Oziana 2012 is out!

After a long wait, Oziana 2012 is finally here!

Normally, Oziana consists of short pieces of work by members of the International Wizard of Oz Club. This year, editor Marcus Mebes decided to do something a little different: do an issue-length Oz story, Round Robin style. Appropriately enough, the person starting the story would be none other than L. Frank Baum himself!

You remember the unfinished Oz story fragment (which might not be by Baum) that features Ozma ice-skating? That was the launching point. And to further help, Robert Baum supplied an introduction and afterword, in which he supplies all the information he knows about the fragment.

Several Oz fans wrote fourteen new chapters including Marcus Mebes, S.P. Maldonado, Jared Davis (yours truly), Kim McFarland, Sam Milazzo, Chris Dulabone, Jeff Rester, Dennis Anfuso, Mycroft Mason, Nathan DeHoff, Paul Ritz, Mike Conway, Paul Dana, and Atticus Gannaway. In addition, S.P. Maldonado, Dennis Anfuso and Kim McFarland all provided artwork to illustrate the story.

Ozma's outing to go ice-skating is interrupted by the appearance of two visitors from Hiland and the Nome Kingdom, who tell her how their respective kings have been acting strangely. Glinda soon discovers that a cruel and powerful witch is at work, making people all over Oz do and believe peculiar things. Can our friends in Oz (including the Wizard, Scraps, Percy, Kabumpo, Jinnicky, the Scarecrow, and of course Dorothy) discover the witch's plot and stop her, or has she sunk her claws into Oz too deeply?

I was one of the early writers who helped the story get rolling by setting up the villain, allowing the remaining writers to work with and deal with her. (My chapter is also the shortest.) While the story didn't reach its fullest possible potential, the story does not disappoint in the least! And also, almost everyone in the blog team contributed to it as well.

One might think the nature of the story's writing might lead to an uneven pace and jarring writing styles, but while some writers can't help but put on their little flourishes, the editors made sure the narrative flowed very well.

This one's an exciting story with some great twists and turns and quite a formidable new foe! Add it to your collection!

Your traditional-style Oziana will resume in 2013.

Oziana #37

Okay, so I got a copy of Oziana #37, the magazine of fiction from the International Wizard of Oz Club, and seemingly, also the last.

The first thing you'll see is the cover, which is by Oz fan and artist Kevenn T. Smith. It doesn't illustrate any of the stories, but rather uses characters from all of the stories to create a "Battle in the Emerald City," The wraparound cover shows mostly familiar faces in Polychrome, the Glass Cat, Ozma, and the Wizard, but there's a couple other characters on the front and all the characters on the back will be new characters to most Oz fans.

There are only three stories inside. The first is the shortest, running for three pages, and it has two beautiful illustrations by Melody Grandy. "As The Rainbow Follows The Rain" by Jeff Rester isn't much of a story, as very much, it is Polychrome telling new character Hyetal (a rain spirit, it seems) about her family as the Rainbow makes a customary appearance after a shower. As I said, there's not much to the story, but it is well-told and imaginative, and tells us some fascinating things about the Rainbow and the family. Worth reading, especially if you like Polychrome.

The next story is "The Magic Door to Oz" by Paul Ritz and Johanna Buchner. An unnamed protagonist finds a door to Oz and discovers the Witched Wick has been taking storybook characters from their lands and imprisoning them in a land under Oz. It is up to the hero, with some help from the Glass Cat and Mary Poppins' umbrella, to put an end to the Wick's wicked ways and send everyone home.

This is a more satisfying story than the first one, but even though it takes place in Oz, it didn't feel like an honest-to-goodness Oz story. I guess that's how the story was written to be. The illustrations by F. Kay Baumann are rather well-done and exquisitely so.

The third and longest is a whole book by Sergei Sukhinov, made readable to us English folk by Peter Blystone, and illustrated by Dennis Anfuso. I haven't finished this one yet, but I'm enjoying it. It really isn't an Oz story, but it easily could be. The story is one of the Russian Magic Land tales written after Volkov's original series. It's a prequel to Volshebnik Izumrudnovo Goroda (The Wizard of the Emerald City), and deals with Bastinda, Volkov's version of the Wicked Witch of the West. A lot of English readers should enjoy this one.

Overall, I'd say this is a worthwhile issue. I'm enjoying it, and hope anyone who gets it (and you should) enjoys it, too.