Superman Through the Ages! Forum

After 5 years of waiting, Jeff Smith's SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil #1 is available today and boy was it worth the wait. Smith breaths new life into Big Red Cheese's mythos. All classic Marvel elements are made magic again. The story is what you would expect with modern updates.  Pencil work is clean and cartoony with gorgeously rendered coloring. While only a setup issue, Monster Society is a welcomed change to current SHAZAM! comics.

Don't forget to crack the Monster Society Secret Code @ http://dccomics.com/comics/?cm=6829  ;D


Spoiler warning

*** One aspect I didn't prefer: At the beginning, Billy receives some harsh treatment from an adult. Although rectified later, I found this portion to be a little unsettling. I'm curious to read how board members feel about it.***   

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=100845

I just my copy today and finished reading it a little while ago.

Wonderful, wonderful first issue!

There's more genuine heart in a few pages of this book than most superhero titles have had in what feels like a thousand years. With Smiths art and sense of movement it's almost like Shazam! The animated series. Likewise with the writing in the sense that like Dini and Timm there is some very smart, thought out, and informed decisions about what to keep classic, what to tweak, and what to take a totally new tact with. Best Shazam! I've seen since Power of Hope!


SAY THE MAGIC WORD!







In regards to that. With a lesser and more classless and shock motivated writer I maybe would have had a bad reaction to that. Under Jeff's pen though there's nothing gratuitous about it and it is being used to simply establish that a kid trying to live by himself on the street is inherently dangerous, and more than a little it speaks to the ideas of bullying and abuse which also does happen. Some degree of leaving the reader with an unsettling feeling is intentional, but he's not trying to milk for cheap shock value nor is it done in a way that breaks the overall tone of the book or the fun of the concept. The stuff in the 80's reboot with Billy ending up with Sivanna is much more blatant and unsettling in that sense I think than anything you'll find here.   
 
Or hell, any scene involving Harry Potter's crazed foster parents.


*SPOILER*





I really like that there can be a character dynamic and interaction between Billy and Marvel now. The Rock of Eternity rules!

"Everything about Billy and the Captain is so open-hearted and honest in a comic world chock full of irony and grim tidings that’s it’s almost bizarrely cutting edge."

Truer words were never spoken by a comicbook reviewer.

I love Jeff's art and writing and this only makes me want to buy that HUGE Bone book now.

This is the best non fawcett Captain Marvel comic. It makes the current Shazam comic look even worst than it did on it's own.

It may not be an offical All-Star book but it might as well be.

After re-reading issue #1, I agree. It reminds me of classic Disney movies, when the protagonist goes through some sort of abuse. I wonder if the homeless man is Theo Adam?

It's too bad Jeff Smith will probably not write/draw a Cap monthly. He has some mad skills.  :D

If I remember correctly, I think he stated that he would be willing to write for it but he just couldn't draw it. Maybe they could out Darwyn Cooke on the art chores.

Boy, I'd love that! As I may have said elsewhere, I think one of the funniest depictions of Captain Marvel in later years is Billy Batson's appearance in The New Frontier, pigging out on ice cream on the surface of the moon and being mildly scolded for it by Zatanna.

I seem to remember reading something where Smith was told his series would be considered continuity. Honestly, I hope this ISN'T the case because it would mean the lovable characters we see here get warped into the stuff going on in Trials.

Maybe Junior's in his own little world and it won't have any impact

One of the best funny books Ive read in a long time --with the exception of All Star Supes and Cookes Spirit (inked by a mysterious J. Bone)