The Worst-Kept Secret in comics is out. Writer, film-maker and virtual Charles Foster Kane Kevin Smith will soon return to write a Dardevil title for Marvel Comics. But he won't be coming back to the monthly Marvel Knights title he so successfully helped relaunch a few years ago. Rather, he'll be writing a Daredvil mini-series entitled "DAREDEVIL/BULLSEYE: TARGET." And this time, handling the art chores will be none other than PREACHER cover artist Glenn Fabry.
Kevin sat down with the Shoot for a few minutes on the set of his just-about-to-shoot new movie JERSEY GIRL and talked about the new mini-series.
The first thing we wanted to know was whether or not the ideas for this mini-series were germinating even during his initial run on the Marvel Knights title. After all, during Kevin's DAREDEVIL: GUARDIAN DEVIL storyline, which featured art by now-Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, Bullseye killed his long-time girlfriend, Karen Page, and walked away unscathed. So was the plan to do a sequel, exploring this event further?
"Sequel? No," said Smith. "But I WAS supposed to go back to the title after Mack and Gale did their storylines, and a rematch between DD and Bullseye was something Joe and I talked about doing in a one-shot, somewhere down the road. That was Quesada's idea; he said 'I promise: the next time DD and Bullseye face off, you're writing it.'
"But stuff just slips away from you sometimes, y'know? Finishing DOGMA and getting it into theaters took my attention away from comics, short of the CHASING DOGMA mini I did with Oni Press. During that time, Joe was upped from the Marvel Knights Editor-in-Chief to the EIC of Marvel itself. And once it became clear that Joe wasn't going to be the artist on the ongoing DAREDEVIL anymore, I kind of lost interest in going back to the series. He and I worked together so well. I knew it then, but I've really come to understand that more with the benefit of hindsight. I love all the artists I've worked with; they're all outstanding talents. But Joe and I really clicked, moreso than anyone else I've ever worked with before or since.
"Anyway, Joe asked if he could turn the ongoing DD over to Bendis, and I said 'Sure.' The idea he and I had at that point was, sooner or later, we'd do the DD/Bullseye rematch as a hardcover one-shot.
"I started concentrating on GREEN ARROW, then JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK started happening, as well as the BLUNTMAN graphic novel. Once the movie was done and out, the 9/11 benefits (the comics stuff I did, the VH1 Concert for NYC short film, the Springsteen/Bon Jovi shows I hosted in Red Bank) took up most of the fall, then JERSEY GIRL started moving forward, script-wise. Writing DAREDEVIL again was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, the next Marvel project I was slated to do was BLACK CAT, which became the Spidey/Black Cat mini that's out now.
Smith said, instead, the mini came about from a promise Quesada made about a DD/Bullseye rematch. "In an e-mail from Bendis, he told me his current storyline (the unmasking of DD) was going to end with a DD/Bullseye fight. I called Joe and said 'I hate to be a bitch, but the DD/Bullseye rematch was something I was supposed to do.' Joe hedged a bit, but then said 'A deal's a deal. However, if I'm taking this away from Bendis, you've GOTTA deliver your story before the DAREDEVIL movie comes out.' I agreed, and he told Bendis to re-work his arc's ending. I turned in the script for issue one of "Target" three days later.
"The bitch of it all was that Joe told me he wasn't going to be able to draw the story. I begged and pleaded, but he's too busy as EIC now, what with coming up with pie-throwing contests and whatnot. I'll miss him like hell, but in a world where Fabry's the replacement, I've got zero complaints."
When word of a Daredevil/Bullseye follow-up to GUARDIAN DEVIL comes down, the initial inclination is to assume that this will be a story of pay-back. After all, that's now two of Daredevil's girlfriends that Bullseye has killed. But it's not necessarily about revenge, said Smith.
"It's more a story about obsession, and how much Bullseye means to Daredevil, and how little Daredevil means to Bullseye. That is, until the end of the mini.
"The point of the mini is that it's not like the Batman/Joker relationship. Bullseye could give a shit about Daredevil, really. The guy's a hired gun; his face-offs with Daredevil shouldn't really be personal. If DD's anything to Bullseye, he's an obstruction to whatever hit he's currently working on; a distraction from the job he's being paid to do (unless the job he's being paid for is to fuck with DD, as in GUARDIAN DEVIL). But we're going to alter the dynamic of their relationship by mini's end, so that DD means much more to Bullseye. And we're not talking silly tie-in revisionist history here, like Bullseye's dad is the old man young Matt Murdock pushed out of the way of the oncoming truck or something. We're talking an understandable grudge; a reason for Bullseye to hate Daredevil, beyond his simply being a nuisance do-gooder.
DAREDEVIL/BULLSEYE will also not focus on recent events in the monthly DAREDEVIL series. Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev have revealed Daredevil's identity to the world, but Smith said his mini wouldn't need to touch on these events. "I asked Joe if it should, but he said that there'd be no point, as things in the DAREDEVIL monthly are pretty much back to normal by the time the movie comes out. I said 'Even this unmasking stuff? How can that be?" And Joe said "C'mon - he's been unmasked before, and things have gone back to normal. But if you're looking for a tie-in to current DD continuity, check out issue two of SPIDEY/BLACK CAT. There's a nod to the state of the Kingpin in that ish.'
