Customer Reviews

Batman: Cacophony

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I really wanted to like Batman: Cacophony. Like a lot of people who picked up this title, I am a huge Kevin Smith fan. I'm more of a fan of Smith himself (interviews, Evening Withs) than his actual work. His past jaunts into comics have been somewhat of a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed his Daredevil miniseries and some of the Green Arrow stuff, for example.

When this project was announced in the middle of '08, I was really looking forward to seeing how Kevin Smith tackles Batman. But I was also a little worried that the character of Batman wouldn't fit with Smith's writing style.

I was right to be worried. It really is bad. Cringe-worthy bad in many spots. I bought the comics as they arrived in the comic store and I really don't know why I even bought all the issues. I guess I was hoping Smith would pull off a great ending. Thankfully it was only a 3-issue run.

Artwork: Very poor and lazy. Smith freely admits that Flanagan got the job because they are friends. It would take a lot more than friendship for me to allow a 'talent' like this to ruin my storytelling. As a fan of Kevin Smith for over 15 years, I had heard of Walt Flanagan. However, I had never seen his artwork before. Ugh. Ech. Bleh. I can't believe an important character like Batman was given over to this guy. The covers were very misleading. Adam Kubert did all three covers, which are actually decent. I wish he had done the inside work as well. But back to Flanagan. Much of his work was very distracting, and often I would linger at some panels and marvel at how bad they were. Did he only have a weekend to turn in his work? One sequence especially stands out to me. On the second to last page of Part 1, there is a group of characters leaving a school, including the Joker himself, and Flanagan simply took the same drawing and put it on three different panels--each of which showing the group getting further away from the school. It's so obvious it's the same drawing it just made me think that he got lazy and didn't want to have to redraw the group three times. Also, many panels seem too 'cartoony'.

Story: Below average. Again, I love Smith, but Batman is not a character for him. I know he wanted to create something that would fit in with the long history of memorable Batman stories, but he falls way short. At the heart of the story there is very little that we haven't read before, and we've seen it portrayed far better. There are a few decent lines, but I had to stop myself from skimming the final issue because it just seemed boring. Maybe the artwork was so bad that I had a hard time really getting into the story. To his credit, Smith does a solid job with the Joker, but it isn't good enough to save this.

Price: I know the graphic novel is around $20, which is way too high. The three issues I purchased were $4 each, which is fairly standard, but a rip-off as well.

Bottom line: If you MUST read this, buy a cheap used copy, read it over a weekend, and put it back up for sale. Trust me, the condition doesn't matter because you won't be keeping it anyway. Kevin Smith needs to stick to characters that align more with his voice. He's much better than what Batman: Cacophony shows.

I've been a huge Batman fan, and a Kevin Smith fan for years. As such, I was out of town on business and picked this up at a local Borders to read back at my hotel. Yes, everyone understands that different writers have different 'takes' on characters, but sometimes in these pages, I found myself thinking that Smith was writing what he was writing just to be different, with no real understanding of the characters at all (some of the Joker stuff is just ridiculous).

Still, my biggest complaint (and I know this has been a major issue since the comic came out), is with the artist. Apparently Smith was well aware of this, and specifically addresses it in his introduction (having to defend the awful pairing of a respect writer and a hack wanna be comic artist?!). While I was made aware that the illustrator had worked in a professional capacity before (although not at any of the major companies), I really could care less if this is the guy who introduced Smith to comic books or not. I paid my hard earned money for something that I expected to put on my bookshelf with my other Batman Graphic Novels (Arkham, Killing Joke, Returns etc...). Instead I saw page after page of work that would most likely be politely rejected at any local comic book conevntion. I work with high school art students who have a better understanding of anatomy, composition, and story telling. I'm sorry, but just because you love comic books and are Kevin Smith's childhood buddy shouldn't qualify you to draw one of comicdom's most respected characters.

I'm selling mine online, not simply to get a few bucks back, but out of principle. I like to think that my collection consists of quality materials, that I can read, and reread again and again, and always find that feeling of enjoyment and respect for the creators. This item has no place there.

