Line #54 ComicBook/Abadazad


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7	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/abadazad_564.jpg]]
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9	You know ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz''?
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11	No, you don't.
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13	It turns out that due to DirectLineToTheAuthor, Oz was... brightened up a bit for kids. Made safe. And the little girl who told the story of her adventures to the author was a little too black for that era to accept as the hero of a kids' book, so the author changed her into a little white girl.
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15	We find all this out while reading ''Abadazad''. Okay, so it's not the real Oz, but it's a brilliant and colorful CaptainErsatz of the place.
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17	Kate was pretty young when her [[DisappearedDad father]] [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned her family]] and her mother started drinking. So she was pretty much responsible for [[PromotionToParent raising her kid brother by herself]]. No wonder she felt so responsible over him getting kidnapped.
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19	Only, thing is, he was actually taken to Abadazad. Kate only learns this a few years later from the woman across the hall in their apartment building -- an old black woman who seems to know a little too much about those kids' books that have been around forever....
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21	Oh, and this book you're reading? It's Kate's magic diary, which she gets shortly after entering the MagicalLand. Sometimes it writes things for itself; things Kate shouldn't even know about.
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23	The 2004 series was written by J. M. [=DeMatteis=] and drawn by Mike Ploog. The comic was published by Creator/CrossGen, which was bought out by Creator/{{Disney}}, who published a few childrens' books based on the comic.
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25	!!Tropes:
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27	%%* BigBad: The Lanky Man.
28	%%* ByThePowerOfGraySkull
29	* CaptainErsatz: The whole of Abadazad is essentially Oz, so many of its characters line up roughly with characters from that series:
30	** Little Martha is Dorothy Gale; an All-American girl who traveled to a magical land at the turn of the century.
31	** Queen Ija is meant to be one for Princess Ozma, being a fairy who rules the magical land of the setting. Her relationship with Martha also echoes Dorothy and Ozma's friendship.
32	** The Two-Fold Witch was only mentioned in the original series pitch and never made an appearance either of the series's runs, but her description as a powerful sorceress makes her out to be one for Glinda.
33	** The Floating Warlock is the creator of Abadazad, which makes him roughly correspond to Lurline, the fairy queen who is said to have enchanted Oz.
34	** The Lanky-Man is one for the Nome King, being a longtime enemy of the heroes. His Rocket-Heads also fill this role. (This may seem odd to people who only know the Wicked Witch of the West as the main threat to Oz, but the Lanky Man is said to be in multiple books, unlike the Wicked Witch.)
35	%%* {{Cephalothorax}}: Professor Headstrong.
36	* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: War doesn't exist in Abadazad because nobody believes in it.
37	%%* CreepyChild: The Lanky Boys.
38	%%* {{Disneyfication}}: An in-universe example.
39	%%* DownTheRabbitHole
40	%%* DirectLineToTheAuthor
41	* DisappearedDad: Kate's parents divorced when she and her brother were young, and they haven't heard from their dad since then.
42	* TheDragon: According to Word Of God, the Lanky Man has a literal example called The Burping Dragon.
43	* ExtraEyes: Queen Ija has three eyes.
44	* FishPerson: The Waterlogged Warlock, one of the Elders of Abadazad.
45	%%* GodIsFlawed
46	%%* TheHighQueen: Queen Ija.
47	* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: Kate comments that the clown Mr. Balloon just seemed to come out of nowhere to offer her and her brother tickets for a ride. [[spoiler: It's really The Lanky Man, who then kidnaps Matt while he's on the ride]].
48	* {{MacGuffin}}: The Blue Globe, whose only purpose is to get people from Earth to Abadazad.
49	%%* MadScientist: The Lanky Man.
50	%%* MagicalLand
51	* MedievalStasis: In Abadazad "Time has no meaning," to the point that the calendar is hard to decipher. However, Uncle Waterlogged comments that Abadazad does rebuild itself once in a while.
52	* MissingChild: Your son can be kidnapped, and finding him seems very unlikely.
53	* {{Mooks}}: The Rocketheads are this for the Lanky Man.
54	* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: Averted. As mentioned above, Martha was given a RaceLift in the books so she could be TheHero.
55	%%* PostModernism
56	* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The Lanky Man has kidnapped various children in order to use their dreams to fuel his "Great Machine."
57	* SaveBothWorlds: [[spoiler:According to the author's outline, this would have been the plot near the end, had the series not been cancelled.]]
58	* ScrapbookStory: The ''Abadazad'' series has been released in small graphic novels, each an enchanted [[strike:diary]]log in which she details her adventures to this point. The "enchanted" part comes to play when the book records things she wasn't around for, as well as turning from text to pictures and back, and bringing in full pages of the "original" ''Abadazad'' books whenever someone reads or refers to them.
59	* ShoutOut:
60	** The series as a whole can be seen as a ShoutOut to L. Frank Baum's ''[[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]]'' books.
61	** The name of the guy who wrote the "original" ''Abadazad'' is Franklin O. Davies. Originally, his name was Franklin O. Barrie. Both "Davies" and "Barrie" relate to the real-life people behind ''Franchise/PeterPan''.
62	** When Kate gets zapped into several different outfits, she finds herself dressed as [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Snow White]], [[WesternAnimation/PeterPan Tinkerbell]], and [[Film/TheWizardOfOz Glinda]]. She is not amused by that last one.
63	* SpiritualSuccessor: ''Literature/{{Imaginalis}}'', a young adult novel written by series writer J.M. [=DeMatteis=] as a form of catharsis over the series' cancellation.
64	%%* {{Steampunk}}: Implied with the Wretchedly Awful City, the headquarters of the Lanky Man.

Context ComicBook / Abadazad