- With the long-awaited Bluntman & Chronic now on shelves, and Green Arrow in its final month with Kevin on board as writer, folks are looking ahead to what’s next on Kevin’s slate in the comics world. Newsarama ran this excellent piece on what to expect in 2002 and beyond:
Smith declined to tell Newsarama anything specific about the villain, saying, “And ruin the surprise? Heavens no. But I’ll tell you what someone else said about him..
“Matt Wagner (who’s come up with just about the most astonishingly artistic comic book cover I’ve ever seen for issue #13) had this to say about the new villain in our recent email exchange about what the cover image featuring the villain should be…”
“And a cool character he is! Like I said, the concept was BOLD AND SIMPLE enough that the image just popped right up. In fact, I’m f*****g surprised that no one’s ever thought to call a character that before. Seems like a natural and the natural ideas are always the best.” Smith did not know whether Hester and Parks would also be exiting with issue #15, and a spokesperson for DC was unable to confirm what their last issue would be either. As it turns out, there looks to be some downtime between the end of Smith’s Green Arrow run and his starting on Brave and the Bold, as the writer tells Newsarama the launch of his upcoming new Marvel ongoing series Black Cat (more on that in a moment) comes first, making a timetable for Brave and the Bold too early to say.
Back to Green Arrow, Smith told us he was not aware of his replacement being found by DC yet, and asked if he had any input in the selection process, Smith replied, “They haven’t asked yet, so I don’t imagine they’re going to.”
As to Black Cat, Smith informs us plans for that series have changed slightly as well since its was announced this past summer.
Originally the series was to be launched with a special Spider-Man/Black Cat one-shot leading into the new ongoing series, but as of this moment, that one-shot has been changed to a four-issue Spider-Man/Black Cat mini-series leading into the solo Black Cat ongoing series.
Smith said they’re gunning for a May debut of the mini-series – in time of course of the Spider-Man film – and describes the mini-series as “packed”.
“Aside from our main story, we’ve got something happening to Peter that’s going to rock his world and change all the books forever,” he teased.
Smith isn’t giving away too many details about the ongoing series either, saying just that it will be “darker and edgier” than people might expect, and although the series was recently described by a comics publication as dealing with the mystical/magical aspects of Felicia Hardy’s ‘bad luck’ powers, he said that is not accurate, and that the series will be more in the vein of his work in Daredevil, “at least more so than Green Arrow was.”
It’s going to be exciting to see what Kevin does with these projects, as it seems he’s got a ton of surprises in store and he’s yet again shaking up the worlds in which these characters live. Good stuff. We’ll keep you posted on the progress of all this stuff!
