With the announcement of Disney buying Lucasfilm, many celebrities have been offering their two cents on the news. But for Clerks director Kevin Smith -- renowned for his immense Star Wars love -- the potential for new Star Wars films meant something much more personal.

In a guest column he wrote for The Hollywood Reporter this week, Smith shared a story from his early days as a Star Wars fan. "Star Wars repeatedly is referenced in all the flicks I make because I grew up watching the George Lucas trilogy in the 1970s and early '80s," Smith begins. "But thanks to the toymakers at Kenner, no self-respecting Star Wars fan was ever content to simply watch the movies. Indeed, until the advent of home video a few years later, playing with Star Wars figures was about the closest a fan could get to seeing the movie again until it was rereleased in theaters."

Smith goes on to describe a boyhood friend named Pete, with whom he would play Star Wars. "Every summer day from 1978 to 1982, you could find me and Pete in his tiny yard, building a new Hoth or Tatooine, brushing ants off our bodies as we laid belly down in the dirt, making Luke Skywalker repeatedly kiss a girl who turned out to be his sister right before they swing from dental floss over the heads of stiff-armed Stormtroopers," he continues. "It shaped me as a storyteller and as a person."

"We'd create our own Star Wars adventures. The best story (and the only one outside of the movie canon that we'd repeatedly play) wasn't about Luke and Leia: It was about inexplicable fan-fave Boba Fett... The plot of our backyard adventure: Boba Fett gets trapped by robotic gunslinger IG-88 in a Star Wars universe time loop, sending him through all the movies as well as moments only referenced in the flicks."

But as Smith and Pete grew older, their interests of course changed. "As Pete and I hit our teens, we didn't play as much Star Wars anymore. I was onto girls, and Pete was replacing Star Wars with G.I. Joe figures.

"One morning shortly after Clerks happened to me, I got the absolute s#!t news that Pete King had been hit by a car in New York City. I asked how long his recovery would be only to learn the awful truth: Pete had died.

"Not a summer goes by when I don't think about Pete or our ongoing saga of Boba Fett lost in time. So when I heard about Disney's $4 billion Lucasfilm acquisition, naturally I had a brief, one-sided conversation with my former best friend.

"'We might finally get to see that Fett flick we always dreamed about, Pete,' I said aloud at my desk after I read the news."

In conclusion, Smith sums up his feelings on the announcement of Star Wars: Episode VII. "In a world where Disney needs to make back its investment, we may indeed see an all-Boba Fett film. And if the Force wills it, maybe it'll even be about Boba Fett lost in the Star Wars universe time stream. But even if it became the highest-grossing film of all time, it'd still never be as good as Pete King's version."

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Tom Waltz and Kevin Eastman have been dragging more and more classic TMNT characters and elements into the new series in recent months. Issue #15 throws Leatherhead into the mix. Though the book hardly needs another villain at the moment, Leatherhead nonetheless enjoys a solid introduction into this new continuity.

The writers briefly establish Leatherhead's origin as another of Baxter Stockman's out-of-control experiments before shifting back to the present. The Turtles are currently searching for a new base of operations, which seems like another unnecessary addition considering how recently they moved into April's antique shop. In any case, issue #15 winds up offering a fun little blend of intrigue, horror, and levity. In the case of the latter quality, Splinter is given the opportunity to stop being so dour all the time and bond with Casey Jones. As far as horror goes, the creators offer up a cool sequence that sees Leatherhead stalk the Turtles in the shadows.

That fight sequence is expertly rendered by Andy Kuhn. While Kuhn's facial work is a bit bland compared to Dan Duncan's, his work is packed with kinetic energy and enough light and shadow to really pop off the page. The series continuously sets a higher visual standard for IDW's licensed comics.

One downside to this issue is a familiar complaint with the series -- it more or less requires readers to have read the April O'Neil micro-series one-shot to fully appreciate the events within. I understand that IDW is paying homage to the classic Mirage series by resurrecting the micro-series format, but in many cases these stories would have been better served by being integrated with the main book. After eight one-shots, maybe it's time to give it a rest and focus squarely on this series.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

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