Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil

By Jeff Smith
Colors: Steve Hamaker

Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel created by C. C. Beck, Bill Parker, Otto Binder, Marc Swayze.

No matter how successful, A rite of passage for American comics creators is that they prove their mettle by working on a property owned by DC or Marvel. Case in point, Jeff Smith had already established himself as the creator of the long-running and beloved comic book series Bone when DC tapped him in 2007 to work on a reimagining of Captain Marvel. The publisher had an undisputably lousy record when it came to their handling of the character. Their current comic was The Trials of Shazam!, the latest attempt to update a superhero known for being the embodiment of 40s whimsy with another grim ‘n’ gritty makeover. In the comic, an older Freddie Freeman, the former Captain Marvel Jr., overcomes a series of brutal ordeals to claim the powers of Captain Marvel after Billy Batson vacated the role in order to succeed the wizard Shazam. No one cared, and that version of Captain Marvel was quickly forgotten after the crossover event Final Crisis. Almost as unpopular was the evil Mary Marvel/Mary Batson who had inherited the powers of Black Adam. But many fans would have agreed that if anyone could make use of Captain Marvel’s classic elements while still appealing to modern sensibilities, it would have been Smith. With the 4 issue series Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil, he proves to be up to the task.

The chief issues with DC’s treatment of Cap are that once he’s integrated into their shared universe, he loses his traditional primacy and becomes an auxiliary Superman. And as a perpetual C-lister, he’s particularly susceptible to the effects of DC’s habit of periodic soft reboots. Captain Marvel doesn’t have the illusion of growth engendered by a decades long history of continuous publication which benefit DC’s most well-known properties. So every cancellation followed by an attempt to reset and update him only underlines just how out-of-step he’s become with the rest of the company lineup. For a publisher that no longer believes in the inherent value of goofy adventures, DC appears to be constantly embarrassed that one of their most iconic, not to mention powerful, characters is also just a dumb kid from the 40s. No wonder turning the Marvel family members angsty or evil seemed like a good idea at the time.

Smith avoids these pitfalls by setting the story in its own milieu, far from the rest of DC’s madding crowd. It’s not a clear-cut solution. Smith starts out with another comic book retelling of Cap’s well-trod origins. But it’s quickly expedited, and he moves on with the main plot, an extra-dimensional invasion orchestrated by Mister Mind with the assistance of Doctor Sivana. When set next to the DC timeline, a comic featuring the classic supervillain team-up known as the Monster Society of Evil feels like a return to Cap’s roots.

But make no mistake, this is a Jeff Smith comic. His cartooning is very different from the DC House style, but Smith’s sinewy figures have a physicality quite unlike that of Cap’s original artist C. C. Beck. In contrast to Beck’s naive simplicity, Smith’s characters stoop, sweat, and strain with every effort. And his thick brushstrokes and moody blacks render a fictionalized New York less a gleaming urban jungle of glass and steel than an impressionistic dreamscape of dark alleyways and crumbling concrete structures. It’s the kind of place where a magic train would emerge from the inky depths to take a young Billy to see Shazam at the mysterious Rock of Eternity. And supernatural creatures like the Alligator Men and the tiger Talky Tawny exude a vague threat without looking entirely out of place.

Smith’s character designs feel particularly well-considered, due to the fact that he had to introduce several of them in a one-and-done story. His muscular Captain Marvel has a different persona than tiny, dirt-encrusted urchin Billy. This choice is a return to the original interpretation of the character. But Mary’s transformation is an unintended consequence of her brother’s, so her powers function in a different manner. And Mind and Sivana make their entrance due to a few of Billy’s unwise choices. Mind, the Alligator Men, and Tawny in particular showcase Smith’s facility for creature creation.

Smith injects some mild satire which pokes fun at the state of the War on Terror, grounding the comic in a specific time period. He may physically resemble a certain ornery Vice President, but Smith’s Sivana as business magnate turned Attorney General willing to sell out his country for a tidy profit has weirdly become more pertinent within the last month. Then again, he did promise that this wasn’t the last we’d hear of him.

Webcomic: Tüki

Go to: Boneville by Jeff Smith (via Heidi MacDonald)

Comic-Con Album Pt 12

Jeff Smith

Charles Vess

Back at the Cartoon Books, a PA message declaring the official close of Comic-Con causes someone to pull out a bottle of champagne. Toasts are made. And there is a visible sense of relief over reaching the end of another convention.

Pt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Comic-Con Album Pt 10

Jeff Smith sketching for a fan

Unsurprisingly, I was a little star-struck on my first Comic-Con. This made me hesitant to approach some of the exhibiting artists. But as any experienced attendee will tell you, most industry professionals are used to interacting with their fans at these events. And Jeff Smith was one of the nicest people I would meet at Comic-Con. At the time, he was still flush from the success of his self-published comic book series Bone, and was then promoting his collaboration with fantasy illustrator Charles Vess, the miniseries Rose.

Pt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Superman by Jeff Smith

Go to: Boneville by Jeff Smith

I'm curious to see his interpretation of the character, given the creative success of his Shazam comic book. But it's always amusing to pick out a Jeff Smith cartoon by the large flaring nostrils.

Bone: Rose

By Jeff Smith, Charles Vess, Steve Hamaker

I've started to re-read my Bone collection, which is composed of various original pamphlets and pre-Scholastic trade paperbacks. It's been many years since I first examined the series as a whole. But I decided to begin at the middle, and read Rose. This comic stands out for a number of reasons. Although it's often labeled as a prequel, it wasn't originally released after the completion of the series, but in the midst of its serialization. Creator Jeff Smith took a break from Bone to initiate Rose and Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails. Both projects were collaborations between Smith and other creators. Both were set in the distant past of the Bone universe. Since the series had begun to roll out a few significant revelations, such as the identities of the hidden main antagonists, this was as good a time as any for Smith to fill in some of the backstory for the readers. As such, Rose and SSRT serve as a kind of interlude, as well as a glorified flashback sequence, before Bone would move inexorably towards a climactic showdown.