Smith hasn't gotten any better from when he wrote Guardian Devil. The villian in this book Onomatopoeia, is very interesting with his gimmick but he is hardly developed and he is one of the few saving graces in this bland and forgettable comic book. The other saving and pretty well done moment is the talk between the Joker and Batman towards the end of the book when Smith writes the Joker as sane as he could possibly get (honestly the Joker is such a odd character that he can somehow pull off both being serious and funny that he doesn't have to use that excuse but whatever)

Even the talk at the very end of the book pales in comparison to other evaluations between Batman and the Joker. (One of my favorites being the talk between the two of them in Under the Red Hood, and in Dark Knight Returns) but its still solid writing (some of the only in this book) I haven't been impressed by any of Smith's comic work but he is getting better.

Kevin Smith and Batman, two of my favorite things. However when you mix two things that are awesome, you're not always going to get Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.

The artwork in this comic is perfect, Batman looks tough, he's dark and mysterious and his outfit looks awesome, just the way it should.

However the writing leaves a lot to be desired. The Joker that Smith portrays is not the Joker that I've come to know and love. The Joker seems to be a mix of a child from the 90's and a Hispanic gangster with minor traces of the actual Joker thrown in.

The scene with the Joker being a DJ in a nightclub and then blasting the place with a flamethrower was PERFECT. That was the Joker I wanted, mixing crime, mayhem and humor all together beautifully. The scene where the Joker shoots his henchmen dead for talking too loud and following it up with, "Quiet, can't you see I'm thinking?" was perfect as well.

However the same Joker also asked for a "piece." The Joker would never refer to a gun this way, he would refer to it as a "toy" so he could play too. Also the part where the Joker starts talking about rape and making jokes about it was too much. This is a comic book meant for kids, tweens and teens, this subject doesn't belong in this book.

The worst part of this trade paperback is that roughly ¼ of the book is a rough draft of the comic that was tacked on as a "bonus feature," but let's face it, it was just filler.

All in all, I think Kevin Smith should just stick to making movies based on fart jokes.

It was ok. I am a huge Kevin Smith fan and love his movies and his podcasts and his interviews and I think he's really funny. The first issue of this 3 issue story is great and he did well with writing the joker. But the second issue it went down in quality for me because his writing for the joker was close to horrible in the second issue. Especially in the way joker acts. In the second and in the first issue I don't buy joker being a sexual defiant the way he writes him because it seems really forced the things joker does to express him being a sexual defiant. Also I didn't like the scene were Onomatopoeia killed a hooker because it doesn't seem how he would react in the situation. In the third issue it picks up simply because throughout the issue it's a wrap up of the story. I would have preffered if this was just a Onomatopoeia story and the Joker was just in the background of the story and it would have been a stronger story. The art is pretty good. The art is very simplistic and I personally don't think batman is character for that simplistic of art style. But the art style isn't bad I actually love it but batman isn't the character for that art style.
Overall this is book that you would have to read at your own risk. But for a die hard batman fan this could be a pick, simply for the amount of villains and fast pace of the comic book and it's a short read.

The negative reviews here may have a point that Kevin Smith's writing may not be best suited for Batman, but this is still a great story.

It's a complicated but well-written plot that keeps you guessing, and that doesn't allow for any cheap resolutions by the end.

Smith's dialogue for Batman somehow doesn't fit too well, but he does a great portrayal of the Joker. In this story, the Joker is funny, creepy, intelligent, well-spoken, manipulative, and devious - in short, what the Joker is supposed to be.

Smith is clearly influenced by all the previous iterations of Batman and Joker, so he incorporates many of those of references; while it keeps the themes familiar, it does sometimes suggest a lack of novelty. But, comic books do seem work best when keeping to familiar themes, so that may not be such a drawback. As one example, Batman and Joker engage in a kind of carbon-copy dialogue from the Dark Knight film, where they discuss good and evil, and debate that perennial question, "why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker?" (see Mark White's essay in _Batman and Philosophy_, ed. by Mark White). So, if a bit cliche and perhaps even copied in homage to sources that have inspired him, Smith's storyline seems nonetheless fitting.

At least the writing is tight and to-the-point, a self-contained story that is aware of its limited space; as a three-issue series, you don't feel like you're reading a stretched-out story that had to go across several more issues, as can sometimes happen with collected editions. Thankfully, Smith kept his dialogue relatively short, unlike his Daredevil which sidelined the usually active red devil for interminably long boxes of text. In addition to being short and sweet (although it is packed with several sub-plots, many characters, and philosophical reflections), it is also funny; Smith's wit comes through in many places.

