Oz book. It doesn’t get enough attention. I think it’s the best picture of Ozma anyone has ever drawn. This could have been cover art.

            Here we have Polychrome, the daughter of the Rainbow, in her first appearance in the 5^th Oz book The Road to Oz. Every Neill illustration of Polychrome is pure gold, I could really have chosen any of them. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to draw like that. This illustration depicts how Dorothy, the Shaggy Man and Button-Bright first randomly encounter her on their journey, dancing away on the side of the road. Despite her merry dancing she is actually quite sad, because she’s fallen off the rainbow and can’t get back to her father, who is kind of like the God of Rainbows. She’s like a type of fairy or demigoddess. Anyway, the thing with The Road to Oz is, it’s kind of a bland book. There’s no central antagonist, the plot has no tension, it’s basically just Dorothy wandering with this homeless guy she meets outside her house known only as the Shaggy Man, and they encounter strange communities as they somewhat aimlessly follow the road before reaching Oz. They visit a city of humanoid foxes, a city of humanoid donkeys, and we get details like exactly what they ate for breakfast at whatever town they visit, things like that. It’s a fantasy travelogue. If you really love the chapter in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends visit the Dainty China Country where everything is made of porcelain, here’s a whole book like that. The book has its fans though, and it introduces some pretty important characters that reappear in later books so it’s not good to completely skip it. But making up for the rather uneventful plot, it has some of the best Neill illustrations ever. He is at the top of his game here. I read that he was compensating for the fact that it was to be the first Oz book without color illustrations, hence they’re extra lavish and detailed. 

          Now for a color picture. Here we have Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, merrily declaring her hatred for the concept of dignity in her debut, The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Not sure I agree with her, but it must be fun to not care about dignity. I think you have to throw a little bit of your dignity away to become a successful writer. If you want to actually make money doing it that is, and not be one of those snobby literary fiction writers who look down on science fiction and fantasy authors yet sell about ten copies of their boring book a year. It’s good to just write whatever it is you want to write, and not care what the critics have to say. Sometimes it's better to just turn off your censor. I have another blog entry coming on that subject. This illustration is from one of my favorite Oz books, by the way, and it has a few more great illustrations I’ll share here. Scraps is essentially a cotton-stuffed dummy made with a patchwork quilt who was brought to life via a magic powder. The protagonist, Ojo, sort of scrambled her brains before she was brought to life because he felt bad that she was essentially being created to be a house slave. Instead when she’s brought to life, she’s independent, poetic, energetic and sassy. One of the relatively few newly-introduced characters from this late in the series to become a mainstay hereafter, right up there with the likes of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Dorothy. Most other characters from the book are relegated to cameos when they do show up. Until Ruth Plumly Thompson gave Ojo his own book that is, but now we’re off topic.

            Here we have another random artwork from Kabumpo in Oz; once again this isn’t depicting a scene that actually happens in the story. This is Glinda, the Good Witch (or Sorceress, as it seems she’d rather be called in the sequels) of the South and ruler of Quadling Country, enjoying a little downtime by reading, well, Oz books. How meta. In the Oz universe, the books exist as true accounts that were told to Baum (and the later authors), the Royal Historian of Oz, usually by Dorothy, so that they could be published and shared in our world. After Baum lost contact with Oz at the end of the 6^th book, he managed to contact Oz via wireless telegraph three years later, which allowed the series to continue (and I’m sure he was just thrilled to continue the series…nothing at all to do with financial problems…).  We’re never really told how Ruth Plumly Thompson, John R. Neill, Jack Snow or the others were getting their information from Oz. This gets to the point where later visitors to Oz from our world already know where they are because they read the previous books. Modern Oz authors who try to follow canon usually have their protagonists visiting from our world be much more familiar with the 1939 movie and have never even heard that there was a book series. Sadly, this is realistic. Anyway, I like this illustration for its subject matter. Best way to spend your day.   

            This is the header illustration from Chapter 19 of The Patchwork Girl of Oz where the gang meets up with Jack Pumpkinhead on their way to gather the magical ingredients needed to transform Ojo’s Unc Nunkie back from being accidentally turned to stone. He mainly features in The Marvelous Land of Oz, the 2^nd Oz book, where he was created by the protagonist Tip out of some sticks and a large pumpkin, and the witch Mombi decides to test her Powder of Life out on him, bringing him to life. He worries that his head will spoil and that he’ll die. It almost sounds like he does get killed off at the end of the book, but Baum retconned this and brought him back. He now just replaces his heads when they spoil. Thompson gave him his own book later on where he was a main character, but in the other books he mainly just shows up for a chapter when the characters visit him in his giant pumpkin house on a pumpkin patch, and he points them in the right direction or just makes them some pumpkin pie. He’s so fashionable here in this illustration. Anyway, I have one more illustration I want to share of him. Most illustrations of Jack are just fun to look at, but check this next one out:

            Wow Neill, way to make a lovable character look like a murderous, psychopathic serial killer! Are these the heads of his victims? Is he ensuring that he is the only pumpkinhead in Oz? In actuality, this depicts him carving his own replacement head, and being a perfectionist, throwing away the ones he made a small mistake on. Still pretty macabre though. I love morbid things, so this illustration amuses me.  

