Since it is Thanksgiving, I feel pretty much obligated to write something related to the holiday, but it can be hard to come up with ideas. I could always say what I'm thankful for, but that's a bit trite, isn't it? So what is Thanksgiving actually about? Sure, it's about feeling grateful, and about how English pilgrims couldn't have survived without the help of the Native Americans, whom they eventually killed off through war and disease. But more than that, it's a harvest festival, and such occasions are known throughout the world. It's actually a bit late in the year when compared to other harvest celebrations, but George Washington sometimes declared days of thanksgiving in December. It was Abraham Lincoln who made Thanksgiving a national holiday and set it in November. Regardless, seeing as how it's intended to honor the harvest, we can perhaps say that the people who insist on calling it "Turkey Day" are actually right in a way, because it's about food. Many holidays are, really.


One item that tends to be associated with Thanksgiving in this country is the cornucopia, or horn of plenty. This is actually a quite old symbol, which Wikipedia informs us dates back at least as far as the fifth century BC. Back then, it was commonly associated with Amalthea, the goat who suckled Zeus in his childhood. The Romans would later depict it as a property of Fortuna, the goddess of...well, I think you can figure that out from her name. Christians also use it, although some evangelicals think horns are of the Devil.


The cornucopia probably appears in some fairy tales, but I can't think of any examples offhand. I do remember a story about a magic grinder that could produce any food, and ended up filling the entire ocean with salt. Tales involving objects that can produce unlimited amounts of something often extol the dangers of not giving them specific instructions. Two of my favorite fantasy series definitely used cornucopias in particular. In Ruth Plumly Thompson's Handy Mandy in Oz, one of Nox the Ox's golden horns produces whatever the person turning and removing it asks for. The term "cornucopia" isn't used, but the literal translation "horn of plenty" is. And in Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, Tiffany Aching receives a cornucopia. If I remember correctly, it would obey instructions, but only if given in Ephebian (the Discworld equivalent of Greek).

After my post on lunar mythology last Saturday, I've been trying to think of other moon-related posts I can make. I went with balloons and rubber for my Oz posts, although maybe they can be tied in through Notta Bit More's song in The Cowardly Lion of Oz about the moon being a balloon held by the Sandman. L. Frank Baum actually used the Man in the Moon in at least two stories. Mother Goose in Prose includes an adaptation of the nursery rhyme about the Man in the Moon visiting Norwich and burning my mouth on cold pease porridge, with Baum offering an amusing explanation as to how such a thing would occur. Queen Zixi of Ix has the fairies of Burzee asking the Man in the Moon to decide on the recipient of their newly-made magic cloak, and if I remember correctly the film version (known as The Magic Cloak of Oz) shows him as simply a face in the moon. John R. Neill also added the Man in the Moon to his drawing of Mr. Tinker visiting the satellite.


Anyway, since Wednesday is often video game day here at Stratovania, I tried to think of video games that utilized the moon, and the one that immediately came to mind was Final Fantasy IV. This game takes place on a world with two moons, one of which was artificially constructed by the inhabitants of a planet between Mars and Jupiter when their old home blew up. (Yes, apparently the Final Fantasy solar system is basically the same as ours.) They became known as Lunarians, and spent their time sleeping inside the Lunar Palace. That is, until a Lunarian named KluYa decided he wanted to visit the Earth, where he introduced several new technologies, and married an Earth woman who bore him two sons. Late in the game, your characters, led by KluYa's son Cecil, find the Lunarian's old spaceship and fly it back to the moon, where the final battles of the game take place. While the main location there is the palace, with the main villain Zemus lurking far underneath it, the natural satellite is also the home of the dragon Bahamut, a mainstay of the series, whom Rydia can summon if the party beats him in battle. A village there is inhabited by the Humingway family, of which the infamous Namingway is a member. He somehow journeyed to Earth to enter the business of changing people's names, and he shows up in pretty much every town. I also feel that I should mention the Pink Puffs, elusive inhabitants of the Lunar Palace basement who will very occasionally give you a pink tail when defeated.

In addition to the balloon people I discussed the other day, the Oz books also have other characters and societies made out of rubber. One such creature is Para Bruin, the Rubber Bear, who makes his first appearance in John Dough and the Cherub. He's capable of stretching and bouncing, and he joined John in his flight from the Isle of Mifkets to Hiland and Loland. When the gingerbread man was crowned king of these two countries, Para became his Chief Counselor. He puts in an appearance in The Road to Oz, accompanying his monarch to the Emerald City and performing a demonstration of his bouncing for Ozma and her guests. Another notable rubber character is the Bell-Snickle, but I've already covered him.


In Tik-Tok, the party of adventurers journeys through the Rubber Country, a part of Ev where the ground, rocks, and trees are made entirely of rubber. A brook runs through this country, but its water somehow doesn't get things wet. There don't appear to be any inhabitants of this dull gray territory, which is right above the Nome Kingdom. In fact, Ruggedo and Kaliko try to delay the travelers using magnetic rubber wires, but learning they can safely walk through the brook allows them to thwart the Nomes' mischief.


Purple Prince contains a brief visit to the rubber city of Squee Gee Ville, which is apparently located quite close to the Emerald City, yet there's no sign of any communication between the two towns. That seems to be the way of the reclusive communities in Oz, though. The people, known as Squee Gees, are based on old rubber dolls that would talk when you squeezed them. This means that they have to squeeze or punch each other in order to hold a conversation, making a discussion look rather like a battle. Randy and Kabumpo leave the rubber city without even spending an entire chapter there, bouncing out on the springy rubber of which the ground is made, which is kind of weird as elephants can't jump. Yeah, I know they can't talk either, but suspension of disbelief is easier when fantasy characters are portrayed realistically in most ways. Oh, well. Anyway, the Squee Gee encounter is brief and uneventful, but it did introduce the phrase "exsqueeze me" decades before Wayne's World.

Finally, while Dorothy and Percy are chasing after Singra in Wicked Witch, they come across a rubber band. If you've been paying attention to how many puns there are in the series, you wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they're people made of rubber who play instruments. They play a few songs for the pursuers, but there isn't a whole lot more to say about them.

