Love him or hate him, Kevin Smith came up with a great idea for a TV show that’s so criminally simple, you almost wish you thought of it yourself: Comic Book Men, a reality show about comic geeks.
Finally a reality TV show geeks can relate to! Who the hell can relate to reality crap like Jersey Shore or the Kardashians, unless you’re a fellow reality TV moron who’s famous for no discernible reason.
So now The Wrap is telling us that Comic Book Men, which was launched on AMC in February, has been renewed. As Smith exclaimed, “Pinch my fat ass, cause I must be dreaming! A thousand thank you’s wouldn’t cover the gratitude I’m feeling right now.”
And again, a reality show about geeks will probably have more longevity because we can relate to that. That could be us on TV. How cool. Now WE can be famous for no discernable reason!
The L.A. Times called Comic Men “a nerd version of Pawn stars,” and as Smith told the Times, “Comic-book dudes, it’s such a well-known stereotype at this point. I mean, we’ve had like more than 20 years of ‘Comic Book Guy’ from The Simpsons. Let’s up the ratio on TV. The fact that it’s AMC is like insane credibility. I’m coming up on 20 years into my career, and the older you get the less cool you are. So it’s nice to be able to say, ‘Oh, hey, did I mention I have an AMC show?'”
So whether or not Smith is going to follow through on his promise of retiring or not, I do like the guy’s work, more often than not he is a good filmmaker, and here’s hope he’ll keep going. Yes, his ego is as enormous as he is. Yes, he’s a thin-skinned whiner and can’t take what he dishes out.
Yes, it’s a shame that he’d rather devote his life to smoking doobage than being creative, especially considering how people out there would give their eye teeth to make their own movies.
But Clerks will always have a place in my heart, I loved its low budget ingenuity, Chasing Amy was a terrific film too, and if he still wants to stick around and make movies and do his own brand of reality TV, I’m cool with that.
