Why Oz?

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum was published in 1900.

It has been adapted for the stage and screen, followed up by dozens of official and unofficial sequels, turned into comics and cartoons, translated and adapted into over fifty languages, inspired songs, analyzed by academics and armchair philosophers, and become a staple of American childhood.

“Wicked,” a revisionist Oz novel by Gregory Maguire tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, archvillainess of the original story.

It has spawned three sequels, a critically acclaimed Broadway musical and a possible TV series.

Perhaps more famous than other adaptions is the 1939 MGM film “The Wizard of Oz,” which often eclipses the original itself.

Elements of the film, such as the slippers being red instead of silver and the witch being green, have become essential aspects of the Oz story in the public conscience.

Why does 114-year-old story still resonate with audiences? What about Baum’s original is so powerful and simple that his work is still so ingrained in the public imagination?

Oz is just that, simple. It doesn’t hide what it’s about. It’s about the importance of home. It’s about self-doubt and self-confidence. It’s about friendship.

It’s a fairy tale, and its simplicity is its strength.

It means what it means and it says what it says, and we can see ourselves in it.

Storytellers can mold it like clay to fit their whims.

Superheroes: The Dark Age

The Dark Age of Comics begins, more or less, in 1986 with the publication of Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns."
The Dark Age was characterized by increasingly edgy characters in violent stories.
The Dark Age began with good intentions. Moore and Miller, among others, crafted some of the first comics to be taken seriously as literature.
Their books deconstructed larger-than-life heroes that hadn't questioned themselves. They asked questions about power, justice and the common man.
Moore, Miller and some of their contemporaries wrote stories that dared to be serious even if they were about men in tights. They wrote stories that pushed the limits of the genre and questioned the genre, the people creating it and the people consuming it.
Their books sold, and the industry took the wrong message.Superheroes were anti-heroes with ethics only a little better than their foes.
Sex and gore splashed across the panels, and the high standards of previous generations of heroes were laughed off the page.
Ultimately, they created stories as ludicrous as any Silver Age goody-two-shoes. Anti-heroes blasted their way from comic to comic with huge guns, inhuman musculature, and costumes covered in spikes.
Bad art and bad storytelling reigned.
The Dark Age came to an end with a boom. In 1996 DC Comics published "Kingdom Come." This story by Mark Waid defied the dark trend of the times.
The book critiques the Dark Age by having the Justice League come out of semi-retirement to face off against a new generation of heroes.
These new heroes, drawn straight from the Dark Age, have killed all their foes and brawl in the streets with no regard for the bystanders.
Ultimately, Waid manages to expose flaws in both the old and new heroes, fusing the thoughtfulness of the best of the Dark Age with the idealism of older comics.