Banksy - "Stop and Search"

I know it's Dorothy Gale, but I can't help but see Red Riding Hood every time I look at this particular Banksy work.

The Wizard of Oz word-image

I discovered this over at award-winning comic book artist Derek Kirk Kim's blog. I'm not too sure about the original source, though. You probably can't tell unless you click on it and see it blown up much larger, but it's a picture made up of the text from the first eleven chapters of Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I love things that play around with the ambiguous space where text/images overlap, and this, something that literally uses the words to paint a picture, creates such a great visual pun.

Update: I try to be curteous and host my own images rather than hotlink, but Blogger only allows images of a certain size. Clicking on the above image will not blow it up large enough to see the text that makes it up. Please head on over to DKK's blog instead to see the image in full.

Emerald City Confidential

When it comes to finding a way to describe the overall mise-on-scene of point-and-click-adventure game Emerald City Confidential, I really can't do better than the game's own creator, Dave Gilbert, who calls it "Raymond Chandler meets L. Frank Baum." Emerald City Confidential is a gem of a game that puts a film noir spin on the wonderful world of Oz, coming up with something that's a little Sam Spade, a little Gregory Maguire and with just a hint of Sam & Max (I was right, I really couldn't do better than the game's creator).

ECC is a thoroughly engaging game that's sure to be an especial treat for Oz geeks. For more on this game and its genesis, check out the video below which features an interview with the game's creator (from which I snagged the above quotation).

Wizard of Oz: Kele-6

More Wizard of Oz stuff now, and yet another rap music video, too:

The rappers in question are Israeli group Kele-6.

The Oz purist in me is mildly annoyed that this video changes the order in which 'Dorothy' meets her three companions (it took me the longest time to realise that the second guy she meets was not just a really poor rendition of the Tin Man, so deeply was the idea of the narrative order ingrained in me). Also, is the Tin Man wearing a necklace made of spoons?

Oz Squad

Now, I haven't actually read Steve Ahlquist's Oz Squad, so I can't claim to give a fair appraisal of it, but from what I have read about it, I certainly seem to agree with Dave Campbell's comment that it seems "gratuitously irreverent," and I imagine that if I ever read it, I might come down on the side of critic and Oz fan Steve Teller, who called it "The most repellent published work with the name Oz in the title I have ever seen." From what I can tell, it seems to take the "add in some sex, death and swearing and that'll make it more 'mature'" attitude that ultimately of course only serves to make things far more puerile. But then again, it all seems to be done with a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, so at this stage, who am I to judge?

Still, if you're interested in learning more, Dave's post on the subject and this site about the comic might provide some decent starting points.

RIZ-ZOAWD

It's all in Japanese, so it may be of limited use for those of us who don't speak the language, but check out the official website for RIZ-ZOAWD, a new videogame for the Nintendo DS set in the world of Oz. As far as I can ascertain from the website, the game features lots of running around using an ersatz trackball. The character designs are much more interesting than the gameplay, methinks.

My Little Elphaba

There's a lot of fanart/fancraft out there relating not just to the Wizard of Oz, but more specifically, to the novel/play Wicked and its protagonist Elphaba Thropp, aka the Wicked Witch of the West. The below image represents what happens when Wicked meets the world of custom My Little Pony (and even features a custom Galinda/Glinda, too):

Many thanks to midnightflurry for the creations.

Inaugural Oz post, plus: BadEggs-x

One of the things that I intend for the future of this blog is to expand its scope so that it becomes about not just Little Red Riding Hood media but media related to some of the other popular fairy tales that I am interested in as well. This should increase productivity around here and also allow me an outlet for my various other obsessions. So this post here is my very first post about something not at all LRRH-related: the Wizard of Oz.

Yes, I know that one could easily argue that the Wizard of Oz is not a fairy tale at all, but it certainly seems to be a peculiar kind of modern fairy tale, along with lots of other, similar texts that originated in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, such as Peter Pan or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (and yes, I do intend to do a post about Lost Girls - a modern and very "mature" updating of all three of the above - someday). The Wizard of Oz has certainly nestled its way into the imagination of countless modern writers, artists, song writers and game designers (and of course, bloggers), and I certainly intend on writing about that here.

So, to kick off, here's a link to a particularly useful index of Oz-related books (Personally, I highly rate Geoff Ryman's Was and Gregory Maguire's Wicked). As well as some photography by (and often starring) the wonderful BadEggs-x:

I recommend checking out BaddEgg-x's deviantart page, in particular her Once Upon a Time series, which of course also features none other than - who else? - Ms Little Red Riding Hood:

 

And incidentally, yes, I do realise that I could always just create a separate blog for things related to other fairy tales, but I'd rather keep a cap on just how many blogs I can feasibly neglect at one time, if that's ok (*still feeling slightly shameful after having left this one alone for so long*).