[Read the whole thing]]]> Abadazad was a fantasy adventure series by J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog which began life as a comic book published by the late, lamented Crossgen. When CGI folded, it was reborn as a series of illustrated prose novels published by Hyperion Books. Hyperion published two volumes: The Road to Inconceivable and The Dream Thief. Abadazad was strongly inspired by L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, but took the tack of suggesting that what was published in the books wasn’t what really happened. Still, despite being a little more “realistic”, Abadazad was still simply a fun adventure story, it didn’t take the “postmodern Oz” approach of making the world darker and grimmer to appeal to modern sensisibilities.

Unfortunately, DeMatteis reports that Hyperion has decided to stop publishing Abadazad. The third book, The Puppet, The Professor and The Prophet, has been published in the U.K., but will not be published in the U.S.

All of which is too bad. Although I didn’t think it was a groundbreaking series, it was fun, and Ploog’s art was terrific (even in the illustrated-prose format), so I’m hoping it will pop up again somewhere sometime, and finish the story.