OZ Film Noir a Wicked Good Read

March 4, 2010 - PRLog -- Attention all Oz enthusiasts and graphic novel addicts...there is a brand new branch of the Yellow Brick Road available to explore.

Canton, Ohio author Craig R. May has created a unique treatment of the Oz fable as a 1940s film noir.  All of the traditional characters are present, although in considerably altered format.  For instance, Dorothy is now Dot O'Connor, a down-on-her-luck chorus girl who takes the YellowTrail Express to meet the mysterious millionaire father she has never known, Winthorne Owen Zolarde.  The companions she meets on the train range from a brainy stage star to a sensitive waiter to a cowardly stowaway...and there's Toto, too...although we'll leave his new incarnation a surprise for readers.

May, who has been a lifelong fan of the Oz tale, chose to render this retelling as a stop-motion animation rather than a comic book composed of drawings.  He hand-crafted each character in Sculpy 3, a polymer resin clay, as well as the miniature sets in which the story is played out.  

"It's a bit like what Tim Burton does with his stop-motion animated films," said May.  "The story is darker than the novel by L. Frank Baum, or the movie that everyone knows.  DOT'S JOURNEY is more of a Hitchcockian journey through the land of Oz, but the story is pretty much intact."

DOT'S JOURNEY is available online at lulu.com and amazon.com.