The art isn't great, but it isn't bad either. If anything, it's just a bit basic and at times inconsistent. I don't think it detracts from the story, but I won't be opening it again just to admire the images as works of art (like I might with a Frank Miller, Jim Lee or Bill Sienkiewicz).

In sum, Cacophony is a great read, limited only by some intangible feeling that I get that Smith's writing isn't exactly capturing the heart of who Batman is. By way of comparison, Cacophony is more enjoyable and understandable than Morrison's recent run, but not near as good as Paul Dini's work in Private Casebook or Heart of Hush or in Streets of Gotham (nor is the art here as good as that of Dustin Nguyen in those works). Cacophony is way better than Smith's Daredevil, but not as good (although it's close) as his Green Arrow, probably because Green Arrow lends itself better to Smith's witty socializing. In sum, a great read not deserving of some of the negative reviews posted here.

I've read some bad comics and this is up there with Marvel Ultimates. When the introduction by the author basically makes excuses for how bad it is, you know it isn't going to be much good. You can see some of the writing that has made Smith a favorite, but it is few and far between. The artwork is horrible, the joker is always terribly drawn in this book and even worse looks different from page to page. I'm also all for 'mature' comics, but it has to fit. The Joker alluding to sex and the other bad guy proposing to scar his privates just don't fit with the Batman universe

Well to start out I am an avid comic reader, the kind that has an almost religious trip to his comic books store to retrieve the content of his pull box and am fully expected to be seen by the employees. How ever i usually stick to marvel, not that i have anything against DC, they've just never caught my interest with the exceptions of batman and green lantern. I had given batman a chance before but it was during that period where he was in prehistoric times, in a cave man get up, with a cave man robin. I read about half that issue and put it down as soon as i saw cave joker. the drawing the line at 2.99 drew me back in so i picked up the latest batman and robin and it was satisfactory but slow, as the beginning of any arch is. I also grab this off the shelf, given that Ive always heard great things about Kevin smith from my friends. to be far this is exceedingly average. personally this came no where near being amongst my favorite. to call it bad would be harsh but its unbearably bland. i felt like Kevin smith was reading every character in that bland tone he gives stand up specials with. it was dreadful and the plot wasn't capturing or exciting kind of just there. Lucky for batman my friend handed me his copy of the killing joke which is a fantastic piece of work that every comic reader should read. so my advice is DON'T BUY THIS,BUY "Batman: The Killing Joke".

OK... Liked the discussion between The Joker and Bruce in The Joker's hospital room. Aside from that, meh.

I recently picked up Batman: Cacophony and I was excited to see that Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) was the creative force behind a Batman comic/graphic novel. I was a little disappointed in it's size, but their are many graphic novels that are short but sweet (The Killing Joke). First thing's first, the art was not brilliant but it wasn't terrible either. At times the art was sloppy, but I thought that it was alright for the most part. The plot was interesting, but not entirely original. Kevin Smith seems to write in the same style, or at least tone, as Frank Miller (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns). This isn't a bad thing, it's actually used well enough. Smith's humorous dialogue was witty, but distracting at times. The dialogue is probably Cacophany's best aspect, Smith's humorous undertones and Miller-esque cinematic moments, made for rather solid graphic novel material. Smith explores the character of the Joker, but perhaps not enough, or at least, in the wrong places. It almost seems as if Smith is trying to remake other Batman story arcs, and throw in dramatic conversations and touching moments between Batman and The Joker. However, I didn't think it worked too well. Was it interesting? Yes. Was it something I had already seen and heard before? Yes. Onomatopoeia, a villain created by Smith in his earlier works, is an interesting character. And I enjoyed getting to see him again. It's hard to tell whether or not who the main villain of the book is, between Onomatopoeia and The Joker. But either way it ends in an alright way, a way that isn't painful or disappointing, but gives readers that, "Yea, their will be a sequel...", thought. And apparently there is a follow up in the making, done again by Smith. Final Verdict- An okay read. If you're bored, and you can't seem to find anything you haven't already read at your local comic store, or bookstore, than pick up Batman: Cacophony. It's a fairly priced graphic novel (got mine for 14.95) and it's good for a nights read. Ratings- C+, 3 stars, and 6.5 out of 10.