NYCC 2015: Kevin Smith Says He Wants to Bring Back the Clerks Cartoon In the Next Five Years

During his ride atop a double-decker tour bus in Manhattan earlier today, Kevin Smith told ComicBook.com that he hopes to resurrect the long-dormant Clerks cartoon and become "Cartoon Jesus" in the process.

The bus ride was to promote the upcoming season of Comic Book Men, which debuts Sunday on AMC following new episodes of The Walking Dead and Talking Dead.

Smith discussed his film and TV projects, as well as the process of discovering his love for comics -- and he even presided over a marriage.

"Every time Clerks 3 comes up -- which is frequently because of me, since I'm always like 'We're going to do it!' and then we don't do it -- usually the cartoon comes up in connection with it because if we do one, then it's kind of a foregone conclusion that maybe we could launch the other," Smith said. "So it's not like we haven't tried over the course of the last five years. There have been a few places we've tried to set it up. We went to Adult Swim and I talked to a dudes who were running Adult Swim at some point. He goes, 'Yeah, Clerks is kind of old, isn't it?' I was like, 'Yeah, I guess.' So it didn't end up happening there. So I don't know; maybe somewhere. I was just talking to somebody today; I think the dude from -- was it Yahoo!? -- who was like, 'Why don't you ask AMC if they'll do it?' And I was like, do you know in all the time we've been the show on that network, it's never occurred to me to be like, 'Hey can we redo the Clerks cartoon here?' So that might be a conversation worth having. It's easy to bring back; it's not like everyone's old now and they look it. It's cartoons, so it's kind of ageless. So i hope to. Honestly, it's been fifteen years since the show. I think within the next five I might be able to pull it off -- and if I can bring that cartoon back from the dead after twenty years, that makes me Cartoon Jesus. So I hope we can pull it off; I've given myself five years to pull it off, but I want to do it."

The Q&A on board the bus was recorded for an upcoming episode of Smodcast. Comic Book Men debuts Sunday night at midnight ET/PT on AMC.