Friday, May 10

2:00p.m. – 4:00p.m. — Signing at the “Signing Area”

8:00p.m. — Kevin to Introduce the First Movie at the Kevin Smith Film Festival – Marriott Hotel, Grand Ballroom Liberty C

Saturday, May 11

11:00a.m. – 1:00p.m. — Signing at the “Signing Area”

1:30p.m. – 3:30p.m. — Q and A in the Dan DeCarlo Room (Room 204 AB)

Trash of the Titans

Kevin Smith talks comics. The ”Clerks” director and frequent writer explains the difference between DC Comics and Marvel by Kevin Smith

While the layman may not be able to distinguish between the two universes in which the most popular superheroes dwell, it’s always easiest to explain thusly: Hulk and Superman don’t hang out together. The former is a Marvel character, and the latter belongs to DC. EW felt that, having cashed checks from both companies, I was in a rare position to offer insight into not what’s great about both companies (and, believe me — there’s plenty), but what stinks about both. Because, y’know — negativity sells.

DC

When I was writing ”Green Arrow” at DC, there were a few content issues that I found puzzling. The first occurred when I included a reference to the cartoon ”The Powerpuff Girls.” It wasn’t a smutty, Jay and Silent Bob-level reference, but instead, it featured a female character talking about how great it was to have cartoon characters for little girls to model themselves on, as opposed to the Rainbow Brites and Strawberry Shortcakes of old. I was told that the references to both Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake had to be altered to Rainbow Sprite and Raspberry Shortcakes, which I understood. However, I was also informed that the ”Powerpuff” reference (a positive one) had to go. This blew my mind, as ”The Powerpuff Girls” are owned by AOL Time Warner… which also owns DC Comics. What, was there the chance in this highly litigious culture that AOL Time Warner would sue itself? Weird.

Though not as weird as when I was informed that the term fart couldn’t show up in the book. Lest you think less of me than you probably already do, the use of fart wasn’t in relation to the expulsion of bodily gas; I had Green Arrow referring to Green Lantern as an ”old fart.” This was excised from the story, and the term ”old toot” was used instead. Mind you, this was in the same month that Superman and Wonder Woman had such passionate sky sex that it shattered the earth in Frank Miller’s DC-published ”The Dark Knight Strikes Again.” The lesson: A Kryptonian can knock red boots with an Amazonian, but at no time can either fart.

MARVEL

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, you can not only use the term fart, but you can use the other F word too, as writer Garth Ennis does in the recent Nick Fury miniseries. Marvel, it would seem, accepts the fact that kids don’t read comics anymore. I can verify this sad fact, because I also own a comic-book store (Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, in Red Bank, N.J., plug, plug). The only time we see kids in there is on Halloween, and they’re looking for free candy.

What Marvel doesn’t understand is the importance of having any given comic available for any potential customer. See, back when I was writing ”Daredevil” for Marvel, when stores sold out of their first prints of issue one, they were able to order second printings to meet the demands of the customers who didn’t get their hands on a copy. Now, however, not only doesn’t Marvel overprint (i.e., print more comics than are ordered by retailers), they also won’t go back to press if a book sells out. This works against the supply-and-demand theory. If the grocery store runs out of Cocoa Puffs, they order more — they don’t mark up the remaining boxes to $20 or $30 bucks a pop.

Granted, having a book that sells out creates the illusion of a ”hot” comic (one that audiences are willing to pay well over cover price for), but I’d much rather have a reader be able to walk into a store and say, ”I’d like a copy of Kevin Smith’s ”Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do” (in stores June 26, plug, plug)” and actually get one. At cover price, too. But what do I know?

Well, I know Green Arrow can’t say fart.

‘Spider-Man’ Creator Stan Lee and Kevin Smith Do DVD

by Kate O’Hare

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) – On Tuesday, May 7, on the heels of the release of the latest Marvel Comics-inspired movie, Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” Creative Light Entertainment offers “Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters and Marvels,” a VHS/DVD production that features the Marvel mogul in extended conversation with indie filmmaker Kevin Smith (”Clerks,” “Dogma,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” ).

“Kevin, he’s wonderful,” says Lee. “I’m a big fan of his.”

“That feels wrong somehow,” says Smith. “It should be vice versa, and it is. Whereas he’s done tons to merit my respect and whatnot, I don’t know what the hell I’ve done to warrant his. You really can’t count ‘Mallrats,’ can you? Stan is a good guy, but he’s a little misled.”

Taped at Hi De Ho Comics in Santa Monica, Calif., segments cover the evolution of Marvel and its characters, including Spider-Man (for which Lee credits himself as co-creator with artist Steve Ditko).

