When I first heard about Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men series airing on AMC, I wasn’t exactly sure what to think. As a reviewer here on the mycomicnetwork.com part of soentertain.me, I was at first hesitant to take a look at Comic Book Men. Honestly, I was prepared not to watch it at all just from the coverage online, the name alone made me wonder to say the least. I decided though to give it a fair chance. I am a fan Kevin Smith’s for the most part, so I wanted to at least watch the first episode. Either it was going to be good, or it was going to be the train wreck that you can’t help but watch. It’s the sort of show that since it does feature comics, I would love to root for it. In the same vein, the way Comic Book Men is handled is another matter entirely.
The concept of Comic Book Men is centered around Kevin Smith’s comic store Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. Walt Flanagan is the manager of the store, helped by Mike Zapcic, and Ming Chen. Bryan Johnson is part of the cast who is best known as “Steve-Dave” from Mallrats. He doesn’t work there, but spends a lot of free time at the store. Kevin Smith’s contribution to the episode are the podcast segments within the episode. The first podcast segment of the episode contains a conversation you’ve heard at least once in a comic store, the hottest super heroine. The way it’s handled was cringe inducing in my opinion. I know it was supposed to be funny, but it didn’t work for me at all. I’m glad this happened early in the episode. For the rest of the episode the podcast sections serve as a way to converse about the different events that go on within the Secret Stash, edited within the segments.
At the core of Comic Book Men is the segments involving the customers that come into the store bringing different items for the staff to look over. The customers vary in many ways as to the products they sell, to the personalities of the customers themselves. As they bring products in you get tidbits about each different collectible such as where the product came from and the year it was made. From the basic to the obscure, there are some fun facts to be gleaned from this part of Comic Book Men. Yet this is the point of the show in which you can see how scripted parts of this show are. In some parts it seem genuine, but the lady with the Child’s Play Chucky doll screamed a scripted moment. The Dawn of the Dead guy that popped up was also just a little too much to seem remotely legitimate. Especially when he had the bag handcuffed to him. It was a little much.
Inserted in between the customers was the competition between Bryan, Mike, and Ming on who can get rid of excess product from the Secret Stash. It’s supposed to be funny and really it’s not as funny as what they make it to be. The flea market atmosphere was something to see, while you have this strange competition on your television. Also the jokes on Ming were nearly as cringe worthy as the super heroine conversation. It was just the sort of situation that’s supposed to be funny yet turned into something else entirely. You can see the scripting in this section as well, just certain parts of their interactions felt forced and unnatural.
Just so you all don’t think I hated the show entirely, you can tell that the cast all have a certain natural chemistry with each other. The other discussions in the podcast about horror movies and superheroes were better than the super heroine conversation. The parts that seem tacked on to be funny, say the Ming jokes were hard to watch. Yet the customers had some gems with the Bob Kane Sketch, Six Million Dollar Man toy, and the Thor poster. Those had genuine moments and didn’t seem forced upon the show. The editing of the segments wasn’t too bad, it was better than the normal reality show in any case.
Comic Book Men wasn’t the worse thing I’ve ever seen on television. It wasn’t near as much of a train wreck as I was expecting it to be. Though to say it’s uneven is an understatement. Despite my issues with the show, I’m willing to give it another try. There are parts of this show that when they work, they work well. A show talking about comic books is something that I’d love to see more of on television. Which is why I’m willing to give the show another chance despite my issues with the first episode of Comic Book Men. I even re-watched this episode just to give myself another perspective, it matched the first watch but I found some parts of the show I liked. Which is why this review isn’t entirely negative. Comic Book Men though only gets one last shot with me. Though the preview for the second episode doesn’t give me much hope. Till next week though, that will make the final decision for me on Comic Book Men.
