Has anyone seen the first few eps of this series? It's a reality show that takes place in Smith's comic shop in New Jersey called Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash and centers around Smiths employees.
The show is a mix of live podcasting, day-to-day running the shop, buying & selling merch and it seems one adventure of the week.
It's standard Kevin Smith fare, a couple of guys hanging around a comic shop making dirty jokes and talking about comics. It provides a couple of cheap laughs per episode but nothing really great.
The only two criticisms I have about this show is that when Smith was all over the place promoting it, he kept insisting that this show would not depict comic collectors as sterotypical geeks with no lives who make dirty jokes all day; and that his show would focus on the more serious side of comic collecting. This show does the exact opposite of that. Most of the show is about the employees at the shop and making dirty jokes about each other. I'm not saying its bad or unfunny, I'm just saying the show went in the other direction.
The other criticism I have is that when customers do come in to buy or sell, it seems that more often than not, the employees talk trash about them when they leave. I'm sure this is the case in 99% of comic shops but actually showing it on live television is a pretty stupid move.
Overall, its good for a watch but not something that should require a whole hour.
Comic Book Men with Kevin Smith
Moderator: MGM
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Tragic Angelus
- Posts: 3397
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:44 pm
- Location: Indiana
Those of us who work at my local comic shop have watched it, mostly together, and like you said, outside of a few laughs, the show is pretty bad.
They really are just making dirty jokes most of the time, like starting the first episode off with the "Batman likes Dick...Grayson" and the second episode with a masturbation joke right away? Way to make a group of male comic fans in their 40s sound like 13 year olds.
Add to it that NONE of them seem to really know how to work in a comic shop, it's pretty sad. They don't know how to evaluate or grade items brought into the shop, and they OPENLY tell someone exactly what it would be worth before they have even looked at it (a big no-no in our store, so the costumers don't demand a huge price for items). We were all shocked that in the second episode they actually offered a decent price for the full CoIE series rather than some ungodly high number. You can normally find all of those books at comic shows if you actually look for them, and more often we find them in $1 bins, but the way they were offering prices we figured they'd throw nothing under $50 for it. But when he said under $20 it was definitely a surprise.
Overall, the show isn't worth that much outside of a few cheap laughs and the RARE information at comic book history. I would rate the show at a mid to low C, and I care very little if I end up missing it.
They really are just making dirty jokes most of the time, like starting the first episode off with the "Batman likes Dick...Grayson" and the second episode with a masturbation joke right away? Way to make a group of male comic fans in their 40s sound like 13 year olds.
Add to it that NONE of them seem to really know how to work in a comic shop, it's pretty sad. They don't know how to evaluate or grade items brought into the shop, and they OPENLY tell someone exactly what it would be worth before they have even looked at it (a big no-no in our store, so the costumers don't demand a huge price for items). We were all shocked that in the second episode they actually offered a decent price for the full CoIE series rather than some ungodly high number. You can normally find all of those books at comic shows if you actually look for them, and more often we find them in $1 bins, but the way they were offering prices we figured they'd throw nothing under $50 for it. But when he said under $20 it was definitely a surprise.
Overall, the show isn't worth that much outside of a few cheap laughs and the RARE information at comic book history. I would rate the show at a mid to low C, and I care very little if I end up missing it.
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Stocky Boy
- Posts: 1861
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:09 am
- Location: England, UK
I actually quite enjoyed it.
I think they could do with altering the format. I like the live podcast bits and the in store interactions. The customer moments are set-up, which is obvious by the fact that they seem to have nothing but quirky customers with something to sell all the time. I wouldn't really know what to comment on the 'business' side of the store though.
Whatever else makes up the rest of an episode can be a bit hit and miss. I thought the first episode flee market bit was great. The commercial filming and tattoo episodes were also funny.
In terms of the podcast moments, I thought the interaction was refreshingly normal. Whether it gives comic book people a bad name, I don't know what I would speculate here, but Dick Grayson and Batman type jokes used to be the sort of normal interaction between a lot of us when this board was more active. I'm more than happy to see a show that's basically Kevin Smith's comic podcasts and reflective of our own jokey stylings.
I'm curious, do you guys who have seen the episodes think that the type of humour on the show mirrored the humour on our board?
If you don't, do you think we were better in some way?
If you do think it's the same, do you look back at our dick joke conversations and conclude that, retrospectively, we were a little too immature?
Or do you feel the humour in the show and our humour is great, but you wouldn't want a TV show bringing that humour to the worlds attention?
I think they could do with altering the format. I like the live podcast bits and the in store interactions. The customer moments are set-up, which is obvious by the fact that they seem to have nothing but quirky customers with something to sell all the time. I wouldn't really know what to comment on the 'business' side of the store though.
Whatever else makes up the rest of an episode can be a bit hit and miss. I thought the first episode flee market bit was great. The commercial filming and tattoo episodes were also funny.
In terms of the podcast moments, I thought the interaction was refreshingly normal. Whether it gives comic book people a bad name, I don't know what I would speculate here, but Dick Grayson and Batman type jokes used to be the sort of normal interaction between a lot of us when this board was more active. I'm more than happy to see a show that's basically Kevin Smith's comic podcasts and reflective of our own jokey stylings.
I'm curious, do you guys who have seen the episodes think that the type of humour on the show mirrored the humour on our board?
If you don't, do you think we were better in some way?
If you do think it's the same, do you look back at our dick joke conversations and conclude that, retrospectively, we were a little too immature?
Or do you feel the humour in the show and our humour is great, but you wouldn't want a TV show bringing that humour to the worlds attention?
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Mr Wallstreet
- Posts: 3734
- Joined: Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:21 pm
A lot of the conversations that we had on Old BX resemble Comic Book Men. We (mockingly & proudly) touted perversion and deviancy as a prerequsite for joining this board. I won't speak for others but I do think that at the very least, I myself was extremely immature as were a lot of the conversations that were had.Stocky Boy wrote:
I'm curious, do you guys who have seen the episodes think that the type of humour on the show mirrored the humour on our board?
If you don't, do you think we were better in some way?
If you do think it's the same, do you look back at our dick joke conversations and conclude that, retrospectively, we were a little too immature?
Or do you feel the humour in the show and our humour is great, but you wouldn't want a TV show bringing that humour to the worlds attention?
However, kicking off the premier of your show by talking about which super hero chick you want to fuck kind of torpedos the entire premise of dispelling the sterotype of comic book collectors being a bunch of socially awkward losers - which is what Smith spent most of his PR campaign doing.
The show is definitely entertaining, I just think its defined too heavily by the negative aspects associated with comic collecting. You can still make your gay Batman jokes but it would be better if you eased your audience into it and parse them out while having some genuinley interesting conversations.