Kevin Smith Working on Secret Project With Geoff Johns

In the latest edition of Kevin Smith's Fat Man on Batman podcast, the filmmaker and comic book [...]

By Russ Burlingame

In the latest edition of Kevin Smith's Fat Man on Batman podcast, the filmmaker and comic book writer revealed that he's been working on a project with DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. While the pair didn't specify what the project was, their brief discussion seemed to imply that the story revolves around a single, male DC hero. "We've been working on something top secret and it is--it's insanely fun and collaborative," Smith said, telling Johns that their collaboration was different than anything he was used to. "I thought I'd done all sorts of writing. Sometimes writing is two, three dudes in a room with a big whiteboard just going 'what if it was this?' 'What if it was this?' and writing s--t on the wall. It's crazy. I tend to write alone and I am a kind of solitary, writer-guy. And this has been absolutely f---ing fun."

Geoff Johns Green Lantern

"You have a whiteboard that's a whole wall so absolutely you have the tools and it's fun to look up at it," Johns added. "but when you're working with other writers that you respect and like, you have a shorthand because they know what they're doing." Smith said that they were "all pulling from the same toybox" becuase they love these characters. "In the thing that we're working on, it's just all about, 'Well, this is all cool but here's some s--t that they've never really touched on so maybe we can stuff this in here'," Smith said. "Let's break the character open a little bit more, and explore him a little bit more," Johns elaborated. "And why he's this way and let's take this particular imagery and it's particularly spooky and inspiring for him. So we take all that in one thing and then...we're not talking about big things liek theme. It's all character and story, alright, so theme will find itself out. And we did--the theme bubbled up. We're like, 'Okay, this is what the story's about', but it's got to be based on character and stuff before you start with theme." Certainly while the whiteboard aspect, and having possibly more than just the two of them involved in breaking the story, sounds like it could be a television or film environment (could Smith be working on an episode of Arrow?), but the other voice in the room could just as well be a comic book artist, who the pair frequently compared to a film director in the interview. The bit about the "spooky, inspiring" imagery sounds a lot like a Batman project. Johns, of course, is working with that character on Justice League and the sequel to Batman: Earth One, while Smith is currently concluding his "Fat Man on Batman trilogy" with artist Walter Flanagan.

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