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San Diego, CA — IDW Publishing will be releasing Adventures in Oz in July of 2006, which collects award-winning cartoonist Eric Shanower’s five out-of-print Oz graphic novels into one volume, along with new features.

Almost everyone is familiar with the clasic MGM film The Wizard of Oz, and know that in the marvelous Land of Oz, magic is always around the next corner. What fewer know is that Oz creator L. Frank Baum wrote not one but many tales set in Oz. Eric Shanower avidly read all of Baum's Oz books when he was a child, and decided that some day he would write and illustrate his own Oz stories. When he grew up and became a professional cartoonist, he proceeded to fulfill this goal by writing and drawing a series of Oz graphic novels, using not only the classic characters and concepts from the Oz books he’d read as a child, but also new characters he'd created in the spirit of the originals.

Shanower's first Oz project was The Enchanted Apples of Oz, published by First Comics in 1986. It was followed by The Secret Island of Oz, The Ice King of Oz, The Forgotten Forest of Oz, and The Blue Witch of Oz. The series of books garnered high critical praise and the Parents’ Choice Award, and also earned Shanower the Russ Manning Award. Booklist hailed the stories as “well-written” and “charming,” and called Shanower “superbly talented.”

In Shanower's tales, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and their many Oz friends can't stop plunging into one adventure after another. In them, readers journey over the rainbow to help save Oz from the Wicked Witch of the South, ride an enchanted whirlpool that leads to a hidden island, explore the spooky Great Gray Gillikin Swamp, prevent a war between dragons and wood-nymphs, and soar in an emerald unicorn to the frozen land of the mysterious Ice King.

The publication of the 256-page Adventures in Oz marks the first time that all five of these full-color stories by two-time Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Eric Shanower have been collected in one volume.

Shanower and IDW Publishing have been exacting in the production of the new book. The original black-and-white and color artwork for all five Oz graphic novels has been digitally rescanned; Shanower produced the original color art separately to accommodate printing techniques of the 1980s. Updates in scanning technology, coupled with personal attention, allow the color reproduction of this new collection to improve on the earlier books, which sometimes failed to adequately capture Shanower's original work.

“For the IDW book,” Shanower explains, “John Uhrich has scanned every page, composited the black-and-white line art with the painted color art, and painstakingly gone over every single panel.”

The undertaking took over a year to complete, but Shanower says that the final result is almost perfectly in line with his artistic intent, which he calls “very rare in comics publishing, rare in most aspects of life.”

IDW has given Shanower approval over every aspect of Adventures in Oz, and it wouldn't be a stretch to dub the edition a “director’s cut.” Shanower had the freedom to clean up here and there and correct longstanding errors that had bothered him from the time they were published.

“The changes are very minor,” assures Shanower, noted for his crisp, near-perfectionist style, “usually just getting rid of lines—so there's not going to be a jarring 20-year difference in style or anything like that. Some of the artwork was better than I remembered, better than I could probably do now—and that was really nice to see.”

His positive reactions were not restricted to just the artwork, and he finds some of the writing “fresher and funnier” than he thought he was capable of. He also found another surprise.

“I was surprised that it's been 20 years,” Shanower admits. “It doesn't seem that long ago.”

For Adventures in Oz Shanower has painted a brand new cover, written a new introduction, and provided several new interior illustrations in color. A map of Oz will also be included, showing locations from the Oz graphic novels as well as locations from the original Oz books.

In addition to the regular 256-page edition of Adventures in Oz, there will be a signed limited edition of 300 copies in hardcover that will include a 70-page bonus section.

“I’m really excited about the extras in the limited edition,” says Shanower. “I’ve written an essay about how the Oz graphic novels came to be and my process in creating them. People will be able to see Oz artwork I’ve done throughout my life, starting when I was seven years old all the way up to now.”

Features in the bonus section include: artwork from Shanower’s original proposal for the series, unused endings from two of the Oz graphic novels, prototype comics stories that developed into the finished books, design sketches for characters and costumes, advertising art, plus short Oz comics stories and various unpublished and little-seen Oz illustrations from the past 25 years of Shanower’s career as cartoonist and illustrator.

Adventures in Oz will be published July 2006 by IDW Publications. More information about Eric Shanower can be found at the artist's website, ericshanower.com.

Zan lives in Seattle with his fiancé and their two dimwitted cats. He is currently working on the mature readers book The Mark of Aeacus, which will be released later this year.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).