Kevin Smith is an indie writer/director/actor made famous for directing the 1994 movie Clerks, which was made for $27,000 on all black and white stock, with the money coming from selling his comic book collection and insurance money from his car. His production company is called View Askew.

Clerks was a breakthrough film for independent filmmakers. It grossed just over $3 million. Not a bad return on an investment, eh?

Smith also wrote and directed Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. He is also credited as an executive producer on Good Will Hunting, which was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both of whom have starred in movies by Smith.

It's no secret that Kevin Smith is a huge comic book fan. All his movies have several references to comic books, most notably in Mallrats and Chasing Amy. One of the two main characters in Mallrats, Brodie (played by Jason Lee), is a comic book fan too, and Chasing Amy is about Banky Edwards and Holden McNeil (played by Jason Lee and Ben Affleck), two guys who publish their own comic, Bluntman & Chronic.

What most people who only saw the movies don't know is that Kevin also wrote several comics. He wrote three Clerks stories, which continue the adventures of Dante and Randall, the stars from Smith's movie Clerks. Then there is his four issue Jay & Silent Bob miniseries, pencilled by Duncan Fegredo, which fills the gap on what happens with Jay and Silent Bob between Smith's movies Chasing Amy and Dogma. All the comics that are related to his movies were published by Oni Press, but will be reprinted by Image Comics when Smith's new movie comes out.

Kevin has also worked for other publishers. When Marvel Comics' imprint Marvel Knights was launched by Joe Quesada, Kevin wrote the first storyline of the relaunched Daredevil comic. The eight-issue Guardian Devil storyline was pencilled by Quesada, with inks by Marvel Knight co-editor Jimmy Palmiotti, who both had been friends with Smith for years, and could also be seen in Chasing Amy.

Smith's latest comic work is for DC Comics, writing the upcoming Green Arrow series, with pencils by Phil Hester. The first issue is scheduled to be published at the end of February 2001.

Kevin also has his own comic shop, the afore mentioned Jay And Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, New Jersey. He wrote a column, Developing The Monkey, every Friday for the now defunct Psyomic.com, a website about comics. And to top it off, he even named his little girl after a comic character, Harley Quinn, from the Batman cartoon.

There is another, perhaps less famous, Kevin Smith -- Kevin Tod Smith of Auckland, New Zealand.

Though his dream was to play professional rugby, he stumbled (almost literally) into acting while sidelined by a rugby injury in college. His girlfriend (later wife) coerced him into trying out for a musical, and he eventually pursued acting professionally.

This Kevin Smith is most famous for his many appearances on the campy TV shows "Hercules" and "Xena", most commonly portraying Ares, the God of war (though like most everyone on those shows, he occasionally had other roles as well).

Kevin Tod Smith was born on March 16, 1963 and died February 15, 2002 after falling from a height of roughly six stories ten days prior, on the set of Warriors of Virtue II. He is survived by his wife Suzanne and three children.

Most facts straight from my brain but fact-checked via the IMDB.

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