Monday, December 1, 2008

Batman: Cacophony #1

Well, that was dirty. I was expecting it, every blogger and his mother has been talking about the most offensive things in this issue. (In case you missed them, Joker talks about his pubs, "presents" to a villain, Mr. Zsasz only has one place left to cut - and yes, it's where you think.) So that's the stuff that was stupid and inappropriate. The good stuff was using Maxie Zeus in kind of a new way, Deadshot being shown as a neat, conflicted assassin (who plans ahead!) and Batman as a little more vindictive as normal. Bats' brutal takedown of Zsasz was pretty satisfying and a great way to introduce him into the comic. So it's about what you expect from a Kevin Smith comic.

This Walt Flanagan guy on art, who I understand is a friend of Kevin Smith's, is pretty good. He's a little on the exaggerated side, but I especially liked his hunched Zsasz and the weirdly deformed flunkies Joker uses to terrorize a private school. His handling of the leads is average, but those little spots with more freedom are interesting. Overall, the weird story stuff lowers the grade. I don't think some of that material is appropriate for Batman, and Joker's actions come close to ruining the character.

Fair

4 comments:

Mej said...

They say the mark of a true hack comic is someone who throws around obvious grossout jokes and forced cursing to get a shock laugh.

Having spared myself from Clerks 2 but hearing enough about it, that seems to be Kevin Smith's entire schtick anymore. It comes as no surprise that he'd overuse "gritty" things in his comics the same way.

Perhaps we expected too much of him after we saw him count to ten by stomping his hooves and lick peanut butter off his teeth.

Timbotron said...

It was just disappointing, because he's got some decent ideas mixed in with his "adult" material. I don't know why he thinks it is necessary to dirty everything up, he actually makes things LESS realistic doing that.

Always Right said...

I thought it was ok. Not a great story, but enjoyable enough. If it was a new character that was crude instead of Joker, would it offend you less?

Timbotron said...

Interesting. Yeah, I think it would bother me less.