The Green Hornet series MEGATHREAD!

[Ghornet2]

Any ongoing series

Are any of the series ongoing? I've read that the Kevin Smith is ongoing but I've also heard that it's a miniseries

[Ranger01]

I'm not sure about each series but Joe Rybandt told me there were 13 different cover art issues of Kevin Smith's Green Hornet #1.

And I just saw an Exclusive available at Collectors Paradise; a comic store I believe...so maybe it's 14....I'm gonna do my best but does anyone here know of anyone who goes this whole variant route...it's kinda bizarre issuing so many covers and I'm not sure of the reasoning...anyway as I said I'm in for a pound in for a penny.

Ranger01

[Ghornet2]

4 basic covers Ross, Cambell, Cassaday & Segovia. With B&W and Foil or negative versions of each as well as a special foil version of the Ross cover and 2 special version of the Cambell cover. Most are very rare, 1 in 25 up to 1 in 200 on the B&W covers. Good luck to completists.

[comixfan1980]

To the best of my knowledge Smith's GH series is ongoing, as is Kato's core series...

[MadMikeyD]

Kevin Smith's Green Hornet is 10 issues. Not saying that Dynamite won't take the character and run with it beyond issue 10, but Smith's story is only 10 issues.

[Ranger01]

4 basic covers Ross, Cambell, Cassaday & Segovia. With B&W and Foil or negative versions of each as well as a special foil version of the Ross cover and 2 special version of the Cambell cover. Most are very rare, 1 in 25 up to 1 in 200 on the B&W covers. Good luck to completists.

Ghornet2,

Thanks for wishing us "completists" luck...I picked up ten different covers today, then found out there are 5 more in the offing and an exclusive that seems to be exclusive to some or specific LCS.

I should have them all by mid-April and then I hear my family is planning an intervention!

See ya all on TLC!!!

Ranger01

[Hobgoblyn]

Terribly Disapointed...

I have to say that as a fan of the Green Hornet character who has been waiting many, many years for a new Green Hornet comic book, at first I was extremely excited to see that a Green Hornet on the shelf. Of course, I picked it up right away. But immediately a huge warning bell went off in my head when I saw the name "Kevin Smith" on the cover.

Before I go off on heavy criticism of the script itself, I want to take a moment to say that Lau's art colored by Nunes is absolutely fantastic. In fact, its some of the best art I've seen in a comic in a very long time! The level of the artwork of the book really carries it. If people continue picking this up, Lau and Nunes deserve most of the credit. I really just wish they'd been given a much better script to work with.

Well.. after reading it, it turns out that warning bell was correct. Kevin Smith is plenty fine at writing comedy, particularly comedies where everyone is a snarky, sarcastic stoner or is Ben Affleck or Matt Damon... but everything I've ever seen about his comic book work tells me that he really can't compartimentalize his off-the-wall humor from drama or action. Also, apparently even after having been asked to write a movie script years ago he failed to do some of the most basic research. I'll go point-by-point.

1) First of all, why did he make the original Green Hornet have the same sarcastic, snarky, overconfident personality as Spiderman, Deadpool and Beast? The original character has never been a cocky jokester-- and if this personality would be assigned to the son, then perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, but it just seemed unfitting.
2) What was with that whole 'cock the gun' conversation? Was that Smith admitting he sucks at writing action and deciding to make fun of how much he sucks at this job? Because it certainly felt like it! Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad had the joke been put into a narration box that represented the stream of consciousness of the Green Hornet, but making those words come out of his mouth when he has a bunch of guns pointed at him? How Bugs Bunny is he trying to make this?
3) On a very similar subject of his Tex Avery style concept of general physics, why exactly did he have the character jump into a room of armed mafia soldiers like that? Did it seem "super heroic" to have the character make himself a giant target and somehow walk away unscathed? Why have the character demonstrate a total lack of intelligence and caution that was never contained in the character before?
Let's say we have the same scene up until the point where Green Hornet decides to get a drop on them. What he should have done was have the car smash through the wall first dousing the whole room with gas, THEN dropped down taking cover behind some crates to dart a few of the criminals before moving in and taking out a couple more with melee attacks. Finally he'd confront the bosses and maybe their lietenants and one or two others who'd managed to escape the effect of the gas. See, that's the smart street-level superhero version of clearing out a room as opposed to the super-speed, super-strength mutant powered way.
4) And, within the same scene, what exactly is the point of having Yakuza there? Yakuza are almost a punchline within Japan. Oh, sure... they are tough and mean... FOR JAPANESE. They can be nasty in that they bully high school and foreign girls into prostitution, they sell drugs and they lend people money and then beat them up... they also have this nasty habbit of cutting off their member's pinky fingers if they fail. However, very rarely do they kill anyone or even carry guns. Furthermore, this is supposed to be America, right? Since when are there enough Japanese around to even create a mafia? If you had an Irish NRA branch, a Mexican drug cartel, a black street gang, the Triad or even the Jewish mafia would have been more beievable than Yakuza. But.. maybe that was supposed to reflect the 1980s when the Japanese economy was booming and there were fear in America that they'd buy everything up.
5) The next point is one that might be forgivable because it is a common mistake, but why exactly was Kato speaking Mandarin? I am glad that at least it says "Mandarin" rather than "Chinese", so there are some props there. But even though Bruce Lee, the actor who became famous for playing the character, was Chinese-- the character has ALWAYS been Japanese. "Kato" is a Japanese name, it has always been a Japanese name. The only way you have someone with a Japanese name who speaks Chinese is if they come from Taiwan where after WWII a number of Japanese families stayed behind and before which a number of Chinese families were forced to change their name to Japanese names and never changed them back. So maybe on this point I am being too critical and he is meant to have come from Taiwan... but somehow I feel as though it would be giving Smith too much credit to have thought of that.
6) Random Indiana Jones reference tied up in insulting the character's outfit... why? Again, this seems indicative of Kevin Smith's comedy writing that seems to have planted itself directly into the middle of an already badly written and horribly awkward conversation. Maybe it was meant to indicate that the story takes place in 1980s? Otherwise I just don't see the purpose of the McFarlan-style random pop culture reference gag that seems to have been the "punchline" the whole conversation was leading to.
7) Looking ahead, even though I didn't notice on the cover (which was more obvious on the alternate version I didn't get) that the plan is to make the new "Kato" character a woman with unbearable huge DD-cup tits in an ungodly fugly outfit that seems to fit terribly. Why?... It's really just annoying on the Campbell cover, the character design looks relatively okay on the others, but looks absolutely revolting on the Campbell cover (and the Benitez one found on the interior for the "Kato" series in which I am going to guess that this "Black Hornet" is her brother or cousin). I really hope Campbell never does the art for the interior if this is what he churns out.

