One of the ideas that I liked about Oz Squad was that the Lion could become human when he went from Oz to Earth. I thought of all sorts of adventures he could have while blending with humanity. So I stole it. Well, played with it. Doing an Oz series on my own, while fun to think about, was and is pretty unlikely.

The human that he turned into in the original series wasn’t terribly impressive. The Lion is a huge lion. Big as a horse. So I made the human a much larger fellow. Of all the Oz ideas I’ve played with this version of the man lion is only one I’ve brought back with me to Oz Squad.

Portraits of the Patchwork Girl and Princess Ozma. As with the Scarecrow image these are not the Oz Squad versions of the characters.

The top character is primarily an exercise in shading.

The bottom character is a version of the Scarecrow. Not Steve Ahlquist‘s Oz Squad version. This was done prior to reconnecting with Steve. This version gave himself a name (“Buster”) and plays saxophone with a blues band in America.