Kevin Smith is one of my favorite pop-culture icons. On my personal Mount Rushmore of directors that influence me he's got the Abe Lincoln spot. As you can tell from previous blogs , I really dig his smodcast internet radio network. I first discovered him as a filmmaker though. The first time a Kevin Smith project caught my eye was Mallrats. I was nine years old at the time and I saw tv spots for the film. I instantly thought it was cool and looked like something I had to see. I wouldn't see it for another 4 years. Cut to the year 1999 my brother Gabby and his then girlfriend Jeanette who practically lived at the movie theatre every weekend at this time. Head out on a date to see it. I remember asking them about the movie after their return. It must of been somewhere in their response that I learned about the filmmaker Kevin Smith and Jay and Silent Bob the stoner heroes who are in four major feature films. That Christmas ...

I spend a great deal of my life thinking about fictional heroes, however when I truly need inspiration I look to my real life heroes like Kurt Russell, Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter, Kevin Smith, Guillermo Del Toro, Richard Linklater, Spielberg, George Lucas, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Doc Hammer & Jackson Publick, Scorsese, Scott Bakula, Brian K Vaughan, Alan Moore, Peter Jackson, The Broken Lizard crew, Bob Gale, Coen Bros, Wachowski Bros, Mario Bros, Robert Zemeckis, Bruce Timm, Geoff Johns, Timothy Zahn, Max Brooks, Paul Dini, Sergio Leone, etc. and of course  ROBERT RODRIGUEZ For as long as I care to remember I've been a fan of Robert Rodriguez. I remember my parents watching his first film El Mariachi on the living room TV and getting shooed away cause it was too violent for my young eyes.  The irony is I walked into my room and put on a tape of Total Recall to see triple boobs, mutant faces, and bloody arm dismemberment. I...

Comic By Comic has a great post about celebing up the Marvel Universe. Check it out then return for my two cents. I totallly agree with all of Rich's points, he's got the archetypes right and it's interesting that this really can't work on a total universe wide scale with DC like it could with marvel. Marvel comics has always had the aspect to its universe that there is a public at large and it may not fall in love with superheroes the way that they do in Metropolis. The best example of using celbrity in superhero comics is Peter Milligan and Mike Allred's X-Statix. Which as I have said before is one of my favorite comic runs ever. This book really looks at the superhero life as more celebrity driven than heroic. What no one ever talks about though is the celebrity associated with villainy. How would the world deal with some one like the Shocker or Rhino as a role model for troubled youth? Would Hank Pym go on the surreal life? Does America still ...