After I finished listening to Anne Hathaway read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I wanted to continue the series, but in a different format. I don't want to commit the next year or two to reading all 14 books in their original form, but if Hathaway had kept reading the rest of the series, I'd gladly listen to it that way. Unfortunately, she hasn't.
Another option is Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's comics adaptation, but before I bought any of the sequels I wanted to revisit the first book while it was still fresh in my mind. That way I could see for myself how faithful it is and how accurately I can expect their other adaptations to translate the rest of L. Frank Baum's saga. Turns out: very faithfully.
I knew it was going to be okay when Shanower wrote in his introduction, "That this comics adaptation goes back to that book as its source is one of the aspects that drew me to this project. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been told again and again in so many different versions and permutations that many of the original's details have been obscured or forgotten. But they haven't been lost. Here they are again, those wonderful Baum touches..." And so they are. I feel like I'm in very good hands by continuing the series in this form.
To celebrate, I've picked my Top 10 favorite moments from Baum's book that didn't make it into the Judy Garland version. I mentioned some of them as I was reading the book, but here they are - in order of occurrence - as depicted by Shanower and Young. Spoilers, of course.
