Spot illustration #6 for the Oz-Squad.com and Skookworks.com header designs.
Nick Chopper didn’t have a lot of choice over what his first tin body looked like but, as the twentieth century progressed and circumstances demanded it, he’s built and worn quite a few different forms. Some are big and scary. Some are almost graceful. Into each he puts the heart that the Wizard gave him. It’s just a thing of sawdust and silk but it feels nonetheless.
Spot illustration #5 for the Oz-Squad.com and Skookworks.com header designs.
Once upon a time, Nick Chopper was a young man in love. He cut wood for a living. He expected to get married, settle down and have kids. He expected a pretty normal life or least as normal a life as one can have in the Land of Oz.
Unfortunately he ran afoul of Rebecca, the Witch of the East. And she arranged him to run afoul of his axe. Several times.*
There aren’t a lot of depictions of Nick prior to his transformation into the Tin Woodman. The only one I’m aware of is by John R Neill for The Tin Woodman of Oz. And, chronologically, the illustration still takes place after Nick got chopped up. It’s in the chapter The Tin Woodman Talks to Himself. I love that chapter.
* See March of the Tin Soldiers for the details. And the 21st century aftermath.
Spot illustration #4 for the Oz-Squad.com and Skookworks.com header designs.
The last century has been hard on the Scarecrow. He’s lost friends. He’s been torn to pieces on more occasions than he’d like to remember. Unfortunately for him he remembers every one of those occasions. He can’t forget anything. Not even the trivial stuff. Fortunately, however, he’s not human so he’s able to cope in ways that a meat person couldn’t. He’s able to put on new faces to fit new moods. This is how he looks in the current incarnation of Oz Squad.
Spot illustration #3 for the Oz-Squad.com and Skookworks.com header designs.
The first person to join Dorothy on her trip to see the Wizard was a Scarecrow. He was stuck on a pole in field. Dorothy helped him down. The Scarecrow decided that a brain would do him good and that the Wizard might provide him with one and off they went. He and Dorothy have remained best friends ever since.
Today’s illustration shows the Scarecrow as he looked on the day he first met Dorothy.
Spot illustration #2 for the Oz-Squad.com and Skookworks.com header designs.
Dorothy Gale, in all of the original Oz books, always struck me as a practical sort of girl. She grew up on a farm. She faced down lions and witches and worse when most grown men would have been peeing their pants.
So when it came time for me to design my version of the adult Dorothy for Oz Squad I kept the short haircut from the final issues of the comic, gave her shoes she could walk in and clothes that wouldn’t slow her down. No doubt she dresses up for state occasions but I’ll worry about what Dorothy in drag would wear at some other date.
The next many posts are going to feature small illustrations. I’m designing headers for Oz-Squad.com and Skookworks.com, and, at least for the first round, including four spot illustrations as part of each design. I’ll be posting the individual illustrations here. Please go to the sites themselves to see how they look in context.
Right now I’ve got two headers designed for the Oz Squad site. The first shows the characters as they appear “today”. The second shows the characters in their early days. The headers are set to show up at random so if you want to see them both just reload the page a couple of times and the image should change.
L. Frank Baum doesn’t say how old Dorothy was when she first came to Oz. In the illustration by W.W. Denslow she appears to be somewhere between 5 and, maybe, 8 years old. I don’t remember if Steve Ahlquist has specified her age in any of the Oz Squad comics or the novel. Most likely she was around six or seven. That’s the age we (that is, scientific professionals who study human behavior) currently think children develop their sense of empathy.