Since the balloon had been a popular toy for some time by the period in which the Oz books were written, it's not too surprising that they would appear as characters in the series. The first example of living toy balloons (as opposed to the non-living hydrogen-filled balloon that the Wizard used to reach Oz in the first place) appears in The Tin Woodman of Oz, in which the main characters visit Loonville, a forest clearing in the Gillikin Country inhabited by the Loons. They're made of rubber and filled with air, aside from the king, who contains a lighter-than-air gas and is tied to his throne with a string. The king's name is Bal Loon, and he was appointed ruler because he had less common sense than any of his fellows. Other notable Loons are Panta and Til, the former of whom was an advisor with a rather inflated opinion of himself, and the latter the one in charge of mending and re-inflating punctured Loons. The jokes behind Bal and Panta are obvious, but what does "Til Loon" mean? Well, someone who read the original handwritten manuscript reported that it was originally "Sal Loon," but that didn't go over too well at the time. Because a kid reading a play on the word "saloon" will automatically want to shoot whiskey, right? Don't ask me what the logic is behind this. I guess Wal, the Loon from Belgium, didn't play a part in this particular story for whatever reason. {g} This video includes the Loonville portion of the recent computer-animated take on Tin Woodman, and gives King Bal a surfer dude kind of voice. I'm sure that wasn't what Baum was thinking of when writing the character, but it works pretty well.



While the Loons are the only balloon people in Baum's Oz books, Thompson introduced some of two of her additions to the canon. In Hungry Tiger, Ozma is kidnapped by a giant balloon man named Atmos Fere, an explorer from the Cloud Country who descends to the surface of the Earth using a pair of iron boots. Ozma punctures him in order to escape, but when the two get to understand each other better, they become friends. A blacksmith in Ev named Rusty Ore re-inflates Atmos, and he and Ozma eventually join Evered of Rash in his search for the missing Rash Rubies.



Finally, in Gnome King, Peter Brown encounters Sandaroo, the Lord High Bouncer of Balloona, on a street corner in Philadelphia. He is described as having a "dark and merry" face, and "his long pointed beard and slouch hat gave him the appearance of a merchant from some far country." He sells Peter a green balloon, which turns into a bird and tries to take Peter to Balloon Island, where he would serve Queen Luna as an airrend boy. As the balloon bird relates, the Queen's servants were always exploding, so she had Sandaroo search abroad for a more solid one. We never get to see Balloona, as Peter lets go of the bird's leg and lands in the Nonestic Ocean near Ruggedo's Island, but the descriptions given by the bird make it sound like not only the people are inflated like balloons, but so is the island itself. If there's some kind of link between these balloon countries, it's never explicitly stated, but maybe Loonville was settled by exiles from Balloon Island, or vice versa.



By the way, happy birthday to fellow Oz fan graycardinal!

First of all, happy birthday to annamatic!

Next, I think I'll follow up my Oogaboo post by featuring another kingdom on the outskirts of Oz. This time, it's Jinxland, an area in the southeastern Quadling Country with a rather tumultuous political history. It's largely separated from the rest of Oz, being surrounded by mountains and a great gulf, aside from where it borders the Deadly Desert. Because of this isolation, it's a popular dwelling place for illegal witches, most prominently the one-eyed Blinkie. Jinxland is a quite beautiful land, but when Trot and Cap'n Bill arrive there in The Scarecrow of Oz, it has a quite unpleasant ruler, with the rather telling name of King Krewl. Not too long before, the ruler had been the beneficent King Kynd, but his Prime Minister Phearse pushed him into the Great Gulf, and usurped the throne. Phearse later got into an argument with his own Prime Minister Krewl, and the latter buried the former under rocks at the bottom of a lake. During the course of the book, Krewl himself is eventually deposed by the Scarecrow, with help from a flock of Orks.



Another significant part of the plot of Scarecrow involves Kynd's daughter Gloria, who is being raised by her uncle King Krewl, falling in love with Phearse's son Pon. At this time, Pon is working as a gardener's boy, and the King is determined to marry Gloria to the old and rich Lord Googly-Goo. The American visitors don't think much of Pon, who's somewhat of a wuss. Really, though, I can kind of identify with him, and he's quite loyal despite his fragility. Anyway, after the Scarecrow shows up and conquers King Krewl, Gloria is crowned Queen of Jinxland, and Pon becomes her consort. Krewl himself is demoted to gardener's assistant, and forced to change his name to Grewl.



As with Oogaboo, Jinxland also makes some return appearances in apocryphal books and stories. Most significantly, Phyllis Ann Karr's The Gardener's Boy of Oz provides a lot of additional details about the history of the kingdom. According to this story, King Kynd's wife and Gloria's mother was named Tralynda, and she was also largely responsible for raising Pon. Phearse never married or had children of his own, Pon actually being a child he bought from the Wicked Witch Blinkie so that he could marry Pon to Gloria and legitimize his own reign. One issue that remains confusing, however, is how Krewl and Gloria are related. She refers to him as her uncle in Scarecrow, but since there's a reference in Gardener's Boy to Krewl wanting to marry Tralynda, he's obviously not her brother. So he's either not technically her uncle (which is certainly possible), and Kynd and Krewl are brothers. While this latter would make sense, I don't recall anyone in Gardener's Boy acknowledging it, and wouldn't Krewl's being a blood relative of Kynd's mean he would have been ahead of Phearse in line for the throne? Then again, that's assuming we really know how the laws of succession in Jinxland work. Anyway, Gardener's Boy reveals the fates of Kynd, Tralynda, and Phearse; and the former two are restored to the throne, leaving Pon and Gloria much more free time.

First of all, happy birthday to goldenmoonbear!



