MGM's The Wizard of Oz has always been a family favorite, but it was hard to watch it at home before the rise of VHS videotapes. Unless a family had a copy of the Super 8 -- which was a hassle in itself -- you would have to wait for the movie to air on TV. With this in mind, a comic book adaptation of the film seemed like a good idea. While it might be missing the songs that made the movie pop, it was still a bright and exciting way for fans to revisit the land of Oz.
Marvel and DC have always had a friendly rivalry. For decades, the two publishers have taken jabs at each other in their books, but they've also acknowledged each other's accomplishments from time to time. On a few rare occasions, they would even bring their biggest characters together for special comics. Batman met Hulk, the Marvel Universe fought the DC Universe and eventually all of Marvel and DC's biggest heroes met each other in JLA/Avengers. But while 1976's Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man was the first crossover between DC and Marvel characters, it wasn't the first time the two companies teamed up.
From a business standpoint, a comic featuring Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion would surely be a big seller. In fact, the idea for a Wizard of Oz comic was such a good idea that Marvel and DC both came up with it at roughly the same time, although they went at it in different ways.
DC, which was owned by Warner Bros., paid for the rights to the MGM movie while Marvel chose to base its comic on Frank L. Baum's book, which had fallen into the public domain and was free to use. It wasn't long into the production of the comic before Marvel's Stan Lee learned DC was working on its own Wizard of Oz comic. While there was clearly a market for one Wizard of Oz comic, two competing Wizard of Oz comics would probably cancel each other out, leading to neither company making a profit. Lee went to then-DC Publisher Carmine Infantino to see if they could make a deal. Infantino was willing to listen, and before long Marvel and DC came to an agreement to create one 82-page oversized comic with the oversized title of Marvel and DC Present MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz.
Written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga and a back cover by John Romita, the comic was really a Marvel production with DC just taking a piece of the sales action. The book was released as part of oversized Marvel's Treasury Edition series, which was primarily used to reprint old Marvel stories. That was followed up by The Marvelous Land of Oz, which Marvel published on its own.
While Marvelous Wizard of Oz let readers open their imaginations to the beautiful scenery of Baum's magical world, it also opened a door between Marvel and DC that has never fully closed. Just a year later, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man would hit shelves, closely followed by Superman and Spider-Man and Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk in 1981, and Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans in 1982. After a short lull, crossovers between the two publishers became regular occurrences in the 1990s, culminating with the all-encompassing Marvel vs. DC.
While Marvel and DC haven't crossed over since 2004's JLA/Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez, Marvel returned to Frank L. Baum's world of Oz in 2009 with Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. While DC's Doomsday Clock ended with a tease of another potential Marvel and DC crossover, there's no concrete indication that a crossover between the two publishers could happen anytime soon. While the land of Oz is filled with fantastic things, the most impressive aspect of that magical world might just be that it brought Marvel and DC together.