You probably already knew this one if you've ever been a follower of the prolific Smith - on twitter, his blog, his books or just on the street - he tends to scream about whatever he's doing from the rooftops, especially if he gets to write Batman for any length of time. Kevin Smith got into the comics biz relatively early into his filmmaking career, driven by his eternal love of sequential art and given the opportunity to turn his creations Jay and Silent Bob into bona fide superheroes Bluntman & Chronic with artist Mike Allred (Marvel's FF and Silver Surfer). He soon got involved in (current Marvel Chief Creative Officer) Joe Quesada's Marvel Knights line of street-level heroes, writing the first arc of a new volume of Daredevil and a Spider-Man/Black Cat miniseries before working on DC books like Green Arrow and Batman, which he's returned to several times. He also adapted his unused screenplay for the Green Hornet movie into comics for Dynamite. The writer/director of Clerks has had a relatively hit-and-miss career when it comes to his movies, and though he's regarded as an extremely capable wordsmith, Smith's films are rarely praised for their striking visual style. Comics, then, are a much better fit for the unstoppable orator, as his occasionally over-wordy panels can be tempered by an artist with a keener understanding of action and tension. While there's some well-reasoned criticism of Smith's work for having rather dodgy attitudes towards women (his Black Cat miniseries sees Felicia Hardy revealed as a victim of date rape and his Poison Ivy is oversexualised to the point of being cartoonish), he's generally a writer capable of an enjoyable take on a familiar hero with some witty banter to go, and that's more than a lot of books get.