For my Oz post today, I'm going to take a look at Oogaboo, a small valley nestled in the mountains in the northwestern (not southwestern, as I originally wrote) corner of Oz. While Oogaboo is officially a kingdom, it's a tiny one. At the beginning of Tik-Tok of Oz, the population is given as eighteen men, twenty-seven women, and forty-four children. All of the men are named Jo, with their surnames being the crop in which they specialize. While a few of them grow normal items like apples and plums, others farm anything from ice cream cones to sandwiches to banjos. The kingdom is ruled by the Soforth family, whom I've guessed might have been named because they were the ones who handled all of the crops not covered by the others. After King Jol Jemkiph Soforth left Oogaboo, later followed by his wife, their daughter Ann became Queen. Part of the plot of Tik-Tok involves how Ann, being dissatisfied with her own kingdom, set out to conquer the world with an army comprised of the few men in Oogaboo (aside from Jo Candy, who absolutely refused to enlist). Not surprisingly, she didn't succeed, but she and her army DID play a role in conquering Ruggedo, and were allowed to take some of the wealth of the Nome Kingdom home with them. I'm not entirely sure what good the jewels would have done in what basically seems to be a closed, self-sufficient economy, but I suppose we can't underestimate the appeal of shiny objects. Also, Jo Files, the only Oogabooite who decided to become a private soldier instead of an officer, met his wife Ozga, the former Rose Princess, while on the Queen's foolish mission.



Despite the lack of size and prestige for Oogaboo, its location in the very corner of the land makes it a convenient landmark, and I can recall references in Tin Woodman, Glinda, and Gnome King to locations being identified relative to the small valley kingdom. It even appears on the maps in Gregory Maguire's Wicked series, although he changed the spelling to "Ugabu." There are also several apocryphal books and stories that feature Oogaboo prominently. In "Nero Zeero, Snoz of Oz," Queen Ann marries the title character, the king of the nearby valley of Snozland, where the people believe that intelligence is relative to nose size. Karyl Carlson and Eric Gjovaag's Queen Ann has the Queen search for her parents, and gives some interesting additional details about the kingdom, as well as bringing in some of the children as significant characters. Kids in Oogaboo are encouraged to cultivate their own new crops, after which they take the names of these crops, like their parents did before. The name "Jol Jemkiph Soforth" is also explained, with "Jol" being identified as a more archaic form of the standard Oogabooish name "Jo," and a jemkiph being a date book. Jol's wife and Ann's mother is named Dede, and the search party eventually locates both parents. In David Hulan's Glass Cat, Oogaboo is invaded by Bad Lads with guns, and it takes the efforts of several Ozian celebrities to drive them off. Finally, Melody Grandy and Chris Dulabone's Thorns and Private Files has Jo and Ozga Files trying to unravel the mystery of the nearby Kingdom of Cyrune, which is finally resolved in Zim Greenleaf.



Not much detail is given about the history of Oogaboo prior to fairly recent years, but its organization suggests that it might have been started as a commune of sorts, which developed into a kingdom over the years. While small and not too prosperous, it appears to be largely self-sustaining, and the people are quite content when not being roped into Ann's crazy schemes. Queen Ann has the title character making Oogaboo somewhat less insular by setting up trade with other nearby kingdoms.

Is there a trick to getting celebrities to reply on Twitter? Yeah, I'm sure there isn't, but I'm still kind of amazed that I've received two replies from Amanda Palmer, who has 192,162 followers. The occasional reply to a fan is actually a really clever marketing technique, though. Even if you only reply every once in a while, it presents the illusion of actual conversation. I guess Amanda has always tried to maintain a good rapport with her fans, but I think it could also work for less sociable celebrities.

The constant changes to the Facebook interface just reinforce what I've pretty much thought from the first, which is that it's SUPPOSED to be confusing. It's chaos with small bits of order, which is the worst kind of chaos (except possibly the end boss of the first Final Fantasy). I have more contacts on Facebook than any other site, yet I check and update it considerably less than I do LiveJournal, Twitter, or Tumblr. I do try to link to my more interesting LJ entries, but I'm not sure how many people go here from there, although I know a few have.

This past weekend, I read through the archives of Questionable Content. I'm pretty sure I'd seen it linked from various communities before, what with its plethora of references, but I'd never read it with any regularity before. I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the characters; as bizarrely exaggerated as some of them are, they seem like people I'd want to hang out with. Too bad they're, y'know, fictional. That's the story of my life, though. As much as I love the magic, humor, and weirdness in the Oz books, a large part of their appeal for me (especially in my junior high years) was always how accepting the fairyland was of characters who didn't fit in elsewhere.

Speaking of web comics, Captain SNES has FINALLY resolved the standoff between Alex and the Sinistrals, and Chaos has shown up in 8-Bit Theater. Now that latter one is a comic where I DON'T want to hang out with the cast, as amusing as they might be. Too much chance of being stabbed or Hadokened. {g}

Some time ago, I had a dream somehow involving a bus labeled as the "Hopper-Horner Express." I'm not sure if this is something that would really work in Oz, considering that the Hoppers and Horners live in a cavern in the rocky mountains of the Quadling Country, but who knows? Anyway, the Hoppers and Horners are perpetual rivals, with their villages separated by a marble picket fence. The Hoppers have only one leg each, and hence have to hop to get around. They live in marble houses, of which there are only about fifty. The only Hopper mentioned by name in the Oz series proper is Hip Hopper, the Champion Wrestler.



The Horners are called that because they each have one horn, about six inches long, in the middle of their foreheads. They have light brown skin and three-colored hair, with red at the bottom, then yellow and green. They dress in white robes, and wear no shoes. Radium mining is their chief industry, and they decorate the insides of their houses with the radioactive metal. (At the time when the book was written, radium was considered a miraculous substance, and its hazardous qualities were not yet known. Perhaps, being Ozites and all, the Horners are immune to radiation poisoning, but I have to wonder if their odd appearances are due in part to the heavy radioactivity of the area.) While the radium makes their homes quite pretty on the inside, the outsides are simply made of dull gray stone. The Horners argue that they actually LIVE indoors, and that the Hopper houses are actually quite ugly inside. The Horners are known for their terrible jokes, at which they all laugh uproariously. Oddly enough, as raucous as the adult Horners are, they raise their children (or their daughters, at least; we don't see any sons in the story) in a quite puritanical fashion, forcing them to be quiet and polite. During the time of Patchwork Girl, the Horners are led by a chief named Jak. (Get it?)



