Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men (AMC)
Finally, I was able to watch an episode of AMC’s new series, Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men. The show follows the antics of the staff in Smith’s comic shop, Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. Billed as a limited 6-part series, the show is a mixture of reality television and video podcast. The episode I watched consisted to the cast, Walt, Ming, Mike, Bryan (who doesn’t actually work there) and podcast host Kevin Smith, as they sat around recording the radio show discussing what had happened that day/week in the shop. The dialogue was peppered with clips from what they were actually discussing, showing folks coming in to try and sell merchandise, casual talk between the guys and even a bet between them to see who could sell the most merchandise at a flea market.
At first I wasn’t aware that this was limited to only 6 episodes. Not knowing that, my first impression was that, while I enjoyed the episode, it wasn’t a show that was going to have a very long life. AMC would have cancelled this or refused to renew it after its first season. I base this on the fact that the content – comics and pop culture – has such a limited fan base that the ratings would have fell dramatically, or not even be there at all. It’s target audience is such that it excludes a much larger viewing audience, and I don’t see the regular viewing audience getting hyped about a discussion involving a particular issue of Batman or an artists signature on a particular book.
With that thought out there, like I said, I did enjoy it and will watch all 6 episodes. But, as Bryan said at the end of the episode, “Does anyone actually come in here to buy anything?” At no point in this episode was anyone shown buying anything. In fact, there were no other customers in view. The only content shown was people trying to come in and get excessive amounts of money for items that were valuable to them, only to be disappointed when they were offered much less and then usually refusing and leaving with their property.
If you like Kevin Smith, he only seems to be showcased in the podcast recording – which I believe is available on iTunes. If you enjoy geekdom and the comic and pop culture market, you may also enjoy this show. While not nail-biting reality television, it is decent entertainment.
