I’m going to just put it out there, I love Kevin Smith. I have since “Clerks” came out and I’ve pretty much supported anything with this name on it. When he started writing comics, over 10 years ago, I was with him there as well because they tied in heavily to the already exiting “Askewniverse.” When it was announced that he would be writing Daredevil, there were some preconceived notions as to what his comics would me like, foul, potty mouthed, dirty, funny, and salacious to spout off a few words I heard people say. However, when Daredevil came out, it wasn’t anything like his movies and was very moving and dramatic. Same can be said about Green Arrow and Spider-Man/Black Cat.

Now, here comes Batman: Cacophony, and unfortunately the Kevin Smith some feared would appear in comics has come knocking. This book is just plain dumb. It’s very immature, many of the characters seem out of character in their portrayal and worst of all, it’s not very interesting. While I certainly don’t mind strong sexual undertones (homo or hetero) in my comics, it felt very out of place here, especially with the dialouge that accompanied it. The only thing that really kept me interested was the appearance of the “Sound” character from Green Arrow he created. On the flip side, the use of Maxie Zuess had me snoring.

I can’t imagine that I would have felt differently if there had been a different artist attached, but I don’t think it helped. Nothing against Walt Flannagan personally, I think he’s hilarious on Smodcast and he’s obviously a very good friend of Kevin’s, but his work was very inconsistent and sometimes looked amateurish (even though he is a professional on some level with 2 other series published by IDW). His Joker’s head would often change shape and size and his Deadshot looked just plain silly in some panels. While the art is much better than I could do, overall I found the it sub par, especially given the high profile this book will undoubtedly receive.

If your a major Smith fan, you might want to wait for the series to be finished (it’s only 3 issues) and read it when it’s collected, otherwise, I would recommend passing on it and picking up Dini’s recent arc on Detective Comics for a great Batman story.