It was actually one of the Horners' bad jokes that led to war at the time Ojo and Scraps visited the cavern. Diksey Horner joked that the Hoppers had less understanding than the Horners, because they had fewer legs. His thinking was that the legs are UNDER a person and used for STANDING, but not surprisingly, the Hoppers didn't get it. Diksey eventually explained the joke and conflict was averted, but it wasn't the last time that trouble would arise between the two groups. In Royal Book, the Hoppers and Horners are at war once again, and it takes Glinda's magic to bring them into line. Hopper-Horner conflict has since become sort of a running gag in Oz stories, with mentions of wars between them appearing in Forbidden Fountain and Blue Witch, among others. They're pretty much always offstage, though, so we don't know the details.



Fred Otto reused the Horners in his short story "Mombi's Purple Polkadot Vest," in which it's revealed that Mombi's four-horned cow (mentioned in Land) is actually a four-horned Horner named Phogg under enchantment. Because of his extra horns, Phogg was a wizard, and served as town leader. At the end of the story, he is planning to take back his old position, so that raises the question as to what would happen with Chief Jak.

Despite the time in which they were written, the Oz books are relatively free from cringe-worthy racial stereotypes. Well, except for The Woggle-Bug Book, but that doesn't really count, does it? One exception is in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, which introduces the Tottenhots, a wild and mischievous black tribe that lives on the plains near the Winkie-Quadling border. The name is obviously a play on "Hottentot," which is what European settlers originally called the Khoikhoi people [1] of southwestern Africa. The book describes them as follows: "Their skins were dusky and their hair stood straight up, like wires, and was brilliant scarlet in color. Their bodies were bare except for skins fastened around their waists and they wore bracelets on their ankles and wrists, and necklaces, and great pendant earrings." They live in houses that look like overturned kettles, with cushioned floors, and are nocturnal. I can't say I ever found their portrayal offensive, but then I'm a white guy. When Books of Wonder published an edition of Patchwork Girl, they left out some of the descriptors and one of the illustrations of a Tottenhot. There is an additional dose of offensiveness in Rinkitink, with a Tottenhot being described as "a lower form of a man," and apparently less human than a Mifket (described in John Dough and the Cherub as being sort of halfway between human and animal). When Books of Wonder published this one, they didn't alter any of the text, but they removed an illustration.



The post-Baum books contain some stereotypical portrayals of different ethnic groups, and Neill's drawings were often worse than the descriptions. Royal Book has the pseudo-Asian Silver Island, and other books bring in Arabian-style countries. I've already discussed the black slave revolt in Silver Princess; and Wonder City says that the Emerald City fire department is made up of "Fire Injuns," depicted as Indian heads on wheels. Most of these seem pretty harmless to me, but they're definitely embarrassments when I describe the books to others.



[1] As with many tribes, "khoi" apparently just means "people." So my phrasing would literally translate to "people people people."

countblastula had a meme up about which authors he'd read the most books by, and that seems like a pretty cool activity. I'm actually not sure who my top author would be, though. L. Frank Baum would definitely rank pretty highly, and I've read most of his fantasy, but surprisingly little of his other works (no Mary Louise or Boy Fortune Hunters, for instance). Terry Pratchett would also have to rank up there, as I've read every Discworld book plus Good Omens. There are times when I read more by series than author, although if I like one series, I'll sometimes branch out into an author's other work. Let me try for a Top Five:

1. Terry Pratchett - 38 - Thirty-seven Discworld books (including the young adult ones), plus Good Omens (co-written with Neil Gaiman, but I'm counting it anyway)

2. Piers Anthony - 32 - All of the Xanth books except the latest one, which I'm working on now.

3. L. Frank Baum - 28 - Fourteen main Oz books, Queer Visitors from Oz, Little Wizard Stories of Oz, Mother Goose in Prose, The Magical Monarch of Mo, Dot and Tot of Merryland, American Fairy Tales, The Master Key, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, The Enchanted Island of Yew, Queen Zixi of Ix, John Dough and the Cherub, The Sea Fairies, Sky Island, Policeman Bluejay

4. Ruth Plumly Thompson - 24 - Twenty-one Oz books, The Curious Cruise of Captain Santa, The Wizard of Way-Up and Other Wonders, Sissajig and Other Surprises

5. Douglas Adams - 8 - Five Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, two Dirk Gently books, and The Salmon of Doubt

Actually, I think there might be some authors of Oz apocrypha (Chris Dulabone, for instance) in between the fourth and fifth, but I don't feel like counting those up right now. And I could easily be forgetting something.

Are you ready for more Ozian bears? If not, then I guess I wouldn't read the rest of this post. In The Gnome King of Oz, when Scraps is appointed Queen of Patch, she meets the former Queen Cross Patch's pet, a small bear named Grumpy. This seems to have become a popular name for ursine characters. The Care Bears have a Grumpy, and I believe some other toy line (maybe Raggedy Ann?) also includes a Grumpy Bear. I suppose it's a popular archetype. Anyway, despite his temper, the Ozian Grumpy is actually quite friendly, and serves as a good companion to Scraps and Peter Brown on their journey from Patch to the Emerald City. On Grumpy's first night in the capital, Ozma gives him a bare room in the back of the palace, and perhaps he still lives there now. While sort of a pet to the Patchwork Girl, the pet-human relationship is obviously quite different when the pets are sentient.