I am hoping the 4-5 other Green Hornet series that the company seems to be planning on rolling out will be much better than this. I just can't really imagine why Dynamite decided to push ahead with an off-beat comedy movie writer for their main series (and after reading this book, I am SO glad he never did the movie). Even after supposedly researching the character for 5 years, he clearly still doesn't know what he's doing.

[comixfan1980]

I'm reading this tonight and am very excited, just flipping through I can tell that the art is fantastic and that it seems to be action packed so I can tell that it's going to whet my appetite for adventure. I'm iffy on Kevin Smith but I am definitly going to see what all the buzz is about, leave it to Dynamite to get me excited about reading a character I have never been interested in learning about.....

Excited!

[Tulku]

Ouch, Hobgoblyn! That was harsh!

I too have been a Green Hornet fan for years, with my favorite version of the character being the original radio show. Second favorite would be the NOW Comics version. So, with that as my prejudices my thoughts on your points are:

1) Agreed. I thought the same thing. Completely out of character for the established Hornet (TV version).

2) Agreed. I thought the same thing.

3) Agreed.

4) Well, I'm going to cut him a break here. "Yakuza" may have been used for generic Japanese bad guys. But depending on how the story develops, they may have been necessary. If the storyline ends up being rooted in this last confrontation of the TV Hornet, and considering that Kato went back home, it may have been necessary to use Japanese villains to have a hook to bring Kato and daughter back to the U.S.

5) It is stretching things to say that Kato was "always" Japanese. While he started out Japanese in the radio series, he then became Filipino. And if I recall correctly, the movie serial version decided that he was Korean. And I have a vague memory that NOW Comics made him half Japanese and half Chinese (as a nod to honor Bruce Lee is my guess). It would not surprise me if Smith is going to go with the same half-and-half approach.

6) This bothered me a bit, too, but it was foreplay chat between lovers--so it didn't strike me as completely out of place. It wasn't meant as a serious critique of the outfit. If this were a movie, the actors would probably have conveyed it as just gentle teasing--a favorite (if somewhat stale and conventional) form of movie foreplay.

7) NOW Comics started with a female Kato as well (and comic book females are notoriously top-heavy). Actually, rather a lot of the storyline to date seems derivative of the NOW efforts. I'm willing to take a wait-and-see approach on this.

Because of my preference for the Radio Hornet (and that great full-face mask) I am most looking forward to the Year One and Kato:Origin books.

[Hobgoblyn]

Well, I tried to note that I could see cutting some slack if it was decided that Kato should be Taiwanese or maybe half-Japanese and half-Chinese would work, but even then he'd more likely come from Japan than China. Even if he was ethnically Chinese but came from a family that had lived in Japan for enough generations to change their family name, then he'd still be speaking Japanese.
As for being Phillipino or Korean-- see, back in the 40s-50s that would have worked just fine. Just like Taiwan, Japan did invade the Phillipines and Korea and did often force prominent families to take Japanese names. So those explainations actually work-- but people who speak Mandarin and have Japanese names are exceedingly rare outside of Taiwan and even in those former cases most of those families changed their names back.

And if the point of the Yakuza was to send Kato "back home" but you've had him come from a Chinese speaking country... then how do Japanese gangs relate to all that? There needs to be some senible connection here.

