Kevin Smith doesn’t need to live vicariously through his on-screen characters. At least not when it comes to his passion for comincs. The 27-year-old-writer-director, who made the two lead guys in Chasing Amy comic-book artists and had Marvel Comics impresario Stan Lee play himself in Mallrats, is turhing out his own comincs almost as quickly as his movies. Smith is currently shooting his fourth flick in five years – Dogma, a religious satire starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris Rock. Meanwhile, Oni Press recently published Jay and Silent Bob and Clerks (The Comic Book), both of which Smith scripts. And he has inked deals to write six issues of Marvel’s Daredevil and an undetermined number of DC Comics’ Green Arrow, due to start hitting racks in late ’98 and early ’99, respectively.

“I started reading (comics) when I was in grade school,” Smith says. “But in high school (Henry Hudson Regional in Highlands, N.J.), I thought there were more important things…like chaising tail and keggers.” Just before graduation, Smith befriended a metalhead, Walt Flanagan, who-by introducing Smith to titles like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen-proved that comics weren’t just for kids. “(I thought) if a dude as hardcore as Walt could be into comic books, then certainly I, not being hardcore in the least, could be into them, too.”

Last year, Smith attempted to bring his two loves together in a big way when he was hired to write the screenplay for Superman Lives. And though the script was initially accepted by Warner Bros., Tim Burton-who later signed on to direct-tossed it. “It’s a shame it went down the way it did,” Smith says. “The reaction I got was like 95 percent overwhelmingly positive…. And from what I understand, there’s still a lot of my story in the movie.”

In a related venture, last January, Smith bought a comics store in hishometown/head-quarters, Red Bank, N.J. “It kind of came out of laze,” Smith admits, laughing at his tendency toward convenience-the local shop was closing down, and he didn’t want to commute 15 minutes from his View Askew production offices to the next-closest joint. And where better to peddle his new books than his own place, rechristened Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash? “It’s like a clubhouse,” Smith brags of the shop (which buddy Flanagan now manages) where he spends much of his time. “Business does get done, yes, but it’s really just a place to hang out and jaw.” — Tricia Laine