My favorite bear in the Oz series, however, shows up in Ojo in Oz. When Ojo is kidnapped by a band of gypsies, he meets a fellow prisoner, a bear who was lured into the gypsies' clutches with honey. (Winnie-the-Pooh had been published just seven years prior to Ojo, so I guess it's possible this was an intentional reference to Pooh's honey obsession, but I'm not sure how likely this is. I mean, bears really DO like honey, after all.) The roving band forced the bear, whom they called Rufus, to dance, beg, and play the accordion at fairs. When he befriends Ojo, he says that his real name is Snufforious Buxorious Blundorious Boroso, which Ojo decides to shorten to Snufferbux. Considering that his first three names look like they could be adjectives, I would think that simply "Boroso" would have also worked as a nickname, but what do I know about bear names? Besides, "Snufferbux" is a fun name to say, and seems somehow appropriate. Thompson presumably intended the similarity to "snuffbox," although there's no actual connection or pun there as far as I can tell. Broadly speaking, Snufferbux fits into the common Thompsonian mold of sarcastic and curmudgeonly but fiercely loyal animals, of which Kabumpo is the most frequently used example. Anyway, when he and Ojo end up traveling with a bandit chief called Realbad, the bear is quite eager to protect the boy from the outlaw, who has expressed a wish to turn Ojo over to the nasty magician Mooj for a large reward.



Neither Grumpy nor Snufferbux plays an important role in any later books, but they do both appear at the celebration in Wishing Horse. Also, the endpapers of Wonder City show a bear labeled "Sniffer." Was this supposed to be Snufferbux? It certainly looks like him, but Neill didn't always vary that much in how he drew animals of the same sort. And if it is Snuffer, was he ever intended to have a role in the book? Presumably not, since no one who's read early manuscripts of Wonder City mentions his having appeared, but who knows what Neill originally intended? Maybe he just liked drawing the character.

We all know the chant in the MGM Wizard of Oz about lions and tigers and bears, and anyone who's either read the Oz books or my previous entries on them knows that a lion and a tiger are prominent characters in the series. It's a little while before we see a bear as a protagonist, though, and it's actually a plush toy bear stuffed with curled hair. In The Lost Princess of Oz, the Frogman and Cayke the Cookie Cook come across Bear Center, a town of toy bears who live in hollow trees in an isolated Winkie forest. Their king is known simply as the Lavender Bear, and he's somewhat embarrassed by the sillier aspects of his own composition, like the squeaker in his chest and the fact that he's merely lavender instead of royal purple in color. This carries over to some of the other bears as well, including their sentry Corporal Waddle, who is armed with a popgun. On the other hand, the king has some magical powers, the most prominent being a wand that allows him to project images of whatever he wants. Also, he is the keeper of the Little Pink Bear, a being that might or might not be alive. The Pink Bear operates by means of a crank, and can move on its own and correctly answer any question regarding the past or present. The Lavender and Pink Bears both join Cayke and the Frogman in their quest for the Magic Dishpan, and eventually join forces with Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. The Little Pink Bear proves invaluable with its ability to answer questions, although Dorothy and her companions initially dismiss its weirder answers. More recently, Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry gave the king his own book, The Lavender Bear of Oz, in which some of his subjects are bear-napped by babies from Merryland.



Several other bears appear in the Oz series, including King Gugu's adviser Bru and a blue bear rug that's inadvertently animated with the Powder of Life. The story behind the latter is that a relative of Dr. Pipt's named Dyna had a pet bear that choked to death on a fishbone (another exception to the no-death rule, I suppose), and made a rug out of the body. When the Crooked Magician faked his own death, Dyna inherited some of the Powder of Life, but thought it was moth-powder. Sprinkling some of it on the bearskin rug made it come to life, but it was unable to speak. Kind of odd considering that other magically animated beings in Oz can talk with painted or carved mouths, but maybe it just took some time for the rug to figure out how to speak. When we see the rug again in dennisanfuso's The Astonishing Tale of the Gump of Oz, it can talk a little bit, but in a hoarse voice. Ruth Plumly Thompson doesn't reuse any of Baum's bears, but she does introduce two of her own ursine protagonists, Grumpy and Snufferbux. If all goes according to plan, we'll take a look at the two of them tomorrow.

The use of the term "undead" to refer to certain sorts of monstrous creatures might well have originated with Bram Stoker, who applied it to vampires. The actual definition of the term is a bit vague, so some types of beings sometimes count as undead and sometimes don't. Werewolves are sometimes grouped in with the undead, but I don't think they were originally, as there's no real connection between turning into a wolf and acting alive after death. Legends of vampires and other monsters eventually merged with those of werewolves, however. While Dracula's most famous alternate form is a bat, the novel clearly states that he could also turn into a wolf. The common ideas of lycanthropy being communicable and its victim becoming indestructible unless killed in a very specific way (silver being one popular killer of both werewolves and vampires) turned the werewolf into a sort of undead being, but not all modern werewolf stories hold to these concepts.


Zombies are very popular these days, although I'm not entirely sure why, as they have no real personalities. I guess there's a certain appeal to mindless grunts, though. Zombies are sort of like Goombas from the Mario series, or the Foot Soldiers from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons and video games. There are millions of them, and even though they're pretty dumb and not too hard to defeat individually, they just keep coming. And there isn't a whole lot of guilt involved in killing people who are already dead. The idea of zombies originates in Voodoo, and is thought by some to be based on the results of drugs. As voodoo zombies are said to be under the control of a sorcerer, I suppose they pretty much have to be mindless drones. I have seen attempts to give personalities to zombies, with my personal favorite being Reg Shoe from the Discworld series, who spends his spare time campaigning for rights for the undead. Can Discworld zombies, who have their own minds, often hold down steady jobs, and seem to achieve their undead state due to determination rather than magic, truly be considered zombies in the traditional sense? Maybe not, and there are a few lines in Reaper Man that suggest even the characters realize this, but "zombie" has come to be a pretty generic term for the animated undead. If you want to get technical about it, "revenant" is a more generic term for a reanimated corpse. There's also the lich, which developed by way of Dungeons & Dragons into a person who became undead by choice, and retains his or her original mind. I've seen it suggested on an Oz mailing list that the Wicked Witches of the East and West, kept alive only by means of their magic, could count as liches, but that might be a bit of a stretch.


I believe the idea of mummies as undead monsters originated with horror movies. While mummification was presumably intended to preserve the body for a person's journey to the next world, I don't know of any indication that the ancient Egyptians thought the bodies themselves would come back to life. The embalming process does add a certain amount of flavor to the zombie concept, though. And speaking of classic horror characters, I'm not exactly sure how to categorize Frankenstein's monster, who was brought to life through a scientific process, and was quite capable of human thought and emotion despite his hideous appearance.


