Kevin Announces His ‘Black Cat’ Comic Book Run At The 2001 San Diego Comic-Con. Jim Mahfood’s ‘ULTIMATE REDESIGN” for Wizard #119. Another BLACK CAT Image.

KEVIN SMITH WRITES ‘BLACK CAT’
And No, That’s Not a Typo

When ya least expect it, expect it.

Comic fan and movie-maker Kevin Smith writing Daredevil for Marvel Comics wasn’t out of the ordinary at all. And Green Arrow at DC? Smith has a lifelong love for the character. So what’s Smith’s next project from a major publisher?

Black Cat.

That’s right — Felicia Hardy, the sometimes-villainess, sometimes-love-interest from Spider-Man’s life is getting ready to claw her way on to the charts. Marvel will launch a new Black Cat ongoing, written by Smith with an artist yet to be determined, in mid-2002.

But why Black Cat, a character who’s never had her own book and has scarcely been seen in years? Smith, who’s made both Daredevil and Green Arrow into major sales sensations, wants a challenge. “[Marvel Editor-in-Chief] Joe Quesada offered me an X-book a while ago before he locked in his final lineup of the current X-Men writing teams,” Smith reveals. “But I was like, ‘The X-books are already a no-brainer. They’ll make it in the top 10 with out without me. That’s too easy.’ If I’m gonna do it, it has to be kind of a challenge. Black Cat? That’s a f—ing challenge to make that book sell.”

Smith’s plan is to write the book for a year, then hand off to another writer. “It worked with Daredevil, it worked with Green Arrow,” he says. “People might jump in ’cause I’m on board, but they get interested in the character. I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘Man, I had no idea Green Arrow was such an interesting cat.’”

The series will be kicked off via a special Spider-Man one-shot that Smith will also write. “The one-shot will re-introduce the Black Cat,” Smith says. “Joe Q. wants to draw a piece of the one-shot, and J. Scott Campbell wants to do a piece. Joe envisions the Spider-Man one-shot as a bunch of different artists.”

This book effectively replaces the long-rumored Spider-Man/Daredevil one-shot Marvel had planned. “Once Marvel did the Spider-Man/Daredevil miniseries by Phil Winslade and Paul Jenkins, I was just like, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ What was I really going to do that was different? I just felt like it had just been done,” Smith says.

Marvel Editor Axel Alonso, who edits the Spider-Man line, will also edit Black Cat, and the pair have been trying to pinpoint an artist for the ongoing series. “Axel is pitching a lot of names at me, but we don’t know who’s going to do it yet,” Smith says.

Smith is also working out his storyline. “I’m going to take a different approach to the character,” he says, “but it won’t be like, ‘Everything you know is wrong!’ It’ll basically be just doing what we did on Daredevil and on Green Arrow: taking the character, keeping all the existing continuity in place, and telling a new story with the character that folks’ll hopefully dig.”

The desire is there on Smith’s part, for multiple reasons. “It appeals to me on a couple of different levels,” he concludes. “It would be great to write a book with a female in the lead for a change. That’ll be different. And it would be great to see if we could take a Black Cat book and put it in the top 10 sellers. That’s a challenge.”

For his part, Quesada is happy to have Smith back at Marvel, where Daredevil launched his comic career. “It’s very simple. Kevin is coming back home and we’re ecstatic,” Quesada says. “Kevin has a track record of taking dead-to-stalled characters and turning them into gold. He’s turned red into gold, he’s turned green into gold. Now it’s time to see if he can turn black into gold.”

Moments away from going to the panel…

…and I had to mention that NY Times piece. A big shout-out goes to Rick Lyman for such great (and substantial) killer ink for a movie that’s very dear to my heart.

You can read it online, as linked by boyd (I’d call him Boyd) below, or over at NewsAskew. But if you’re so inclined, I’d urge you to pick up a copy of the actual paper – as it features a HUGE photo of yours truly, taking up half the front page of the Arts section. I was blown away.

A few unrelated notes…

For the curious, ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ received an ‘R’ rating.

If you’re in the San Diego area, I’ll be on the CBS station’s nightly news at four or five this evening (I also did two morning shows, but you’ve already missed those).

And I respectfully disagree with Jon Favreau, in regards to our casting of the same actors repeatedly in all the films we’ve done. Not only has it been essential (as some folks HAVE to play the characters they’ve played in the previous flicks, since we’ve often brought back the same characters), but if a actor or actress is good, then why not work with them again? And again? And again?

Plus, it’s just more fun.

Plus, it’s one of the attributes to the films we’ve made that makes them stand out.

Plus, the audience (Mister Favreau excepted) loves it.

Plus, I love it.

I can go on, but you get the point.

But if that’s his take on it, it’s cool. I’m not offended, so please don’t rush at the man’s cyber-throat in an effort to avenge some imagined wrong.

