According to JOE QUESADA, news of KEVIN SMITH’s departure as writer of DAREDEVIL over the weekend proved to be premature, and that Smith is still in, or more accurately BACK in, as writer of what-will-be a relaunced DD.

Last week, Smith announced to reporters that he was NOT going to participate as has been long-rumored, and left the following explanation at his website. “I wanted to do a storyline about Matt Murdock getting his sight back. About a week ago, Joe informed me that in the lag between the Event pickup and Joe Kelly’s run, Scott Lobdell was going to do 4 issues. In those 4 issues, Daredevil was, you guessed it, going to get his sight back. This left me in a bad place, as that was the storyline I was working on for a few weeks.”

“Faced with this, I had to come up with a new storyline, and guess what? I couldn’t. I didn’t have another story arc in me. I thought and I dwelled, did a bunch of re-reading of my favorite DD storylines – I did my homework. And I still couldn’t come up with one.”

HOWEVER, over the weekend, after a pep talk with Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti, Smith came up with another idea. “A (bleep)in’ brilliant idea, better than his original,” said Quesada. According to the Event co-head, Smith has already finished the plots for the first 2 issues and will now write 6 issues, or at least as many as his filmmaking schedule will allow. “Kevs original idea was really good, this new one is epic, I don’t want to give away any details but I’ve worked with a lot of great writers before but this has to be hands down the best 2 issues of any comic I’ve ever received to pencil, you can tell that Kevin was truly inspired writing this, it’s not an easy task taking a much worn hero and taking him to new horizons but I believe Kevin is going that way,” concluded Quesada.

After Smith departs, writer DAVID MACK (KABUKI) will come on and finish out the year of stories the deal entails.

It’s really nice to see Kevin getting involved with the comics industry. We can’t wait to readthe story and see what the brilliant idea is. Should be interesting! Getting fans of theindustry directly involved in the creation process of the books is an exciting prospect and, inour opinion, could only help get some great stuff out there. Wonder what Kev would do witha JLA scripting opportunity?