I'm a part-time fan of Kevin Smith, although I've skipped his comic writing to date, and I've watched every goofy episode of Walt Flanagan in Comic Book Men. I like these guys. I picked up this water-damaged hardback and decided to give it a twirl. It's fun. They're fanboys living the dream, writing and illustrating their favourite character and making him say and do stuff they think is funny.

At one point Batman crashes through a skylight to interrupt Mr Zsasz in the process of self-mutilating his junk and says, "Baruch haba, scumbag." That's as fine a bris reference as I've seen in comic books. Thank you Kevin.

Not for everyone. Almost certainly for me. ( )

It’s an amazing read as always. I really like how he brought back Onomatopoeia. It’s going to be really interesting to find out what he has planned for that character. The thing that suprised me the most about this one was how much it was really about the Joker. I had been given the impression it was going to be more about Onomatopoeia. But the storyline was just amazing. And I love the last issue. Getting to see what a closer to sane Joker is really like.

The rest is at the blog. ( )

Batman finds himself trying to understand a strange relationship between The Joker and Onomatopoeia. The Cape Crusader soon has to choose between chasing down The Joker and this puzzling villain Onomatopoeia. Writer/Director Kevin Smith puts his love of comic books and Batman to a practical use and wrote the series Batman: Cacophony.

I picked this graphic novel on my honeymoon because I was curious to see what Kevin Smith would do with Batman. I wanted to see what Smith would do with this superhero and I was a little curious about the super villain he created. Onomatopoeia is an enigma and I wasn’t sure how to take him; he works well as a super villain but for the most part I am still not sure what to make of him.

I am a fan of Batman and have often enjoyed Kevin Smith’s movies (except Jersey Girl) but I found this collection to be a little juvenile. Smith’s humour is often childish but that is never a defining factor in his movies with the exception of Clerks 2, so I was expecting so much more. There wasn’t much in the way of a storyline in Batman: Cacophony and I ended with so many unanswered questions. This is only a three issue series and I have to wonder if there were plans for more.

Walt Flanagan’s illustrations were a lot better than the writing; while not great it was far more entertaining. Flanagan uses a lot of vibrant colours that help distract the reader from the rest of the series. I had to enjoy the small homages Walt Flanagan made to other artists; one that particularly stood out to me was The Joker dress from The Killing Zone. Flanagan adopts a very busy style and while I wanted to rush through the story, it was hard to do this with the art.

There are a lot of great Batman series out there and I am struggling to work out which ones to try and which ones to look over. I am sad to say that Batman: Cacophony is one that should have been overlooked but that won’t stop me from trying to explore the rest. I hope people will help me with recommending me some good Batman series to read.

This review originally appeared on my blog: http://literary-exploration.com/2014/11/23/batman-cacophony-by-kevin-smith/ ( )

An interesting three issues (though in the TPB the issues aren't really differentiated). It's a Batman story that is not in the general Batman DC Comics timelines, though it does take its history from Batman canon of the time.

A guy with grey circles on his full face black mask (no eye holes) breaks the Joker out of Arkham. Then death and mayhem ensue. There's even an interesting conversation between a mostly lucid Joker and Batman.

The art is interesting and the writing is pure Kevin Smith (both movie Kevin Smith and his other comic books). Not a bad graphic novel at all. ( )

Deals with the Joker/Batman relationship more directly than any other arc I've seen. I don't know where this falls in terms of DC canon -- it does not read like an Elseworld, but Jim Gordon is commissioner...again? DC continuity makes me cry. I'll have to ask a friend who knows.

ANYWAY. It's interesting in that the Joker explicitly states he wants to have sexual relations with Batman's corpse. He also, upon being freed by Onomatopoeia, drops his pants and offers him his ass. So they've officially made the Joker queer. It's been subtext for decades, but it's never before been actual text that couldn't be semi-plausibly handwaved away.

At the end, there's another entirely intimate encounter between first Matches and then Batman and the Joker. Bruce was comfortable enough with him (chained to the hospital bed) to change from Matches into the Batsuit with only a flimsy curtain between them -- and that -- combined with his admission (yet again) that he couldn't bear to allow the Joker to die in front of him -- was surprisingly intimate. Also, the Joker says, something like, "I'm sorry for whatever happened to you that made you what you are," in a moment of genuine sympathy. And then he reminds us that he is actually a psychopath.

All of which works out to a nice character study of Batman and the Joker and their mutual obsession. I like seeing the parallels between them. I loved Batman knocking Joker's "I'm your greatest foe!" down to "number sixteen". They're comfortable together, familiar, even though they're both crazy in diametrically opposed ways.

I wonder how much Bruce loves that the Joker *knows* him? Despite the sheer squickiness of how their entire relationship is predicated on violence. Joker destroys someone's life to get a rise out of Batman, so Batman destroys Joker's plan, beats the crap out of him, and locks him away. Repeat ad nauseam. If they were married, it would be a marriage based on a domestic violence kink. Which, hello squickiness. /o

Sometimes I wish Batman didn't have such an intimate relationship with his villains. ( )