Map from the book
The Ozmapolitan of Oz is a modern Oz novel written and illustrated by veteran Oz artist Dick Martin; it was published by The International Wizard of Oz Club in 1986, and is considered #44 in the Sovereign Sixty and Supreme Seventy-Five numbering systems.
Summary[]
A 15-year-old Ozian boy named Septimius Septentrion has worked at The Ozmapolitan in the Emerald City for all of three weeks. A chance encounter with Dorothy Gale inspires him with a plan to juice up the sleepy newspaper. A trip to investigate and drum up news is planned through the Winkie Country; "Tim" and Dorothy are accompanied by the kitten Eureka and a mifket named Jinx, a printer's devil at the paper.
Unsurprisingly, the excursion does not go as planned. The would-be journalists encounter strange beings and phenomena, including cryptic fortune cookies, a Trade Wind, an Art Colony, and a Game Preserve. They take a long subterranean river journey, during which they tangle with a dragon-like Tyranicus Terrificus and rescue a frozen water spirit named Melody, a cousin of Polychrome. After meeting up with the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman in their boat the Blue Moon, the juvenile reporters return to the capital with abundant fresh material; in the process, Tim discovers his secret royal ancestry.
(The idea of the Scarecrow and Tin Man as boaters derives from "The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman," one of the six Little Wizard Stories of Oz.)
Background[]
Chris Dulabone's The Colorful Kitten of Oz contains an Afterword that discusses Martin's book.
"Ozmapolitan"[]
Baum's publisher Reilly & Britton coined the term "Ozmapolitan" in 1904, for promotional materials generated in connection with Baum's second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. The firm created advertising in the form of a newspaper of Oz called The Ozmapolitan, with another issue in 1905 to promote The Woggle-Bug Book. It is possible though not certain that Baum wrote some of the early Ozmapolitan press releases. The company used the same tactic in 1926, 1927, and 1928 to promote some of the books of Ruth Plumly Thompson, and again in 1963, 1965, and 1970 for other projects, including the McGraws' Merry Go Round in Oz, illustrated by Martin.
The International Wizard of Oz Club also used The Ozmapolitan as the name of a periodical in 1986, edited and illustrated by Martin, to promote his novel of similar name. Hungry Tiger Press revived the newsletter in 1995, 1998, and 2000 to promote its Oz-story Magazine. Since 2010, Blair Frodelius has maintained a blog called "The Daily Ozmapolitan: News from Glinda's Great Book of Records."[1][2][3]
Teen hero[]
Martin departs from the practice of Baum, by selecting a teenager as a protagonist rather than a younger child. He does not go as far as a few later writers do (see David Hardenbrook's The Unknown Witches of Oz or Charles Phipps's The Umbrella Man of Oz) in making the young man a love interest for the heroine.
Artists and writers[]
With this book, Martin won a place on the short list of Oz artists who have doubled as authors - a list that includes John R. Neill, Eric Shanower, and William Campbell and Irwin Terry. Notably, these individuals tend to start as artists and expand to writing, rather than the other way around.
References[]
- Katharine M. Rogers. L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz: A Biography, New York, St. Martin's Press, 2002.
External links[]
- ↑ Bill Campbell, "The Ozmapolitan," The Oz Enthusiast, December 12, 2008. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
- ↑ David Maxine, "The Newspaper of The Land of Oz," Hungry Tiger Press. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
- ↑ Jane Albright, "Blair Frodelius," The Oz Club, January 15, 2024. Retrieved 25 January 2024.