For pretty much every fanboy on the planet, Kevin Smith lives the life of which we dream.

Get this: In 1994, with a staggering budget of just under twenty-eight thousand dollars, the movie Clerks was released in theatres, and Kevin Smith, a four-month film school dropout, was suddenly a major name in Hollywood. He won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Festival that year, and the movie was acclaimed by many, including Roger Ebert.

And it’s part of this movie’s lore that Smith sold his comic collection to help pay for the film. That’s right — Smith reads comics. And now that he’s become a major talent, he gets to write them as well.

Smith’s first outings in comics were adaptations of some of his film characters into Oni Press’ Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob. Of these titles, J&SB is the more interesting, telling the stories of the characters’ time between Smith’s latest film, Chasing Amy, and his forthcoming Dogma. Jay is a loud-mouthed, fast-talking, dim-witted wannabe drug pusher and sex fiend, and Silent Bob is his mute accomplice, keeping Jay only barely in check The comic is funny, with seismic dialogue and ridiculous scenarios.

This is a direct contrast to Smith’s most ambitious comic work: The new Daredevil title for the Marvel Knights line of comics. With smooth, full-bodied artwork from Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti, Daredevil grapples with issues of religious faith and personal longing. Internal dialogues carry on for pages at a time, which can be a risky practice in the age of the catch phrase. But the writing is so involving and character-driven that you find yourself glad to be reading a comic book again:

My apartment — while well appointed — isn’t what I’d call “lush” or “huge” by any means. It is, after all, a Hell’s Kitchen apartment. But given that, there are still rooms I haven’t been in for months. The bathroom off the master bedroom is one.

We designated that as “her bathroom.”

This morning, a guy who spends half his life as a “Man Without Fear” took an hour to summon the courage to use a brush in that bathroom. The bristles were still tangled with her hair…

Daredevil is a challenging book to write, but many exciting talents have risen to the task, including Karl Kesel, D.G. Chichester, and, most notably, Frank Miller. It took Kevin Smith writing and directing three whole movies to get there, but now he can be added to that very exclusive list.