The faces of the Wicked Witch of the East (1)
When it comes to the Wicked Witch of the East... well, we don't have much of an idea of what she looks like, do we? Baum never described her in any way, beside her being very old and wearing the silver slippers.
In the Baum books the Witch of the East only appears twice. First in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", as the glimpse of a corpse by Dorothy, an unflattering description by the Good Witch of the North, and a name in the backstory of the Tin Woodman. One has to wait until "The Tin Woodman of Oz" for her to return and be fleshed out more - as we have a retconned and extended version of the misadventures of Nimmie Amee and her boyfriends. And it is by this book that we have the real first "illustrations" of the Wicked Witch of the East, courtesy of John R. Neill.
While the picture above, in black and white, is known as THE most famous and iconic depiction of the book-Witch of the East, down to being her profile picture everywhere, Neill also did another drawing of her which, when colorized, has her wear as colors black, orange and red... Very bizarre for the blue-coded Munchkin land, but at the same time orange-red DOES clash neatly with the blue of the Munchkins.
The second most famous picture of the Wicked Witch of the East (book-wise) is this drawing by Eric Shanower, not for a given book of Oz, but for the 1992 issue of Oziana. As you can see, Shanower took heavy inspiration from the drawings of Neill (same hat and scarf around the head, same edges of the apron and the shawl-thing around her shoulders) but simplified it - the checkered pattern is gone, and the long twisted staff became a shorter cane. Also note how Neill purposefully gave the Witch of the East traits that would echo Denslow's design of the Wicked Witch of the West (such as the ruff-collar, that Shanower removed).
But all of these pictures come from later Oz artists. It is commonly agreed that the original Oz illustrator, W.W. Denslow, the one who gave us the "iconic" Witch of the West design, never did any portrait of the Witch of the East...
If you check Wikipedia Commons, you can find the picture below, which apparently W.W. Denslow created to promote the 1902 "Wizard of Oz" musical (you know, the extravaganza Baum created out of his novel, and that paved the way for "The Marvelous Land of Oz" to be written). And this is a portrait of... the Wicked Witch of the East, Denslow style.
A fairly "traditional" witch as you can see, quite different from the more extravagant appearance of the Witch of the West... But a design some of you might recognize.
In 1991, Donald Abbott wrote "How the Wizard Came to Oz". This book is not considered part of the "Famous Forty" as Abbott never became an "official" Oz Historian... But this novel still got some fame because, not only does it act as a prequel to Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (by telling the story, as you can guess, of the Wizard's arrival in the land), but it also imitates Baum's own writing/storytelling style... With illustrations imitating Denslow' original drawings.
And this includes having the Wicked of the East appear... With the exact same design Denslow made (with just the additional of the silver slippers). Many thought it was Abbott's own invention, but no, he really just imitated Denslow's creation.
Later (around 2016-2019 if I recall?), Abbott turned his novel into a graphic novel, a comic which, interestingly, had quite a radical change in design, as this new version embraced much more the MGM movie's influence, resulting for example in the Wicked Witch of the West going from the "Denslow goblin" in her occult-pattern clothes...
... to a sexy witch in all-black outfit riding her umbrella like a flying broomstick.
As you can see, the "glamorizing" of the Wicked Witches I told you about before is at full work here. The Wicked Witch of the East, also became far more sexier, going from this tiny crooked crone... to a tall sexy jeweled witch-queen in armored bustier. The comic version also attributed names to the witches: Morella for the one of the West, Malvonia for the one of the East.
Speaking of comic books, I will conclude this first post with the Marvel comics adaptation of the Baum novels - written by Eric Shanower, but drawn by Skottie Young, and in which the Witch of the East makes several visual appearances.
And Young decided to make her a short, fat, hunchbacked hag with her face perpetually half-covered by a hood, which focuses the reader on her large mouth. A design which was made to oppose and complete the one of the Wicked Witch of the West, tall and thin with a great focus on her eye(s).
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