Director, pop culture icon still coming to Northern FanCon

There was a real-life comic book battle inside Kevin Smith’s body and the hero destroyed the villain. The bad guy was his totally blocked left anterior descending artery and his Justice League was the cardiology team at Glendale Adventist Hospital in California.

That’s the colourful way of drawing it. The flat way of explaining it is Smith – the film star, celebrated movie director, and host of the podcast Fatman On Batman – had a massive heart attack and managed to survive thanks to modern medicine.

He is still the official headline guest for Northern FanCon coming up in May at CN Centre where he will broadcast a live episode of his podcast and have a very interesting story to tell of his body’s rebellion and how it was vanquished.

“Dr. (Marc) Ladenheim...oh, that guy,” said Smith in a Facebook Live monologue from his hospital room on Tuesday.

“This guy’s the Batman of.... cardiologists, man. He was so calm. He was like a vigilante. He seized that LAD and he was like ‘c’mere Joker’ and he stuffed him in... Arkham (the fictitious prison asylum in Batman comics). These are comic book terms for people who don’t understand medicine.”

In his video post, Smith explained how he had finished one of two shows he was scheduled to perform for a live audience on Sunday night.

In between events he began to feel nauseous, sweat profusely, and couldn’t catch his breath. There was no pain and he remained mostly lucid. He was in the process of convincing himself it was food poisoning when the ambulance got called