Get a first look at three new Wizard Of Oz-inspired posters

One of Hollywood’s most enduring stars, Judy Garland would have turned 100 on June 10. To celebrate that milestone, memorabilia company Mondo is releasing three posters inspired by Garland’s most beloved film, The Wizard Of Oz. The A.V. Club has received an exclusive first look at the designs, which go on sale June 9.

Artist Jennifer Dionisio has created regular and variant editions of her own Wizard Of Oz tribute, featuring Garland as iconic heroine Dorothy Gale. Dionisio has previously developed images for Jack White’s Fear Of The Dawn, Criterion Collection’s release of the Humphrey Bogart film High Sierra, and a Mondo print honoring Marvel’s WandaVision.

Irish artist Alan Hynes, who has created Mondo prints for John Carpenter’s film They Live and his soundtrack for Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, also designed a Wizard Of Oz poster capturing a stylized version of the landscape of Oz.

Check out Dionosio’s posters below:

Dionisio explained her inspiration for the posters, telling The A.V. Club:

I’m a big fan of Judy Garland and was very excited to work on these posters to celebrate her 100th. As a kid I watched The Wizard Of Oz so many times. I was captivated by the sets, the color and all of the characters. As the film is so iconic, it felt like a perfect opportunity to deviate from some of the well-known visuals and focus on Dorothy.

For my portrait poster, Dorothy’s pose and the composition are inspired by illustrated advertising posters from the early 20th century. Also, I read up about the production and really liked finding out how much Judy cared for the dog that played Toto. I feel like you can see it so clearly in the film, and I wanted to capture that sweet relationship.

For my landscape poster, I thought about how a lot of the characters in the film are searching for something they feel is absent. “Over The Rainbow” is an ode to longing, and many people have pointed out parallels between The Wizard Of Oz and Judy’s own story. So in this composition I circled around these themes of loss and internal reflection.

These posters were so rewarding to make. I hope I’ve succeeded in celebrating Judy in the way she deserves.

Here’s a look at Hynes’ poster:

Hynes said of his design:

The genesis of this idea occurred whilst exploring title treatments for the deluxe edition of the Wizard of Oz soundtrack packaging I was working on. In retrospect this design should probably have been the cover to that LP set but I had already set out on a different path with that project, so instead the basic elements morphed and expanded into a full size poster, growing ever more complicated along the way.

Since 1939 when it was released, there have been multitudes of typographic variations on the title treatment for this film—most placing the emphasis on the word Oz. To be honest I was pretty surprised to not find this particular configuration of the two letters having been utilized previously to represent the movie—a pictorial combination of two of the more iconic symbols from the story.

An over-exaggerated rainbow semi-circle forms the letter O, and flanked by foreboding rows of poppies, dense forest and distant mountains depicting the perilous journey, a stylized letter Z rises on its crooked path to the Emerald City. Tornado-esque flourishes on the coloured rainbow bands add movement and life to an otherwise fairly static image whilst a drought cracked foreground marks the beginning of the adventure in dust bowl era Kansas.

All three posters will be available at MondoShop.com.