Crossover Oz is a notable subgenre of alternate Oz that usually incorperates other fairy tale characters and settings with those from Oz.
Some entries are based on many fairy tale characters interacting with one another such as Once Upon a Time, Fables, Grimm Fairy Tales, and Lost Girls.
The most common single pairing is with Wonderland as there is the Oz-Wonderland series, The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles, The Oz/Wonderland War, along with the upcoming book The Red Queen of Oz. The inhabitants of Bunnybury are described as wearing clothes which would not much unlike the White Rabbit. An outright merger of the Land of Oz and Wonderland, referred to as The Wozenderlands, would take place in the DC Universe as part of the 2019 storyline Shazam! and the Seven Magic Realms.
Another common pairing is Neverland as the 4th and 5th book in the Oz-Wonderland series are entitled The Marvelous Neverland of Oz and Peter of Oz respectfully. There is also the comic book series Peter Pan and the Warlords of Oz.
Other examples include an episode of The Oz Kids called The Monkey Prince is inspired by the Chinese story of The Monkey King while the Russian version of Pinocchio called Buratino appears in the Magic Land book Buratino in the Emerald City by Leonid Vladimirsky.
The reason for these pairings is usually comparative and perhaps competition between fairy tales regarding their different well developed characters and worlds. Back in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the different stories faced competition in the market as they do today. The works of Hans Christian Andersen were published between 1835-1875, Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, Andrew Lang was writing English translations of foreign fairy tales from 1889-1913, and J. M. Barrie wrote the play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up in 1904 before turning it into the novel Peter and Wendy in 1911.
The original title of The Magical Monarch of Mo was entitled A New Wonderland as with the title of his 1901 book American Fairy Tales, L. Frank Baum focused on creating a unique sort of stories in order to compete with these European based examples.
He wrote fairy tale stories starting with Mother Goose in Prose in 1897 until his last Oz book Glinda of Oz published in 1920.
Notes[]
- Some of the entries are quite similar enough so that it may lead to confusion as:
- Almost all include numerous worlds that can be visited as for how Oz can connect to other places such as Earth and Wonderland.
- Fables and Once Upon a Time are both based on characters being banished from their realms
- Dorothy has a violent vendetta with Cinderella in the miniseries Cinderella: Fables are Forever, while Cinderella becomes a "serial killer" within the Grimm Fairy Tale timeline.