[What have we here? Another award-winning piece? Somehow I
won an honorable mention at that State of Illinois competition sponsored by the
Chicago Tribune. I should mention that I had no idea I was nominated for this
or for my previous Local Haunts piece. I just showed up to the weekly meeting
at the Leader, and my professor thrust my two awards into my unsuspecting
hands. I believe I got the honorable mention because I was the only comic book
reviewer in the state. They didn’t know what they were looking at, so they
threw an honorable mention at me. Anyway, in this review I claim that Kevin
Smith doesn’t know his own characters well enough. Oof. Talk about eating my
own foot. I didn’t understand his intentions with this comic book. I think I was
expecting to see Jay and Silent Bob the way they were in Clerks, when they were
just a couple of slackers/drug dealers hanging out in front of a convenience
store, rather than the cartoons they became throughout the course of the View
Askewniverse (especially when they were made into actual cartoons for a season
of that one show). Fuck it. This is from the Elmhurst College Leader November
8, 1999.]
After months and months and months of waiting for the last
issue (a nearly legendary delay, even by independent comics’ standards), Jay
and Silent Bob #4 finally hit the comic book shops. Unfortunately, it’s not
worth the wait.
Artist Duncan Fregredo isn’t the greatest artist in the
world. He’s not bad, either, but there are a lot of times when he lapses into a
really bad Warren Pleece imitation. He has his good moments, and Jay and Silent
Bob really do look like Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith (unlike the renditions in
the Clerks comics).
Writer Kevin Smith, made famous through writing and
directing Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy, has decided to give his true fans
a treat with the Jay and Silent Bob miniseries. It’s supposed to happen during
Chasing Amy through to the beginning of Smith’s new movie, Dogma. However,
while it possesses the spirit of the movies, Jay and Silent Bob themselves
aren’t consistent with the Jay and Silent Bob of the movies. Granted, they are
Smith’s creations, but apparently he doesn’t know them well enough.
While Silent Bob still doesn’t talk at all (he doesn’t even
have his one cryptic statement in the end, as per usual with Smith’s movies),
and Jay talks too much, they are noticeably less intelligent. Even Silent Bob,
who is significantly smarter than Jay, appears to have a moronic streak through
him.
The whole point of this miniseries is to follow Jay and
Silent Bob as they travel from their home, New Jersey,
to Shermer, Illinois. Why are they headed to Shermer?
Because that’s where John Hughes set his brat pack comedies, among them The
Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. They want to be the drug connection for
Shermer because they probably don’t have one, and if they have troubles with the
locals, they’re a bunch of pansies anyway. At least, that’s their reasoning
(the only one who escapes this is Judd Nelson, who they think is tough). Never
mind that Shermer, as well as Hughes’s characters, are fictional, they believe
that it’s all real. Not even Jay, who can be pretty stupid, would think
something like that.
Not that all the writing is bad. There’s the time when Jay
and Silent Bob went to see an ‘Eighties speed metal band, Forked Tongue. That’s
vintage Jay and Silent Bob material. They’re the only two in the audience, and
they’re still dancing like crazy (or at least Jay is).
There’s also the point when Smith confronts the fact that
yes, Jay and Silent Bob have indeed become icons of America’s youth. The two of them
having made it to Shermer (which is really McHenry) are decked out in red,
white, and blue Uncle Sam outfits (except the comic’s in black and white), Jay
says, “We’re living, breathing icons of the American Dream, Silent Bob!!! True
paradigms of the greatness of the United States of America!!!” He
follows this up with a loud fart that causes Silent Bob to buy air freshener
and spray Jay with it. “What, man?” Jay asks. “Americans fart!” It’s pure Jay
and Silent Bob.
If you’re a die-hard Smith fan, you’d better read these
comics. They’re apparently an important bridge to the next movie. The “action”
will be continued in the theaters, starting Nov. 12, in the movie, Dogma.
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