Review: The Complete Annotated Oz Squad

So on Sunday I picked up The Complete Annotated Oz Squad by Steve Ahlquist. I've always been interesting in Oz, ever since I was very young and read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  and found it to be much more interesting and gruesome than the movie ever was.

The Oz Squad was a ten-issue comic book series that dealt with Dorothy Gale and her attempt to reconcile Oz with Earth. The "Gale Force" (consisting of an older Dorothy, a more Terminator-ish Tin Woodsman, a more emo Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion) were tasked with investigating magical or Fortean events and, if Ozian people or artifacts were involved, to bring them back to Oz.

The first issue was actually fascinating (and why I picked it up): the Tik-Tok Man, newly arrived on Earth, has gone beserk. Dorothy and the others have to figure out a way to bring him down, while also figuring out why he went insane.

The first three issues of The Oz Squad are actually very good and feature some really interesting world building. There are references to events we don't know of yet (I also love a Cryptic Background Reference) interspersed with some great action scenes.

And then it goes off the rails. It's still well written (even though the artwork suffers), but there is one major flaw with the later issues: it never slows down. It goes "Here's something new" and then moves on. For example: in one very jumbled issue, we are presented with an interesting fact about the JFK assassination: apparently, God was not watching at that moment in time and without God's infallible eye, the events of that date are left to human eyes. And since people's accounts are contradictory, so is reality: every single theory about what happened is true, all the conspiracy theories, all the potential assassins are competing to be the actual assassin. And so even though everyone has their ideas about what happened on that day, nobody can know.

And what does this have to do with the Oz Squad? Well, Dorothy was friends with JFK. We are shown on flashback with them. And then...nothing else. All of what I wrote right there? It would have been super-fascinating to see, to show the consequences of an event that can never be known, but it's never mentioned again.

Another example: in one issue, the Tik-Tok Man becomes a crime boss. I thought "Okay, here's a nice storyarc. They can't just leave him to be a crime boss forever. They have to come back and stop him." But they don't. They make one attempt and then the story moves along, forgetting all about the Tik-Tok Man.

Even with these problems, there are interesting stories. The last issues are concerned with the present Dorothy received for her 100th birthday: a Time Train. We are given accounts of what happened to various character did when they were thrown out of the Time Train and into various time periods. Except it still has the same problems as before: these momentous plots that could sustain a comic book for entire arcs are condensed to one issue and never mentioned or brought up again.

So, would I recommend this book? To those who like reading about Oz, yes. It's a fascinating take, even though it does take some liberties, and it has a lot of great ideas (most of which, however, it leaves by the wayside). To those who aren't interesting in Oz: Fables would be a better read. The same type of concept (fairy tale characters try to live in the real world), but with better plotting and art.