The first issue of Kevin Smith's
BATMAN: CACOPHONY was a lot of fun, even in the moments when it was a little too "Kevin Smith" for its own good. The Joker's characterization, for example, was heavy on sex jokes, gay jokes, and gay sex jokes presented in a way that might not have been jokes. And though Batman's dialogue seemed a bit too hard-boiled at times, his walking to safety of a group of orphaned children was about as beautiful and inspiring a Batman moment as you could ask for.
The real stars of the issue were marginally reformed criminal Maxie Zeus and Onomatopoeia, an assassin who vocalizes his own sound effects. The one-tow dialogue punch Smith gave these guys at the end of the first issue was as classic (and as appropriately hilarious) an ending as you could ask for.
As part two begins, The Joker acts on his frustrations over Zeus modifying and marketing his Joker Venom to the Gotham club crowd by…setting fire to the Gotham club crowd. It's pretty ghastly and awful, but Batman arrives in time to try to set things right. A solid action scene erupts and ends unexpectedly, sending Batman home to wrap his brain around this latest conundrum.
There's some classic (if not familiar) banter between Bruce and Alfred, with Smith referencing his work on the Green Arrow title. Bruce deduces that Onomatopoeia is some kind of "hero-killer" who broke The Joker out of Arkham to use him as bait to draw out Batman, and tells Alfred not to tell Tim about what's going on. I'd think you'd WANT to tell Tim what's going on so that he can be prepared, but ...
There's a classic Kevin Smith movie reference that readers my age will appreciate as Maxie's men try to keep their boss's Olympian appetites fed. I enjoyed Maxie Zeus a lot more in the first issue, when he was trying to go straight but struggling against his villainous, toga-wearing past. In this issue there's none of the balancing act that was so much fun the first time around; this time he's so silly and idiotic that he's almost no longer entertaining as a character.
There's some more good Batman stuff, and some more good Joker stuff, but then Onomatopoeia does something that erases all of the character's quirky charm. The issue ends with as much action as it began with, and Batman gives The Joker a verbal beating as brutal as the physical one, before a fairly predictable cliffhanger happens.
One more issue to go. This second part wasn't as much fun as the first part, but Smith has set things up pretty well for part three. We'll see where it goes. Artist Walter Flanagan's not as inconsistent with bodily proportions as he was in the first part, though his Batman is still sometimes a bit off. (At his best, he recalls Michael Keaton's Batman.)
But you know what? It's got BATMAN in it. Unlike some of the other Batman titles at the moment. Smith's story is a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see how he ends this. - John Bierly
