Yeah, I was gonna say, the peeing-his-pants thing is annoying but it's not even the worst thing Smith wrote in that miniseries; I'd have to go with the ending for that "honor".
Spider-Man/Black Cat was horrifying. I mean, legitimately disturbing in the same way that Neonomicon was legitimately disturbing, but without Neonomicon's big ideas and structural cleverness.
And speaking of Alan Moore, Moore himself has pointed out how terrible it was when Kevin Smith brought back Stanley of
Stanley and his Monster as a child-sacrificing Satanist. I like to imagine Kevin Smith's reaction on reading that. "Alan Moore read one of my comics!
...and says I'm everything that's wrong with comics.
"
I still like Kevin Smith. He's great at writing banter, and characters who seem like real people (for definitions of "real people" where everybody talks exactly like Kevin Smith). He's a FANTASTIC raconteur and the true stories he tells are genuine and heartfelt; the one about Jay's years of addiction, in particular, was possibly the most affecting thing I've ever read on a blog.
And I think that speaks a lot to his weaknesses as well as his strengths. He's a great example of the "write what you know" cliche -- when he's writing about overgrown man-children arguing about Star Wars or comic books, he's hard to beat. But put him into something action- or story-driven and he flounders.
I'm probably the same way. I picture the kind of comic book I would write, given the opportunity, and I come up with something that looks a lot like American Splendor (in fact, I've got a script around here somewhere called Thad Goes to the ER which I wrote for my uncle to draw -- maybe we'll get around to that someday). I like to read about capes and tights, but my storytelling strengths lie in, as I believe Kazz once put it, "some zany anecdote about back home".
It's not that he's INHERENTLY bad at the shared-superhero-universe stuff -- I actually thought his Green Arrow run was great right up until that Stanley and his Monster nonsense.
Also, I've got a copy of Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters & Marvels sitting on my desk still in its shrink wrap; my wife bought it at the dollar store, mostly as a joke. And this brings up another of those things about Smith that grates on me: his total, unquestioning belief in Stan Lee's string of "How I Created Everything All By Myself and Am Great" tall tales. (Hey, that was another Alan Moore reference.)
Exhibit A is, of course, Mallrats. For another example, check out this article from ComicsAlliance featuring a
1998 Wizard article where Smith says he never really got why people like Jack Kirby so much.
(And I seldom say this, but scroll down to the comments section, where Jimmy Palmiotti explains that after the interview he convinced Kevin Smith of the error of his ways.)
Anyway. All this to say, I still like Kevin Smith, and most of his movies, and...about half of his comics? I'm trying to do the math here. Four Clerks comics, four Jay and Silent Bob comics, a Bluntman and Chronic OGN that's structured like it's four individual issues, the first ten issues of Green Arrow, about half of Cacophony...? You know, when I start actually listing them out, he's got a better batting average than I would have thought, though his good comics are definitely tilted toward his creator-owned movie universe stuff.
