I'll let you in on a well known secret (does that even make it a secret?). Before the Seth Rogan Green Hornet movie, before Copout..in 2004 Miramax had approached Kevin Smith to write a Green Hornet movie. Due to bad luck and the lack of giant mechanical spiders this, much like his Superman script, fell through..leading to the fun, but generally odd Green Hornet movie of a couple years ago.
A year before the aforementioned Rogan movie, comic publishers Dynamite began looking into a comic book adaptation and learned that Smith had done a script..they approached both he and Miramax (then owned by Disney) to see if they would be willing to turn it into a comic book...and so Kevin Smith's version of the Green Hornet movie that never was became a comic book series.
So who is this Green Hornet guy anyway? Created by George W. Trendle for American Radio audiences on January 31st 1936, The Green Hornet was the antithesis of the highly popular The Shadow radio/book serial character. Britt Reid, a multimillionaire newspaper publisher, decides that the streets need to be cleaned, and he's the one to do it. Along with his trusty aide Kato, Reid creates the Green Hornet persona to bring fear to the lowlifes and ne'er-do-wells in his city (as they are a superstitious and cowardly lot, dontcha know). Unlike the Caped Crusader, the Green Hornet appears to the Police and Criminals as a criminal himself, moving in on the mob operations and taking them over. Acting very much like a street level hero along the lines of Daredevil or Nightwing, this is less about supervillains and more about a guy and his ninja friend taking out the mob...piece by piece. Yes he has the gadgets and car like Batman, but nothing like Killer Croc or the Joker. As such it's actually refreshing to concentrate on the character rather than the rogue's gallery. He also seems to be the Lone Rangers great grandson or something daft like that.
So what about Kevin Smith's Green Hornet? Well much like the recent movie it's set in modern times, with Britt Reid Jr playing the wastrel son of the original Green Hornet. Naturally Jr does not know of his father's previous life. Following many similar story beats as the movie and spread over two graphic novels (10 issues), the origin of the modern Green Hornet is well written by Smith and Phil Hester (who rescripted it for comic book format) and has some nice twists along the way. I'm bound to say that my favourite character of the series is Kato, purely because she is written with the right amount of teasing wit, and the slight twist in her tale makes her an even more interesting character. It's a shame that the villain of the piece ends up being closer to a stock comic book villain than anything really interesting, and the ending is suitably daft, with roof top escapes...one gets the feeling it would have worked better as a movie (pre Nolan/Whedon) script rather than as a comic book. It certainly is far superior to the Rogen Green Hornet movie.
The art work by Johnathan Lau sets the dark and yet vibrant scene of the Green Hornet's world perfectly. His lines are generally very clean and his work on the action sequences are clear and easy to follow. On Lau, Smith himself stated ' Lau was crushing it from the moment I started looking at the pencils, and it was clear that Phil understood the script top to bottom and could communicate the fun to Jonathan, and in the early issues I'd see him include a page broken down into panels with stick figures. It made the workflow on the book incredible.' (via CBR)
In all Kevin Smith's Green Hornet is a great bit of fun, and a huge improvement upon the recent film. Though I could have done without the ridiculous ending, I can still recommend the book whole heartedly. Thankfully Hester picked up the continuing adventures of the Green Hornet and I will get around to reviewing them at a later date.
Score: 4 hats out of 5.
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