That being said, I suspect I’ll be waiting until video to check out ‘Made’ now.

Because, you know, fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

Just kidding.

About the fuck him part; not about skipping ‘Made’.

Interviewer: So you’re not building an ensemble company of actors?

Favreau: No, I don’t work like that. I think it hurts Kevin Smith’s films. I couldn’t get too emotionally involved in Dogma with Jason Lee as the Devil. I didn’t want this movie to be a yearly talent show. I wanted it to be a film where there was a familiarity because of us, but I also want you to feel like you’re traveling to a world that none of us know. I want there to be a feeling that something very bad could happen, that the stakes were very real. Creating that tension gave us the opportunity to laugh and also the opportunity to have some sort of emotional resonance at the end.

KEVIN SMITH Narrowly escaping a Shit Monster who is ravaging the Jersey shore, orphaned David forms a symbiotic bond with pimp-manqué convenience-store clerk Gigolo Joe (David: “Are you the Blue Fairy?” GJ: “I’m not a fuckin’ fag, you fuckin’ fag”). Upon being revived, the real Blue Fairy—in fact an inflatable sex toy named Betty Blueballs—administers a blowjob to David and conjures from his spunk a doting three-breasted Mommy.

“Everyone who’s seen his films know that director Kevin Smith(Dogma, Chasing Amy) is one of us. The man LOVES Star Wars – one of the most memorable scenes in his film “Clerks” was the scene in which the two main characters pondered the morality of the contract workers dying along side the imperial bad guys in the Rebellion’s fiery attack on the unfinished Death Star in Return Of The Jedi. And, Silent Bob’s homage to Yoda in “Mallrats” manages to keep that movie on our to-rent list’s. So, no one should be surprised that Smith’s next venture, due out in August, is titled ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’”

All may not be lost, though. The scabrous, particularly observed critique of film world ways that marked such smart, astringent comedies of the 1990s as “The Player,” “Swimming With Sharks,” “… And God Spoke” and “Living in Oblivion” returns alive, well and brimming with independent attitude next month in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” Kevin Smith’s (”Clerks,” “Dogma”) affectionate but merciless response to every stupidity he’s observed in seven years of making movies.

No marketing maven vetted this script, which includes Smith pals Ben Affleck and Matt Damon dissing each other’s career choices and sets a record for swipes at an actual distributor — in this case the one that’s releasing “Jay and Bob,” Miramax.

The short, thick, bearded Mr. Smith is familiar to moviegoers for the small parts he plays in his own films. (In his latest one, he is the wordless Silent Bob to his co-star Jason Mewes’s motormouth Jay.) And as he moved through the suite of offices and into the editing room to watch “A Man for All Seasons,” he looked very much like Silent Bob, right down to the doleful eyes and the backward baseball cap. Once in the editing room, the door closed and the DVD slid into the bank of technical gizmos, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and began to snap it loudly on his forearm.

“Why this movie?” he asked as he watched the credits roll. “It’s been a favorite of mine since I was a kid. The first time I saw it was when I was about 13. It would have been 1983. I watched it because I was going to a Catholic school in Jersey at the time, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I had this teacher, Sister Theresa, who was great, and Thomas More was her favorite saint and she loved this movie. For our eighth- grade production one year, she did an adaptation of Bolt’s stage play for us to perform. She chopped out a lot, but we still put it on. I played Cromwell. She picked a guy in the class to play Henry VIII because he had red hair. She was kind of fanatical about the details.”

Sister Theresa encouraged her class to watch the film when it was broadcast on a local television station, to introduce them to the story and prepare for the class production. “I watched it and I just fell in love with it in general,” Mr. Smith said. “Even though it was on television and interrupted by commercials, it knocked me out. I don’t know why Sister Theresa loved it so much. I think it had something to do with the integrity of More. He wasn’t one of these fanatical kind of martyrs who wanted to die on the sword. He was a lawyer and tried like mad to get out of dying but in the end found no way that didn’t involve violating his faith. But for me, I loved it just because it was so well-spoken and yet incredibly spiritual at the same time. Here’s a dude who held one of the highest offices in England at the time but was still able to maintain his faith.”

Mr. Smith said his family had just bought its first videocassette recorder, and he made a copy of “A Man for All Seasons” and watched it at least 10 more times in the next weeks. “It got to the point where my parents were, like, ‘C’mon, move on, watch something else,’ ” Mr. Smith said. “But I didn’t want to. It was the language. It was the story. It was being 13 years old and admiring somebody who was able to go down for God. Maybe I even felt I could identify with Thomas More a bit. I can appreciate the way More’s mind worked, how he was able to juggle the two worlds of the spiritual and the everyday. I mean, it’s easy to say we don’t want to sin, but it’s very hard not to sin. Here’s a dude who found a way to do it, to walk the line.”