Frank Baum and illustrated by Walt McDougal, better known as a political cartoonist. The comic was called Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz and its tie to the latest addition to the Oz book series was obvious, a calculated bid to acquire new readers and a form of advertising that harkens forward to the media tie-ins for today’s block-buster movies.

Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900 and occurred in conjunction with the 1904 publication of The Marvelous Land of Oz. It was true! Dorothy and a cohort of her remarkable friends from Oz had escaped the confines of the book and landed smack-dab in the Sunday comics’ section of the nation’s newspapers. They want to romp with the children of the United States. Here they come! The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Woggle-Bug, the animated Sawhorse, and the Gump! They are on their first vacation away from the Emerald City and the Land of Oz. It is during THE REVELATOR years from 1907 to 1917 that The Wizard of Oz comic strip innovated the characteristics that would influence later comics luminaries such as Milton Caniff, Chester Gould, and Charles Schultz.Ī series of strange newspaper reports appeared in 1904, culminating in a “Proclamation Extraordinary” that read:įrom the Land of Oz to the United States.

Indeed THE REVELATOR, beneficiary of a hitherto unheard of licensing arrangement with Baum, carried the strip as an exclusive for a decade. Frank Baum series from its inception as a national Sunday feature in 1904 through to the final daily strips starring Toto in 1917. THE REVELATOR was a proud and earlier proponent of The Wizard of Oz comics, running the entire L.

The oz books series