Finally, we come to ghouls, and if the Wikipedia page is to be believed, they were originally demons from Middle Eastern folklore. They're known for eating the flesh of dead bodies (and apparently sometimes living ones as well) and taking the forms of the people they eat. The idea that zombies eat flesh as well was presumably borrowed from ghoul stories, and George Romero played a major part in popularizing the idea of reanimated corpses eating human flesh. I think it makes more sense for demon to eat bodies than for a revenant to do the same. Do zombies even have functioning digestive systems? Oh, well. As long as the rules are internally consistent and your vampires don't sparkle, you can pretty much do what you want with these undead monsters in your own fiction.

For today's Halloween-related Oz post, I direct you to the twenty-third book in the series, Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz. Here, Jack (who is rather Halloween-ish himself, and even has his pumpkin head lit up with a candle a few times) and Peter Brown inadvertently visit Scare City, a rocky town of cliff dwellings decorated with heads and goblin lanterns. The inhabitants are bizarre monstrous beings with disturbing features. The spiked gate of the city is maintained by the Chief Scarer, a man with multiple faces who informs newcomers of the rules. The ruler is King Harum Scarum VII, who is described as having "a horn for a nose, a lion's mane, pig eyes, donkey ears and billy goat whiskers." Honestly, Neill's pictures of these two Scares look more comical than frightening, and it's not like Neill couldn't draw creepy stuff when he wanted to (look at the two double-page spreads of witches and sorcerers in Lucky Bucky, for instance). Anyway, anyone who screams at the Scares is turned into a statue, while those who run away are transformed into Fraid Cats, strange felines with heads at both ends so that they can't help but see the Scares surrounding them. At the end of the book, Ozma restores all of the transformed people to their proper forms and homes, but there's no indication that she removed the transformational power from the Scares, so they might have achieved a new collection by now, if Ozma hasn't been keeping a watch on them. The Scares also held Snif the Iffin prisoner until Peter and Jack rescued him.

And on another note, happy belated birthday to sailorptah!

The Oz books and related fantasies include a lot of villains, but even the worst of them tend to have some comical traits, and most of the ones that can't be reasoned with are often easily contained in some way. Even the Wicked Witch of the West was afraid of the dark and terrified of water. I do think an examination of the villains, as well as the way Baum and Thompson tended to treat them (offhand, it seems that Thompson's villains were less likely to commit physical harm, but also much less likely to give up), would be a good subject for a future post or series of posts, but that's not what I'm addressing today. Rather, I'm devoting this post to the truly evil beings, who are typically motivated not so much by self-interest like most villains in Baum's world, but simply by wanting to make others unhappy.

While I am intending this post to tie in with Halloween, the best examples of such creatures in Baum's fantasy work actually appear in a Christmas-themed book, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Here, the main villains are the Awgwas, large creatures that could fly around the world invisibly and influence humans to do nasty things. Their government was sort of a skewed democratic monarchy, in that the Awgwa who thought of the worst deeds was elected king. The Awgwas hated Santa for the joy he spread to children, so they tried to stop him in various ways, but were always thwarted by the jolly man's immortal friends. Finally, they openly declared war against the immortals, and gathered allies from among the nastiest beings in the world. I might as well quote Baum here: "There were three hundred Asiatic Dragons, breathing fire that consumed everything it touched. These hated mankind and all good spirits. And there were the three-eyed Giants of Tatary, a host in themselves, who liked nothing better than to fight. And next came the Black Demons from Patalonia, with great spreading wings like those of a bat, which swept terror and misery through the world as they beat upon the air. And joined to these were the Goozzle-Goblins, with long talons as sharp as swords, with which they clawed the flesh from their foes. Finally, every mountain Awgwa in the world had come to participate in the great battle with the immortals." Despite the impressive appearance of these monsters, however, they were no match for the magical weapons of the good immortals, under the leadership of Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World. Baum uses this as a lesson that good always triumphs over evil, but I think an alternate moral could be, "Don't mess with Ak."

In his crossover story The Raggedys in Oz, Ray Powell uses the idea of this great war of good and evil in the background for his new villain, the Black Magician Cell-U-Loid. He was once the leader of the Philms, nasty creatures who were made of film and had the power to make their enemies (who were just about everybody) disappear. They lived in Philmland, which was located next to Patalonia, and used wild Gadgols (flying creatures mentioned elsewhere in Life and Adventures as predators of trees) as steeds. The Philms missed the war because their leader was assisting the Roly-Rogues of Noland at the time, but when they tried to avenge their former allies, Ak blew all of the Philms except Cell-U-Loid himself to a faraway land where they were destroyed. The Master Woodsman turned the Black Magician into a cactus, and he remained in that form until Percy the Rat foolishly disenchanted both him and Ruggedo. The evil creature conquered Oz and lured Ak into the Nome Kingdom, where his powers were weakened. Fortunately, Raggedy Ann and Andy figured out that he was weak against flint, and his plans were thwarted.

Baum himself had Santa captured by another evil crew in a story appropriately titled "A Kidnapped Santa Claus." This time, the offenders were the five Daemons of the Caves, each of which represents a different personality trait. The Daemons of Selfishness, Envy, Hatred, and Malice all tried to keep the gift-giver as a prisoner; but the Daemon of Repentance let him go again, although unfortunately not until after he missed his Christmas Eve rounds. His helpers managed to fill in for him, however, and it all turned out happily.

