SDCC '08 - DiDio on Kevin Smith, Batman and Onomatopoeia
by by Matt Brady
Date: 25 July 2008 Time: 12:41 AM ET
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SDCC 08 - DiDio on Smith & Batman CREDIT: |
As was announced by special panel guest Kevin Smith himself at today’s DC Nation panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the filmmaker and occasional comic book writer will be coming to DC Comics starting in November.
The three issue miniseries will re-introduce the unique villain (and flashback to English class), Onomatopoeia, who first saw life in a two-part story in Smith’s Green Arrow run (issues #12-#13). The character is largely a mystery, and has had only very minor appearances since Smith’s original story. What is known about Onomatopoeia could fill a thimble – he can perfectly imitate the sounds around him, may have some super-human abilities, rarely, if ever speaks, and is deadly with many kinds of weapons. He nearly killed Connor Hawke during his first appearance. As for the character’s origins, Smith related the idea behind the character in a 2007 interview, saying: “When I did Green Arrow, I went with Onomatopoeia for a villain, just because I loved that word, and it kind of formed the character inasmuch as he would say sounds out loud. It only kind of works – I think – on a comic book page because if you have a gun going off, they usually write BLAM! and then you can have, you know, the character saying “BLAM!” in a word balloon, but like if you tried to do that cinematically you can’t really rock it. A gun in a film sounds completely different. It doesn’t read as BLAM! and so to have a dude say BLAM! after a true gunshot, all these people would be like ‘he’s just retarded’. I think it works great in print and on a comic book page. I don’t think that character would translate very well outside of that.”