Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet | DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT

Now that it’s all over the comics news sites…

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They’re not the real covers, though they’ll be published with the comic book. They’re produced only to confuse and whet the appetite. I drew these two weeks ago and they’re now being inked by Joe Rubinstein. Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet #3, from Dynamite Entertainment, will see the death of one of its four protagonists, the original and new Green Hornet and Kato teams. These covers are something akin to disinformation, or ambiguity covers. Dynamite isn’t telling which one of the four will be killed. To deepen the mystery, DE chief Nick Barrucci devised this idea. Interesting PR and proving somewhat effective.

Nowhere in the press release does it say that I drew these, but the signature is clear on all four. Looking around the forums there were only a couple of comments about the art itself. Most of the talk is about whether anyone cares about Green Hornet or which one of the characters dies. I joined an engaging discussion at Bleeding Cool where the significance of the characters and merits of such a hype were weighed.

Nick Barrucci has done wonders with Dynamite Entertainment. He seems to have an affinity for culture and history. His publications are mostly revivals of well known properties. From the Lone Ranger to Sherlock Homes, perusing his list of properties reveals a treasure that is at the heart of modern day mythology. With such a reverence for cultural icons, it’s clear that Nick isn’t simply out for a sensationalist PR coup with these covers. It’s also not a crisis-like hero-killing gimmick such as other publishers have saturated the last decade of comics with.

Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet is based on his movie script, written long before Dynamite acquired the character, which is still in the promotional stage. It’s a legacy story where a new generation of heroes continues the work of the old. So in his original script, on which these comics are based, one of the heroes dies. It happens in a pre-ordained stage of the story and this is how Barrucci decided to promote it.

I watched nearly every episode of the Green Hornet TV show with Bruce Lee in the 60′s, and enjoyed every minute of it. I couldn’t think of a more unexpected and interesting set of characters to draw for my first published mainstream comics work in more than 15 years.

I know it’s self indulgent, but that seems a little more significant to me right now than which of them dies.

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The art was produced on a computer as a pencil stage for Joe Rubinstein to ink from blue-line prints. Because Dynamite darkened my images to give them an inked feel for the press release, here they are below in their originally drawn state.