            So these sketches come from Handy Mandy in Oz, my absolute favorite Ruth Plumly Thompson book. Mandy is a seven-armed goat herder who ends up shot through the air via a geyser and landing in Oz. Mandy is strong, sassy, and doesn’t take lip from anyone. She completely carries that book with her personality alone. It doesn’t matter to me if the villain’s plot (stealing the most powerful magic artifacts of Oz) has been done before in a previous Oz book (Baum’s The Lost Princess of Oz), nor that everything’s solved via contrived deus ex machina. Seeing Mandy and her interactions with the much more serious Nox the Ox, and the way their personalities bounce off one another but they develop a strong bond, makes reading and re-reading the book worth it. And she’s such a unique character. In no way is she "disabled". She uses her arms to her full advantage. In her mind, she’s the normal one, everyone else is a disabled weirdo for having only two arms. Haven’t you ever wished for more than two arms? If not, become a parent sometime. You will. Now I just love these sketches because you can see that Neill was practicing having to draw a seven-armed goat herder; not an easy task. None of these scenes happen in the book. They’re just Mandy in different poses. Almost like a model sheet. It reminds me of how the inside of my sketchbooks end up looking when I’m designing a character. We get Scarecrow and Scraps as a little cameo too. 

            And here we have Woot the Wanderer, a young vagabond appearing in the book The Tin Woodman of Oz who got bored one day and just decided to explore Oz for the rest of his life, gratefully drinking a gigantic cup of coffee offered to him by a giant witch (who later transforms him into a green monkey against his will; a signature trope in Oz books by the way, someone getting transformed against their will). This would make a perfect “When you…” meme. It’s me after a night of insomnia. 

Woot is such a wasted character, by the way. He only ever appears in this one book. I’m not aware of any modern Oz books that really utilize him either. 

            I know this illustration is marred by a page break in the middle, but just try to overlook that for a moment and appreciate how badass this illustration is. This is Princess Planetty of Anuther Planet from The Silver Princess in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, escaping her homeworld on her black steed, galloping through the void of space only to land in the Land of Ix, one of Oz’s neighboring countries. So, we get some sci-fi mixed with our fantasy here. Neill must have had a blast drawing this character because she gets tons of illustrations throughout the book, and they’re all really good. But there is, unfortunately, a big elephant in the room when it comes to this book, and it's not Kabumpo. It’s only too bad that the second half of this book is one of the most racist things you’ll ever read. Planetty, Kabumpo the elephant, and Prince Randy of Regalia (one of Oz’s semi-autonomous micronations) help put down a slave rebellion and rescue the slave-owner, depicted as a “good guy”, Jinnicky the Red Jinn (a character I hate not only for being a racist slave-owner, but also for always ruining good plots with his deus ex machina, but that’s besides the point really). And the illustrations for this part are quite racist too. It really makes Huckleberry Finn look progressive by comparison. So, while the first half of the book is actually pretty good, or at least the characters are interesting and they interact well, it gets ruined. Planetty is a cool character, it’s just too bad she’s in this book. It made me sad when I first read it. Read this one with utmost caution; it is public domain, you can find it on Gutenberg if you're curious. It’s still a badass illustration though, right? Just look at the skill with which this illustration was drawn.

So yes, back to The Patchwork Girl of Oz. This is the last illustration in the book, where Ojo, after enduring a long, difficult and at times seemingly hopeless journey, full of hardships, finally succeeds in saving his beloved Unc Nunkie from being turned to stone, and they have a loving embrace. It’s almost like the end of An American Tail when Fievel finally reunites with his family. Awwww. I have something in my eye now. I’m not crying, you’re crying. It’s such a satisfying end to the book, that you won’t really get if you’re reading an edition of the book without Neill’s illustrations. There’s so much heart put into this. I love how Ojo has to stand on his tip-toes while Unc Nunkie has to crouch a bit for them to hug, Ojo losing his hat in the moment. You just see the father-son love between them both. It’s little details like that which make a good illustration. It not only compliments but completes the narrative. Baum doesn’t really go into a lot of detail about this particular moment, but seeing it is worth a thousand words. In short, this illustration made the story even better.

Anyway, that’s ten illustrations. Let’s do this again sometime. Next time I talk about Oz on here, it will probably be the book reviews. Probably. I don’t really know what I’m doing day-to-day on this blog. I came up for the idea for today's blog entry last night at 4am while suffering insomnia, and watching the silent movie adaptation of The Patchwork Girl of Oz to goth music. Fun times.