And.. well, I can see giving him a female partner being perfectly acceptable, particularly if (as I suspect) you'll still have a male operating under the name The Black Hornet and working overseas. However, if one is going to use a female character, then why make her look like a badly dressed porn star?
Why not fashion her after Zhang Ziyi, Ki-yong Lee, Yukie Nakama or So-yi Yoon? Or an amalgam of them. (I'd put more Japanese names on that list, but pretty much any Japanese female martial artists/actress ends up doing endless bikini or nude photoshoots and that's all you'd come up with if you google their names-- Yukie's results are tame compared to the rest of them.)

Point is, if they made her look more like the real life equivalent than what they have now, she'd look a thousand times better.

[comixfan1980]

Okay, so after reading the first issue I have a more clear idea of what/who the Green Hornet is and is all about, really fun and quick read IMO. My only question is why did they put a female on the cover of the book when his sidekick is male.....? Did I miss something while taking a bite of my pop tarts or something?

Good action, nice little plot and tons of room for some great storylines, I liked it a lot, my only complaint is the cover I have looks a lot like some old Batman covers I have seen, one most recently in the "All-Star Batman" series.

[Tulku]

Hobgoblyn, would this make sense for Kato (although I freely admit it is heavily influence by the NOW Comics concept):

Assume the TV Hornet in issue 1 is not the original Hornet (the 30s version). There is a slight hint to that. When he and Kato come out of the fireplace, Reid catches a falling vase. My suspicion is that the vase contains the ashes of his father, the 30s Hornet.

If we accept that, then suppose the 30s Hornet is assisted by his purely Japanese friend, the original Kato, who (when the war breaks out and being Japanese in America is no longer such a good idea) pretends to be Filipino and/or Korean. But time moves on and Kato I gets married to a nice Chinese girl in America, but he then moves back to his ancestral home in Japan. They have a son, Kato II, who is half-and-half and learns his mothers tongue. He comes to America and befriends the TV Hornet. He can speak Mandarin, but his birth home is still Japan. They clean up the city and prevent the influx of the trite Yakuza. Kato II goes home to Japan and has a daughter. And then we wait for Issue 2 where (guessing) the Yakuza come back to Century City for another try. Kato II and daughter know this and come to help Britt and son, leading to the inevitable son and daughter team-up as the new Hornet & Kato. Does that get us past the Japanese-name/speaking-Mandarin issue?

But, yes, female Kato's costume is...unfortunate as is her overly-endowed depiction on some covers. But she would hardly be the first comic book heroine to have those complaints lodged against her. Power Girl springs to mind. I agree I would have preferred a more restrained presentation, but I can't say that I am surprised.

[TwinPistols]

Kevin Smith's Green Hornet is 10 issues. Not saying that Dynamite won't take the character and run with it beyond issue 10, but Smith's story is only 10 issues.

I heard it was eight issues.

[TwinPistols]

I like it...I like it, a lot!

Okay, so after reading the first issue I have a more clear idea of what/who the Green Hornet is and is all about, really fun and quick read IMO. My only question is why did they put a female on the cover of the book when his sidekick is male.....? Did I miss something while taking a bite of my pop tarts or something?

The male Kato is the past Kato, who we see in action with the original Green Hornet after the "Then" caption. After that, the comic jumps ahead in time after the "Now" caption, and Britt Reid Jr. is all grown up. The female Kato will be the Kato in the present; and since she's Kato for the majority of the series, and Britt Reid Jr. is the Green Hornet for the majority of the series, they must have decided to put them on the cover for issue #1 to keep the covers consistent.

Hobgoblyn: I understand your frustration. From what I remember about the TV Show, this is not the same Green Hornet, but keep in mind, this was originally a movie script, so the ramped up action, the comedy and the choice to put the Hornet in a room full of baddies when he would normally be more cautious, to me, are things that were probably added to make a more exciting movie.

I get that you don't like Kevin Smith, that's fine. Hopefully, Green Hornet: Year One will be the title for you.

Personally all, I enjoyed the issue very much. It was exciting, it was funny, and I remembered a few things that are just cool about the Hornet. The Black Beauty!!! The way they flip the cars!!! That will always be cool.

I also really liked the "BZZZT" sound effect and the green light from the dart gun. That was just awesome. Can't wait for issue #2.


-Pistols

[TwinPistols]

The Eye of the Beholder, I Guess....

But, yes, female Kato's costume is...unfortunate as is her overly-endowed depiction on some covers. But she would hardly be the first comic book heroine to have those complaints lodged against her. Power Girl springs to mind. I agree I would have preferred a more restrained presentation, but I can't say that I am surprised.

I didn't think I've seen anything shocking or titillating, as far as the female Kato's costume or form, from the cover releases I've seen. But that's my humble opinion of course. For one thing, she is totally covered, this is no Lady Death or bikini costume.

To me it looks just fine. I dunno. She has breasts, but they don't seem overdone to me.

-Pistols