There are some thoroughly nasty characters in The Emerald City of Oz as well. When the Nome King plans to invade Oz in order to retrieve his Magic Belt, he sends the newly-appointed General Guph out to gather allies. He first recruits the Whimsies, fierce fighters with tiny heads, who wear giant pasteboard heads in order to hide their lack of intelligence. They cannot be killed, and are described as "evil spirits," although they obviously have bodies. Next come the Growleywogs, skinny but muscular giants with immense strength and sadistic dispositions, who are ruled by a leader known as the Grand Gallipoot. I suppose the Growleywogs aren't quite as strong as the Herkus, but we never see a battle of strength between representatives of the two nations, so we don't know for sure. The name is obviously a play on "golliwog," which was presumably also the source of the recurring exclamation "Great Gollywockers!" in the Thompson Oz books. The last and most dangerous allies recruited by Guph are the Phanfasms, shape-shifting beings of immense power, who join the Nomes simply so they can make happy people unhappy. The Phanfasms dwell in a beautiful city on top of a mountain, but it just looks like a pile of rocks to visitors. On the Scarecrow's advice, Ozma places dust in the Nome King's tunnel, and all of the Nomes' allies drink the Water of Oblivion and forget their goals. I tend to doubt the memory loss lasted too long, however, and the Phanfasms appear in several other Oz stories. Joe Bongiorno presents a possible way to tie all these stories together here. The Phanfasms are also the main villains in the Emerald City Confidential video game, although that portrays them as simply beings with animal heads, rather than shape-shifters.


Jack Snow, who had experience as a horror writer, introduced some of his own evil beings in the Mimics, who are fairly similar to the Phanfasms in that they specialize in shape-changing. Like the Phanfasms, they belong to the race of evil spirits known as Erbs. They also possess a power that the Phanfasms presumably do not, in that they can steal the forms of people, leaving the copied victims frozen in place. When Lurline enchanted Oz, she cast a special spell to prevent the Mimics from harming the Ozites, and left Ozana on Mount Illuso to serve as a guardian. The plot of Magical Mimics involves the Mimic rulers, King Umb and Queen Ra, managing to temporarily break the spell and invade Oz.

One thing we really don't see in Baum's fantasy universe is an ultimate evil along the lines of Sauron or Voldemort. About the closest we get is Zog, and he's killed off in the same book that introduces him. I know some fans have tried writing such a being into Oz, but they've generally reported that it didn't work out. Maybe that's actually a good thing, as the Almighty Lord of Evil is sort of a cliché by this point.

Since I've been writing a fair amount about cats in the past few days, I think it would be appropriate to include something about one of the more famous literary felines. No, not Dick Whittington's cat (although I can certainly elaborate on that story if anyone is interested), but the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Like the Ozian Leopard I posted about yesterday (and, for that matter, fellow Wonderland denizens the Mad Hatter and March Hare), the character is based on an expression, in this case "to grin like a Cheshire cat." The phrase dates back at least as far as the late eighteenth century, but its origin isn't entirely clear. Some possible explanations include that it was a reference to the Cheshire cheeses made in the shape of a grinning cat, while others say that it reflected the happiness of the dock cats in Chester. Regardless, the Cheshire Cat of the book does grin throughout its several appearances. The Cat appears to officially be a pet of Wonderland's ugly Duchess, but it comes and goes as it pleases, with its body parts appearing and disappearing at will.



As with many of Carroll's characters, the Cat is probably most often recognized in its form from the Disney movie, in which it's voiced by Sterling Holloway. It's drawn as pink with purple stripes, but I suppose that's artistic license, and Carroll never specifies a color anyway. More significantly, while Carroll's Cheshire Cat can be frustrating, it's usually friendly in its own way. Disney's Cat is, however, genuinely nasty at times, purposely acting to get Alice in trouble with the Queen of Hearts. Not a huge change to the character, perhaps, but an odd one nonetheless. I seem to recall the store at Disney's Hollywood Studios devoted to villains including some Cheshire Cat merchandise.



I've actually seen the grinning feline a few places recently. A store in Portland sold mugs with pictures of the Cat in various states of presence (based on Tenniel's drawings, rather than Disney's), and therealtavie mentioned that she owned one of them. Also, the Cat is an important character in the Thursday Next series, working as the librarian in the Great Library that holds every book.



Incidentally, while speculations on the origin of the grinning Cheshire Cat can now be found on the Internet, it was my grandmother's copy of The Annotated Alice that first introduced me to them. The annotations were written by Martin Gardner, who actually turns 95 today. Gardner is also known for his recreational mathematical puzzles and skepticism, and I believe he was one of the earliest members of the International Wizard of Oz Club. Unfortunately, his one attempt at an original Oz novel, Visitors from Oz, isn't very good, at least based on the little bit of it I've read and reviews from fellow Oz fans. But it's odd how often I've come across totally independent mentions of Gardner, right up to Penn Jillette just recently saying on Twitter that Gardner loves the Penn & Teller iPhone application.

When dealing with the big cats of Oz, I've already written posts about the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, and Gugu the Leopard. So who's left? Well, in Rachel Cosgrove's The Hidden Valley of Oz, we're introduced to a leopard who can change his spots. This is, of course, a joke on an old expression that can actually be found in the Bible. In Jeremiah 13:3, we read, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" The leopard is not accompanied by a skin-changing Ethiopian, but he IS able to change his spots into many different patterns, often reflecting his mood or what he's talking about at the time. He makes his first appearance when Jam is on his way back to the Hidden Valley with the Ozian celebrities, and the group is journeying through a forest in the Winkie Country. The Leopard reveals that he's an outcast, but the celebrities befriend him, and Jam gives him the nickname "Spots." (Despite this, however, Jack Snow simply lists him under "Leopard" in Who's Who in Oz.) Not surprisingly, he ends up living in the Emerald City. I'm not sure he appears in Rachel's other full-length Oz novel, Wicked Witch (if he does, it's just a bit part), but he does play a major role in her short story "Spots in Oz." This tale involves a Winkie boy mixing up a magic spot remover that works too well, and leaves Spots temporarily blank.

Here's a picture of Spots, drawn by Shawn Maldonado.