The DVD also features cast and crew bios; a behind-the-scenes featurette; an interview with Stan Lee’s wife, Joan; home movies; details about the never-released “Fantastic Four” movie; Stan Lee reading his original poem “God Woke” ; a tour of Lee’s Hollywood Hills home; and “Easter egg” surprises.

Smith, who had originally interviewed Lee for Rolling Stone, jumped at the chance to have a longer conversation with his idol. “The opportunity to sit there and jaw with him at great length, knowing that it wasn’t going to be cut, that was the appeal, to go back and speak to him again, because he’s a great speaker.”

“I love talking to Kevin, to begin with,” says Lee, “and I certainly love talking about myself, so it was a very enjoyable experience. I had to keep reminding myself that I was doing it for a DVD. I don’t think we left anything out. What was it, two hours or something? I just hope I didn’t repeat myself.”

A teen-age Stanley Lieber joined Marvel predecessor Timely Comics in 1939, when he dubbed himself Stan Lee. In 1963, Spider-Man made his debut and forever changed what a superhero could be. He was a teen-age nebbish who got super powers from a radioactive spider bite, and didn’t exactly start his career with the most noble of intentions.

“I used to feel,” Lee says, “that if I had a super power — which is not to imply that I don’t — but if I had a super power, would I immediately say, ‘This is wonderful. I’m going to go out and save the world.’ I don’t think so. What I’d think of is, ‘How can I make a buck with this?’ Then the second thing I’d think of is, ‘Gee, I wonder if this is going to cause me any trouble or embarrassment.’”

“I didn’t want to write it so people suddenly had a super power and everything coming up roses, because I don’t think it would be that way in the real world.”

“The nice thing about Spider-Man,” says Smith, “you would imagine his big problems were battling Doc Ock and Electro, and instead they were about how to keep Aunt May from finding out that he was Spider-Man, or paying the bills, or worrying about public opinion.”

“Spider-Man was ahead of the curve, because now most folks in the public eye worry about how they’re perceived, particularly on the Internet, and Spidey had that down cold 30 years ago.”

Whether for legal or financial reasons, or because technology had to catch up with the storytelling, Marvel’s flawed, quirky heroes are coming to the screen years after more conventional DC heroes like Superman and Batman.

But with Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” a certified blockbuster, and a sequel already mapped for “Spider-Man,” Marvel is on a roll.

“I can’t count them,” says Lee of the upcoming projects. “There’s the sequel to ‘X-Men’; the sequel to ‘Blade’ is already on the screen. They’re developing ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Silver Surfer.’ The next movie to come out after ‘Spider-Man’ is ‘The Hulk,’ then comes ‘Daredevil.’ They’re working on ‘Sub-Mariner’; they’re working on ‘Iron Man’; they’re working on the ‘Ghost Rider.’ There’s no end to it.”

Lee often states that he wishes he’d come to Hollywood to do movies instead of staying in the New York comic world (”If I had gotten here earlier, I would have been Steven Spielberg,” he says with a laugh).

Smith has gone the other way, taking time off from screen duties to pen “Daredevil,” “Spider-Man” and “Black Cat” for Marvel, and “Green Arrow” for DC. “I swing both ways,” he says. “You’ve got to share the love, too many good characters.”

While Smith says that big-budget comic-book movie adaptations “are out of my league, too big,” Lee would love him to tackle something from the Marvel stable.

“The way I feel about Kevin,” Lee says, “he can pick his own. I’d be enthusiastically behind him doing any one of them.”

“In an unrelated matter, Quesada said that in addition to his upcoming stint on Amazing Spider-Man and the Black Cat series, newly-exclusive writer Kevin Smith has a new project that will be announced at one of this summer’s major conventions.”

Just thought I’d mention, quick Clerks mention on Dawson’s Creek…Dawson and his latest fling, a film critic, were discussing movies. The woman was arguing that it takes time for a director to find his voice, giving the example of Traffic and saying that Sex, Lies and Videotape was just a throwback to movies where all people did is talk… anyways, she challenges him to come up with a truly orginal film by a first time director, and he rambles off a list which inclues Clerks, among such others as Reservoir Dogs, Body Heat, Say Anything and the Maltese Falcon. Also, Dawson challenges his girl to go back to filmmaking instead of being a critic, and she asks if she should just quit her job and finance a film on credit cards. He replies “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Stan became an ambassador of comics to the mainstream,” said “Clerks” director Kevin Smith, a comics fan and friend of Lee’s who conducted the interviews on the DVD “Mutants, Monsters and Marvels.” “He’s the face behind comics to people who don’t read or identify with them. He took superheroes public.”