The first woman Bullseye killed that personally affected Daredevil was former-love-turned-ninja assassin. Will she play any role in this mini-series?
"No Elektra, that's for sure," Smith said. "I'm sticking to a conversation Joe and I had back when I was writing the ongoing DD. Joe and I had agreed we wouldn't touch Elektra, because Miller said she was dead. Even though, she'd been revived, as far as we were concerned, when the creator of a character says his character is dead, then his character is dead.
"The P.S. to that story: a year or two later, as EIC, Joe brought Elektra back. Makes sense, I guess, what with her character being in the movie and all. But it's kinda funny, in retrospect. Put a guy in a suit, and his opinions can change pretty drastically."
Smith's first run on DAREDEVIL was also his first comics work on characters that weren't his own. And killing a character that dated back to Stan Lee's start on the title in the 60s generated its share of controversy ("Yeah - like nobody's ever done THAT before," he says). Would this current mini include anything that might incite a similar reaction?
"If there is, I'm not talking about it," Smith replied.. " I don't want to be one of these guys who hypes the shit out of their stuff, maintaining 'This story will blow your fucking mind!' That kind of hype only tends to disappoint, ultimately. I'm a bigger fan of the soft sell. I feel the less said about the story, the less expectation built, the better the chance readers won't be like 'Is that it?' when it's done. I wish we didn't even have to conduct this interview, really. It makes sense, from a sales point-of-view, of course; but it'd be so much better for me if one day, the book just came out, hype-free, and folks could judge the story on its own merits.
"I'm glad folks have liked what I've done in comics in the past, but anything I write tends to suffer from over-hype before it hits the stands, even though I'm not the one out there talking my shit up. I like to talk about trying to get the book into the top ten, and sales, and shit like that, because shit like that's got nothing to do with the story or the writing. And for me, the sales stuff is part of the challenge of writing comics that I feel free to discuss, prior to the streeting of whatever I'm writing. I don't like talking about the contents of the story, or how it's going to rock the reader's world or some such shit. If it rocks readers' worlds, let the READERS talk about it, not me. The story and the writing should always speak for itself, not be trumpeted by the writer.
"For what it's worth, though - Affleck and Mark Stephen Johnson (the director of the DAREDEVIL movie) dragged the story out of me at one point, and they said they dug it a lot. But then again, we're talking about the guy from MALLRATS and the guy who made SIMON BIRCH here, so take their enthusiasm with a grain of salt.
Smith has been blessed with the chance to work with some of the best artists in the business today: Joe Quesada, Phil Hester and Andre Parks, Mike Oeming and Jim Mahfood, among others, and now he gets to add the talented Glenn Fabry to this list. Fabry, whose pencil-and-ink art was recently on display in HOWARD THE DUCK, is "a fantastic artist," Smith raved. "I'm so used to his gorgeous covers, but his pencil and ink stuff's just as good, if not better."
It's never really a good business practice to question the boss about unsavory topics, but there's one topic that fandom is sure to bring up when they hear "Daredevil" and "Kevin Smith": lateness. Smith and Quesada's GUARDIAN DEVIL arc was beset by various problems that delayed the book considerably. With Smith's ever-busy schedule, timeliness could again be a concern in fan's eyes. Smith was very frank about admitting that yes, this was still a distinct possibility.
"Rest assured, lateness will come into play somewhere down the line, I'm sure. That's one thing I WILL hype: the fact that I'm sure, regardless of how hard everybody tries, sooner or later, lateness will play a role in "Target."
One of the other bits of criticism that follows Smith's comics work is the question of whether he's overly verbose in a largely visual medium. Even Smith has admitted that bits of GUARDIAN DEVIL were wordy. "In places, yeah. But I love reading wordy books, so I love writing wordy books."
But he also feels he's gotten stronger in the years since. His recent run on DC Comics' GREEN ARROW (which came to an end with last week's issue 15) was much less wordy. Of course, some of the never-happy readers then complained it moved to slowly. But regardless, Smith feels his writing has only gotten stronger.
"I'm happier to let shit breathe more now. I don't try to fit twelve panels on a page any longer, and I feel I've become more economical in terms of expressing ideas through dialogue. I've learned how to rewrite, too. Back in the day, I'd write a script and send it in, and maybe do a dialogue cleanup before the comic went to press. Now, I'll turn in a script and still tinker with it, even before the art's done. It's been working out nicely on
SPIDEY/BLACK CAT."
Sometimes it comes down to simply trusting your artist to do more with the visuals, he said. "But I'm a dialogue man. Always have been, always will be. I'm much more into conveying thoughts through what's said than what's seen. I'm not saying it's the right way to tell a story at all, and I understand why some folks have criticized me for it in the past. But it's the way I like writing comics, so it's the way I'll probably always stick with."
As to the question of more DAREDEVIL work in the future, Smith said the character will definitely show up in his AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run, but that "short of that, I don't have anything in mind right now."
Look for another feature on DAREDEVIL/BULLSEY in this month's WIZARD magazine. The comic itself hits stores in November. Smith is currently in Philadelphia, preparing to shoot his sixth feature, JERSEY GIRL, starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, George Carlin and Liv Tyler.
Chris Ryall
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