Dorothy was accompanied to Oz by a dog in Wizard, a chicken in Ozma, and a cat in Dorothy and the Wizard. Since Dorothy begins the story in California, on her way back from Australia, it's likely that she found the kitten in Australia. Dorothy names her pet Eureka, as it means "I found it." When we first see Eureka, whom Dorothy had been keeping in a birdcage, she appears to be pink in color. The Kansas girl assures her companion Zeb that Eureka is actually a white kitten, but the odd light of the Mangaboo suns makes her appear pink. The feline is a quite difficult character with a sassy attitude, who makes no bones about the fact that she wants to eat one of the Wizard's Nine Tiny Piglets. When the party reaches the Emerald City, Eureka actually tries to eat the piglet that the Wizard had given to Ozma as a present, and the ruler puts her on trial for the crime. It isn't until Eureka is declared guilty that she reveals that she was unable to eat the piglet, as it had gotten itself trapped in a vase. Since the cat did intend to devour the young swine, however, she remained in disgrace while in Oz, and Ozma eventually transported her to Kansas with Dorothy. There's no indication that Eureka comes to live in Oz with Dorothy, Toto, Uncle Henry, and Aunt Em in Emerald City, yet she's living at the palace in Patchwork Girl, and now actually pink in color. Other references in later books confirm Eureka's presence and pinkness, but Dorothy also mentions her "purple kitten" in Glinda, even though she specifically refers to Eureka as pink when talking to Queen Coo-ee-oh. As if matters weren't complicated enough, Dorothy talks about her white kitten in Lost King, and Eureka is drawn as white on the cover of Ozmapolitan. In Eric Shanower's Secret Island, however, she's pink throughout. A few authors have addressed the issue of Eureka's mysterious color change, and sometimes how she returned to Oz as well. Here are the explanations I can remember:

• In March Laumer's Careless Kangaroo, which takes place in between Emerald City and Patchwork Girl, the Shaggy Man makes a trip to the United States to retrieve Eureka. She's colored pink while on Sky Island, and decides she prefers that color.
  
• Glenn Ingersoll's "The Piglets' Revenge," published in the 1984 issue of Oziana, has the piglets essentially dyeing Eureka pink.
  
• In Chris Dulabone's Colorful Kitten, Eureka's color changes are due to her wearing a magic amulet through a time tunnel. This explanation does not limit Eureka's colors to white and pink, thereby explaining the "purple kitten" reference.
  
• David Hulan's Eureka is probably the most complete chronicle of the cat's life, explaining that she secretly accompanied Dorothy and her friends to Oz in Road, but separated from the party and went to live with Professor Nowitall for a few years. Her fur turned pink when she caught a tixie, one of the odd creatures that keep the different sections of Oz properly color-coded. The professor defends Eureka in front of Ozma, and the cat is allowed to become a member of the ruler's household.
  

The other cat who plays a major role in the Oz books is the Glass Cat, introduced in Patchwork Girl. She's brought to life by Dr. Pipt, and given a ruby heart and pink brains. The Pipts intended to have her catch mice for them, but she was too proud and haughty to do so. Because of this, the magician's wife Margolotte named her Bungle, which remains her official name despite the fact she prefers not to use it. She is very proud of her pink brains, which you can see work, and the Wizard tried to make her more humble by replacing them with clear brains. The experiment apparently didn't work out, however, as she has the pink brains again in Magic. Although she only plays major parts in two of the Famous Forty, she's been used quite a bit by more recent authors, having starring roles in Greg Gick's Bungle and the Magic Lantern, David Hulan's Glass Cat, and Gina Wickwar's Hidden Prince.



Dot and Tot of Merryland introduces the Valley of Pussycats in Merryland, home to a group of cats who live in flats and eat bread and cream (how they survive on that isn't clear). Their ruler is a Maltese named King Felis. In Thompson's Lost King, there's a much less friendly community of cats within Oz, known as Catty Corners. The inhabitants of this town are about the size of children, and hate boys and love witches. Interestingly enough, they're also ruled by a Maltese, albeit a queen instead of a king.



Also deserving of mention in this post is the Curious Cottabus, described in Kabumpo as being "as large as a pony, but shaped like a great overfed cat." Being shaped like a cat doesn't necessarily mean the Cottabus IS a cat, but Jack Snow seemed to think it was, referring to him in Who's Who as a cousin of the Cheshire Cat. It has a fan on the end of its tail, and carries around a porch rocker. The Cottabus lives on questions, and has to ask at least fifty every day in order to survive.



There are a few other cats mentioned in the Oz books, including Tattypoo's two-tailed cat and Princess Ozana's pet Felina. But the series actually features more big cats than housecats, and we'll probably look at one of the large variety tomorrow.

One concept that appears in several different video games is that of the airship. Every Final Fantasy game has at least one, and sometimes entire fleets of them. The airships that you can control are listed here and here. The designers obviously liked the names Enterprise, Falcon, and Invincible. While many of the airships in the games are simply sailing ships with propellers, others are more similar to dirigibles, which were commonly known as "airships" in real life. Super Mario Bros. 3 also included a fleet of airships, each one commanded by one of the Koopalings. In the cartoon and some other media based on the game, this changed into one Doomship. Later games have another airship known as the Koopa Cruiser. There are also the flying treasure ships that appear on the map screen when you've finished a level with a certain combination of time, points, and coins. Soul Blazer had an airship made by artist and inventor Dr. Leo, and there are probably similar ships in other games that I either can't remember or don't know about.



How did the idea of the flying ship originate? I'm not really sure, but it's probably one of those concepts that developed independently in several cultures, as it's a pretty simple concept: "Hey, what if a ship could sail through the AIR, instead of the WATER?" A Google search results in a few references to "The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship," an old Russian folk tale of the variety where a young peasant receives supernatural assistance in performing seemingly impossible tasks in order to marry a princess. The Tsar's first task for the young man is to make a ship that can fly, which he accomplishes with the help of one of those weird old men with magical powers who are always hanging around in fairy tales. The old man directs the boy to give a ride to anyone who asks, which results in his gaining more companions with supernatural powers. Much later, in 1886, Jules Verne wrote about a flying ship made airborne by propellers, which might have been influential to some of those video game designs.



And getting back to the topic of my Oz post from yesterday, both books featuring Captain Salt have a scene with the Crescent Moon becoming airborne. In Pirates, it's accomplished with help from a magic flask that Peter finds in the ocean. By the time of Captain Salt, the Red Jinn has installed balloon sails on the ship, enabling the craft to float above an attack from another ship.