Of course Rose contains no real surprises, since it requires that the reader be already familiar with the fantasy world revealed in the series at that point. Without the Bone cousins as reader identification characters, the story's fairy tale elements come to the foreground. This also means that much of the characterization that makes Bone so appealing is missing here. In the series, the eponymous hero Rose Harvestar is known as Gran'ma Ben - a no-nonsense, tough as nails farmer who races against cows because, well why the hell not? However in Rose, both she and her sister older Briar become archetypal feuding siblings: The latter's a power-hungry schemer, while the former is completely oblivious to the latter's open hatred towards her. Individual motives for their behavior don't extend far beyond one being pure and good, and the other being pure evil. Supporting character Lucius Down, a gruff but noble barkeep in Bone, has zero personality here except as an easily manipulated bodyguard. And the cigarette smoking Great Red Dragon in transformed into a stern, judgmental, and stubbornly impassive observer. The absence of the Bone cousins is usually brought up to explain the lack of humor. But my guess is that Smith was more concerned with producing a straight fantasy than injecting even a bit of levity into the story.

This makes Charles Vess an appropriate choice as the book's artist. As someone influenced by Arthur Rackham, his art is charming enough to please adults while still appearing creepy enough to scare younger readers. But it's a different school of illustration from the Disney animation style that informs the rest of Bone. With each chapter, Vess becomes more capable with translating Smith's characters into his own idiom. But a few, most noticeably the Great Red Dragon, betray and uneasy balance between Smith and Vess' divergent artistic approaches. Rose is also the only book with interior art that was originally published in color. This contributed to its initial impact among fans who were accustomed to seeing the characters in black and white. Even today, his application of light color washes contrasts significantly with the more heavily textured styles found in most digitally painted comics. Vess is very adept at using color to enhance the story. As the mood becomes darker, the warmer reds, oranges, and yellows are gradually replaced by cooler greens and blues. White snow that initially appears in the background suddenly falls more heavily as the situation grows more dire, until it envelops the landscape. It's a traditional narrative device. But it's gorgeously executed by Vess.

When set against the events of the rest of the Bone series, Rose is a small scale work. The overall tone of the book is sinister and foreboding. And the ending is left unsettled not only to remain consistent with concurrent issues within the series, but also to foreshadow upcoming events. In retrospect, the battles depicted in Rose were probably a dry run for the even grander armed confrontations that would take place in future chapters of Bone. But since Rose is collected as a separate work to be read after the Bone story-line, most readers will find it redundant. The Bone series repeats most of the pertinent information found in Rose anyway. But when Rose first came out, it only added more intriguing layers, helped along with a dash of color, to the then unfolding Bone saga.

Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas! May your days be merry and bright.

RASL #1

If there is anything about reading serialized comics that one can take away, it is that one should not judge the quality of a story based on a very partial reading. The early chapters of Jeff Smith's hugely popular comic series Bone were likened to the work of Walt Kelly. But whether due to artistic evolution or conscious design, it would later quickly advance into the realm of adventure fantasy. Yet on rereading all of Bone, it becomes apparent that this narrative shift was anticipated from the very beginning. With this in mind, examining the debut of Smith's new series RASL is an intriguing exercise.


Bone was one of those rare comics creations that received both tremendous commercial success and high critical praise. Jeff Smith could have parlayed that into landing a lucrative deal with an established publisher. And yet with RASL he returns to his black-and-white self-publishing roots. Even more interestingly, instead of publishing the series in thicker "graphic novel" volumes, he chooses to work in the traditional pamphlet format as he did in Bone. Working within these limitations, each pamphlet forms the outlines of a single chapter within a larger work. The first issue becomes the prologue. Smith is adept at this kind of pacing, and in this case he thrusts the reader right into the action. A unnamed art thief is in the middle of a heist which doesn't go smoothly. Fortunately for him, he has the uncanny ability to jump between dimensions. How he acquired this goes unexplained, but it grows increasingly evident that someone may be aware of his ability and is after him for unknown reasons. This is all that is needed to set-up the narrative. The protagonist is introduced, a conflict is framed, and a number of mysteries are presented to draw the reader in.

Smith is as skilled a cartoonist as ever. He seems to have no problem drawing gritty urban settings as he did valleys and the forest filled with talking animals. His art thief is as unpleasant a character as the Bone cousins were small and huggable. It's still the same cartoony style which triggered those Walt Kelly comparisons, but adapted to a very different subject-matter. There isn't a whole lot of humor, but there is a great deal of forceful energy. Smith uses very little dialogue for this issue, but instead employs the technique of narrative captions as a way to reveal the character's inner state. He manages to avoid the trap of dumping too much information by carefully balancing captioned panels with silent action-filled panels. But the restraint also serves to control the pace of the story. Only a few details are revealed by the end of the issue before it ends. But this serves only to raise more questions.


Where Jeff Smith will eventually go with RASL is the most interesting mystery of all. Just as in Bone, Smith is taking his time establishing the tone of the narrative. Only gradually will its contours be revealed. That he lets it unfold within the confines of the pamphlet comic is itself an important choice designed to keep readers engaged. He succeeded before in building and maintaining a fanbase for more than a decade, and he has the clout to repeat his success in today's radically different market.