Dorothy and Co. get an edgy makeover in new 'Oz' comic

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY | USATODAY

The farm-girl crop top is a good sign that we're not exactly in Kansas anymore — at least not L. Frank Baum's.

Dorothy Gale and other iconic characters from The Wizard of Oz receive a dark, edgy makeover and reimagining in Zenescope Entertainment's Oz, a new comic-book series launching in July that explores the fourth and final realm of power hinted at over the years in the company's long-running Grimm Fairy Tales title.

"They're definitely recognizable, but a little bit cooler and a little bit more fantasy-based," says Joe Brusha, Oz writer and president of Zenescope. "And their backstories aren't going to be as nice and fairy tale-ish as they are in some of the Oz books."

Since it debuted Grimm in 2005, Zenescope writers and artists have twisted and turned a variety of recognizable characters, from Alice to Red Riding Hood to Peter Pan, to create a vast universe encompassing Earth but also the worlds of Neverland, Wonderland and Myst.

Oz has been the one unexplored territory thus far, although that wasn't part of any grand plan, Brusha says. "We've really taken our time and tried to not rush it and let it develop over the time we've been working with these other realms."

Featuring the art team of Rolando Neto, Glauber Matos and Ulises Grostieta,

the first issue sees the witches of Oz on the hunt for the Veridian Scepter, a lost mystical weapon that's tied to the Emerald City and the green life-force power prevalent through all the fairy-tale realms.

Their search leads them to Kansas and the Gale farm, where they run into Dorothy. From there, the series will follow the traditional Wizard of Oz story and take the girl off to see the Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, but not the Wizard. (There's actually a different ruler of Emerald City here.)

Dorothy is much like the rest of Zenescope's heroines both in look and personality, Brusha says. "She's tough and she's trying to find herself and find hope for her life."

As for the green-skinned Wicked Witch pop culture loves to hate, she's "definitely more wicked than the old version of Oz. She's about as bad as she can be," says the writer, adding that there will be a sister act with the Wicked Witch of the West and the East. "One of them will be with us through the whole story, and one of them will be gone pretty quickly."

Brusha promises new characters, as well, including the Wicked Witch's apprentice and a crop of Munchkins who are still good "but they're not as nice and friendly and jolly as they are in the original story."

And naturally, no Oz tale is complete without a horde of flying monkeys, though Brusha says his nasty winged simians are much like those of the recent Sam Raimi film Oz: The Great and Powerful. "These monkeys are really monsters, even more monstrous than that."

There are some challenges, though, that go with creating something new with the Wizard of Oz characters since they're such a part of culture, from the early 1900s Baum books to the 1939 Judy Garland movie to the '70s musical The Wiz to the more recent Oz flick and upcoming Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return animated film next year.

"I just try and as much as I can put all that stuff out of my mind," Brusha says. "But I saw the Oz movie and you can't help but think, 'Oh, that's a cool idea. That might work with our stuff.' You've just got to steer yourself away from that.

"There's a lot of fairy-tale stuff out there right now and you see things," he adds, "but quite honestly a lot of the incarnations of these fairy tales are borrowing from us. It all bleeds together in some way or form, and people are taking stuff from each other."

Creating new mythologies for the Yellow Brick Road crew has endeared them to Brusha as a writer.

"The main thing is trying to give each character their own unique voice and history and explain why they're doing the things they're doing," he says.

"Now having done that, I really love these characters. There are going to be some really cool twists — not everybody is going to be good who was good in the regular Oz story and not everybody is going to be bad."