It’s been a few years since Jeff Smith wrapped up his masterpiece, Bone. In the meantime he’s been traveling around the world and puttering away on SHAZAM: THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL, a four issue prestige mini-series from DC. The first issue launches, at long last, February 7.
To get us in the mood, Smith has been posting a SHAZAM PRODUCTION JOURNALwith drawings and process. Charming doesn’t begin to cover it. This is what comics should be, and should be one of the biggest comics events of ’07.
What’s with the weird blue text in his journal? I don’t have a decoder ring. Does Jeff want us to be sure to drink our Ovaltine?
That code is really easy to figure out. I’m no good at things like deciphering codes, and even I figured it out in about five minutes. Why parts of his journal are in code, that I don’t know!
Graeme covered this a few days ago (has had ongoing pimpage of this book actually) and has the decoder key in this post…
http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/01/18/you-will-believe-a-tiger-can-talk/#more-2294
I think Jeff Smith is just trying to get into the Golden Age spirit with the secret codes. Comics used to be full this this sort of fun stuff… before they got “serious”.
He announced this so long ago, I thought it came out and I’d missed it. It’s looking great!