Bus Stops - February 12/13, 2012 - MORE TALES OF THE COMIC BOOK MEN

Clerks and Comic Superheroes Collide in Kevin Smith's Comic Book Men (TV Guide) 

(It took 41 years, but Kevin Smith is finally proving his parents wrong. "They always said, 'Your friends are idiots. You can't sit around and goof off with your friends.' I was like, 'Yeah we can,'" Smith tells TVGuide.com of his new AMC reality series, Comic Book Men, starring his childhood friends-turned-comic book store employees Bryan Johnson, Walt Flanagan, Mike Zapcic and Ming Chen.)

Comic Book Men is 'a guy thing' (Vancouver Sun) 

(One day in the not-too-distant future, in a galaxy close to home, cultural historians may pore over the mind-blowing pop-culture artifacts of fan-boy Kevin Smith's New Jersey comic shop, Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash, and wonder: What was that all about? If they're lucky, Smith will still be around to tell them. If not, they will have the new AMC docu-reality series, Comic Book Men, to show them.)

Zombies then comic books? A winning 1-2 punch on AMC (Philly.com) 

(IN THE AGE of the DVR, caring about audience flow is supposed to be, well, so 2007. We record what we want, we watch when we can. AMC must not have gotten the memo, because starting Sunday it's following the return of "The Walking Dead" with the premiere of Kevin Smith's "Comic Book Men.")

Comic Book Men (Chicago Tribune) 

(Taking the plunge into unscripted TV, AMC gets almost everything right with "Comic Book Men" -- the time-slot, the tone, the surprisingly fertile collectibles/pawnshop genre -- except for the production of the series itself. Static and disjointed, the show yields amusing moments (many courtesy of director Kevin Smith, who presides over it), especially for anyone who has frequented a comicbook store and noticed its quirky denizens. Still, as constructed, any appeal beyond committed nerds who can appreciate drooling over a "Six Million Dollar Man" action figure is likely to be limited.)

'Comic Book Men,' premiering Sunday on AMC (Kansas City Star) 

(The new series "Comic Book Men" taps into the love and longing that many of us have for those colorfully drawn magazines of our youth. And it gives us reason to believe that our love for those pages of bright, action-laden panels had some value. That's certainly the belief of Kevin Smith, the writer-director-actor famous for films such as "Chasing Amy," "Dogma" and "Red State." Smith has also had a long life in comics: writing them, collecting them and selling them through his New Jersey store, Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash (named after two characters from several of Smith's movies).)