Shout-Out to Shirkie!: The Official Smallville Magazine

The Magazine

Smallville: The Official Magazine is a great bimonthly (used to be monthly; get the details on the News and Updates page) magazine with awesome articles, photos, and interviews pertaining to our favorite show, Smallville. I try to pick up a copy when I have time to get to our local comic book store, but, unsurprisingly, it's been SOLD OUT whenever I go. Today, acting on a suggestion from the mysterious Mr. Beppo himself, I went to the store and requested the latest issue of Smallville: The Official Magazine. There was only one copy left, even though Issue #5 (February 2005) just came out a few days ago. I purchased the copy and raced home to find out what secrets the Magazine could hold.

The Discovery

Pages 48 and 49 caught my attention; these pages contain an article called "Birth of a Prophet: If you haven't yet heard the name Ezra Small, read on...", part one of a three-part article by Jim Bradlee. The first paragraph reads as follows:

The Internet, that great equalizer and maker of strange bedfellows, has linked countless people through their passion for peculiar subjects. Under normal circumstances, an unassuming Kansas journalist and an enthusiastic fan from, say, Naperville, Illinois, would have a pretty small chance of becoming familiar with each other. But the Web has an amazing ability to inspire fervor among a small, devoted community, completely under the radar of the rest of society.

Well, as anyone who's seen my Kryptonsite member profile knows, Naperville, Illinois is my hometown. But it gets better! The very last paragraph of the article reads as follows:

Although he was unavailable to be interviewed for this article, Mr. Beppo offers the following advice: For further information on Ezra Small and his legacy, please visit:
lmhth.txetdnip\a:rze/\s/etiws_wlanwre.tnie\mzoc.rsoarbrsenmrawa.elllilvl.lamcs\o\:pmtth

Leave it to Mr. Beppo to be so cryptic! J The last line looks like a really screwed-up, garbled URL (website address). It's actually two. The colons, dots, and slashes give this away immediately. But the important thing to notice is the direction of some of the slashes-- they're backwards. These slashes belong to one URL, encoded backwards, while the other slashes belong to a second URL, encoded forwards. Being my usual persnickety self, I decided to tackle the backwards URL first and started by reversing the jumbled text:

httmp:/o/scmal.lvlillle.awarmnesrbraosr.cozm/eint.erwnalw_swite\s/\ezr:a/pindtext.hthml

Knowing web pages begin with http:// (hypertext transfer protocol), I highlighted these letters and began searching for the rest of the URL. The first word that stuck out was Smallville, so I highlighted that as well.

httmp:/o/scmal.lvlillle.awarmnesrbraosr.cozm/eint.erwnalw_swite\s/\ezr:a/pindtext.hthml

At this point, I was able to figure out the URL was a WB Smallville site address, so I highlighted the remaining letters.

httmp:/o/scmal.lvlillle.awarmnesrbraosr.cozm/eint.erwnalw_swite\s/\ezr:a/pindtext.hthml

Ignoring the non-highlighted letters gives the first hidden URL:

http://smallville.warnerbros.com/internal_sites/ezra/index.html

This, of course, is the address of The WB's official Ezra Small House-- the same page where the Hidden Prophecy was discovered by yours truly. But we can't forget the letters and symbols I intentionally ignored to identify the first hidden URL. The remaining letters and symbols, in the same order they were given, are here:

moc.llamsarze.www\\:ptth

Because I had originally reversed the coded text to determine what the backwards URL was, I had to reverse the text once again. When I did, a very familiar URL was revealed:

http://www.ezrasmall.com

And that's where the story ends-- for now, anyways. I strongly suggest you pick up this issue as the Ezra Small article is great (not to mention the exclusive interview with Michael Rosenbaum a.k.a. Sexy Lexy and other great articles). Also, keep in mind that this Ezra Small article is Part One of Three, so there's more Ezra-- and Mr. Beppo-- to come!