Batman: Cacophony

A banner across the top of the cover says KEVIN SMITH. This is in even bigger lettering than the title which is immediately beneath it. So you can call it a Kevin Smith production. Indeed, it demands you call it that.

There’s nothing wrong with a comic trying to cash in on a celebrity name (think of Keanu Reeves and BRZRKR), and since Smith is a sometimes able screenwriter and die-hard comic fanboy, I didn’t go into this one with any misgivings or, for that matter, particularly high expectations.

Smith himself is self-deprecating about his efforts in his Introduction. “By series’ end, I realized it wasn’t the best Batman story I could write; nor was it Walt’s finest hour.” Walt being Smith’s buddy and series artist Walt Flanagan. The most he’ll say for Cacophony is that it provided useful experience for his later efforts. So that’s setting a pretty low bar.

I thought it was just OK. Only three issues, so there wasn’t much there. The storyline has Onomatopoeia (a Kevin Smith supervillain creation) breaking the Joker out of Arkham Asylum so that together they can hunt down Batman. Or at least I think that was the plan. Ono doesn’t say much and needless to say things don’t work out.

If the story is a weak sauce at least the writing has some of Smith’s distinct personality and brand of humour. Which is either a good or a bad thing, depending on how big a fan you are. And so the Joker is a mouthpiece for various semi-obscure cultural references, and even a couple of Maxie Zeus’s security guards get into an argument over the original Clash of the Titans. For the most part I thought this stuff fell flat. When the Joker says at the end that “I’m Glover, Circle Jerk’s Mel, Broodin’-Ruben’s Busey, and this is the end of Lethal Weapon,” I just couldn’t figure the comparison out. Nor could I understand the Joker’s big line at the end about how “I don’t hate you [Batman] ‘cause I’m crazy . . . I’m crazy ‘cause I hate you.” These are just words. Then there’s also some politics thrown into the mix, mainly in the opening pages where a lack of funding has made Arkham Asylum even easier to break into and out of. I did love Maxie Zeus saying that he’s done a lot of good with “some of the profits” from his drug operation (a philanthropist very much in the modern mode), but the Joker’s fascination with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead was another joke that went over my head. And I wasn’t sure what to make about the television broadcast being presented out of its original order the second time it’s played. Was that a mistake or was I missing something?

The art too was just OK. It looks quite generic. Action is handled pretty well, but Flanagan has a lot of trouble with Bruce Wayne’s face the few times we see it. The Joker’s sad excuse for a beard though is memorable.

Not a write-off or a disaster then, but nothing very special about it either. I got the feeling Smith wanted to go a little deeper into the Batman-Joker connection, but that’s been done so many times now that he really doesn’t have much to add. As comics go it’s the sort of thing that might leave you curious to see more, but not necessarily eager. Nevertheless, Smith does promise that he was getting better and learning on the job so I’ll probably check in later to see how that turned out.

Graphicalex