Ozma is a fun character, because no matter how complex the story is, her backstory is pretty basic. Muses ran things, and put in place systems like the Namesakes and Death. Namesakes being those who keep magic spread evenly across worlds, and Death being the one that makes sure energy is recycled. Shadows ate all the muses but one, Calliope. Calliope ran, lived a long life where she was basically always running, and eventually created Oz and Ozma from her power.

While a lot of characters - like One - see Ozma as Calliope, she is not. She's made from what remains of Calliope after the muse discarded power, memory, and huge chunks of her being, including some eyeballs. The closed analogy would be that Ozma is like Calliope's daughter, born from unusual means. A bit like how Emma Crewe was made. It wasn't a biological birth, but Emma Ramos still sees her as a daughter.

Unfortunately, because the person creating Ozma is also the one that became Ozma, she is a bit of an unfinished project. Ozma knows something is a bit off with her, that sometimes she has thoughts, memories and reactions she doesn't quite understand. But she is taking matters into her own hands, because Ozma wants to truly be ONLY Ozma, as the muse had hoped.

It's basically a storyline that is very similar to Emma's. And like Emma, Ozma has to take a beat and take control. There's a line in the comic - spoken by Adora, Warrick's mom - saying that Warrick's heart went to Emma Crewe , because she was the closest thing to Ozma the heart could fine. And Emma is similar to Ozma is so, so many ways. How thy were created, what they want, their power level, their personalities. I really hope people see the two characters are parallels.

Folks who have read the Oz books written by Baum know that Ozma was temporarily turned into the Ozite boy Tip by Mombi. This is a situation the comic referenced a few times. In chapter 35 of Namesake, we'll get to actually see Ozma as Tip, and I'm very happy to draw that!

Here a few refresher comic sequences to check out before we enter chapter 35!

• Emma doing a dream deep dive where she awakens as Ozma meeting Warrick again - a scene that is about to come up in-comic.

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/saving-people-again

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/ozma-isn39t-it

• Adora telling Emma about the muses

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/the-muses

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/the-runaway

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/sanctuary

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/trying-to-forget

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/what-the-heart-did

• The comic draws a lot of parallels between Ozma and Emma via Warrick because he was at some point in love with both, though his infatuation with Ozma was one-sided and based on vibes.

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/hard-to-choose

• This segment has Ozma spell out that she is a new person made from Calliope, but mainly I love how lively she is in this sequence. It was sooooo nice to draw Ozma speaking for herself instead of being seen mainly thru other characters.

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/forgetful-fountain

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/old-magic

            https://www.namesakecomic.com/comic/time-to-leave

And of course, textless illustration once again!