Marvel And DC's First Collaboration Was A Contentious Wizard Of Oz Project

Back in 1975, famed rivals Marvel Comics and DC Comics did what many fans felt was unthinkable: they collaborated for the first time.

Marvel and DC, even to this day, remain the two largest power players in the comics industry. Marvel has been making bank since the 1960s with characters like the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Avengers, and the Awesome Slapstick. DC, on the other side, has been lucrative since the 1930s, overseeing characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and the amazing Ambush Bug. Debates over which company has produced the superior characters is the source of infinite nerd conflict, even more hotly contested than the "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" discussions. And given how protective Marvel and DC are about their characters, it was a rare event indeed if they ever crossed over. 

It happened from time to time, of course. Old-school comics nerds will recall the first 1976 crossover event "Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century," wherein the DC and Marvel heroes got into a brief scuffle. There are no parallel universe shenanigans in that comic. Superman and Spider-Man are seen to simply be living on the same Earth. The fight between the characters is evened by a high-tech radiation ray that weakens Superman slightly, but strengthens Spider-Man considerably. And that was just the first superhero crossover. Every few years or so, another event would pop up, and comic book nerds would learn, say, if the Hulk could beat up Superman, etc.

But the very first collab between the companies came in 1975 over a very strange and hotly contested project. Both companies, it seems, were working on simultaneous comic adaptations of MGM's 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz." But rather than one company ceding the project to the other, however, they ended up joining forces. The result was an 84-page mega comic called "MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz."

The story was told in a 1987 issue of The Baum Bugle, handily archived by the Oz Club.

At the time, a man named Roy Thomas had just ended his tenure as editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics. An unearthed letter he wrote revealed that Marvel and DC were negotiating for the comics rights for MGM's "The Wizard of Oz" at the same time. At that point, Victor Fleming's classic movie was only 36 years old, but had already entrenched itself in the popular consciousness. It was being broadcasted on television, and adapted into new musicals like "The Wiz." Thomas was an avowed "Wizard of Oz" super-fan, and it was evidently his idea to bring the movie to the page. With the rights from MGM, the comic would be allowed to use the images from the film, and the likenesses of its actors Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, and all the others. 

DC was negotiating with MGM to make not only comics of "The Wizard of Oz," but a new toy line as well. Marvel, though, somehow won the contract, and Roy Thomas, working with Marvel artist John Buscema, began working on the comics immediately. At first, they constructed several penciled out pages of wholly original drawings, sporting all-new character designs of L. Frank Baum's immortal characters, but that version was scrapped in favor of a more screen-accurate version.

This was all before the advent of VHS, so Buscema had no visual cues to go by, other than several production stills that MGM provided. Frustratingly, MGM refused to give Thomas a copy of the "Wizard of Oz" script, so Thomas went out and bought a dialogue-heavy audio cassette of the film's soundtrack. He was able to transcribe the audio, and kind of describe the visuals to Buscema. Thomas also filled in the missing dialogue himself, as the soundtrack cassette didn't have the entire movie on it. In a stroke of good luck, Buscema had seen the movie a few times (who hasn't?), and he was able to trace the images from memory. 

In Thomas' letter, though, it was noted that DC Comics had a retaliatory plan. It seems that DC, in an attempt to undercut Marvel, decided to start working on a "Wizard of Oz" adaptation of their own. The original novel was in the public domain, so DC was within its rights to use the title, even if it couldn't use the likenesses of the actors from the 1939 movie. Marvel was well within their legal and creative rights to work on their "Wizard," but, according to Thomas, the company became afraid that DC would outstrip them in some capacity. "At the last minute," it said in Thomas' letter, "Marvel seems to have panicked and struck up a deal with DC to avoid two Oz books at the same time."

The real reasons for this deal remain hazy, but the deal was struck nonetheless. "MGM's The Marvelous Wizard of Oz" was to be published as a joint Marvel/DC venture. Curiously, though, no one from DC Comics contributed to the book creatively. It remained Thomas' and Buscema's project through to the end. The inkers and co-writers were also Marvel staff employees. The finished book was planned to be 72 pages, but stretched out to 84, including movie stills, maps of Oz, and a brief biography of L. Frank Baum. 

The book, however, was not a success. There was no marketing, for one. Because the book was so thick, and printed in a larger format than traditional comics, most comics fans stayed away. Traditional bookstores refused to stock it because at the time, bookshops rarely stocked comics. 

The comic faded fast, and vanished from the public consciousness. This historical collaboration between two major comics manufacturers should have been more of a cause célèbre, but it ended up merely being a curio. A footnote. These days, only curious souls with a few bucks to burn can purchase the book on the second-hand market.