I wasn’t planning on getting “Batman: Cacophony” (not crazy about the title).  As regular comic readers, we know that the writer of this series Kevin Smith as of late has not been good at meeting deadlines.  His last work over at Marvel was a six-issue mini-series called “Spider-man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do”.  A mini-series which began in 2002 and did not finish until sometime in 2006.  Four years for six issues.  Then there is “Daredevil: The Target”.  Issue one was released and the series was never finished.  So why should I even bother investing money and time to this man?  If I wasn’t writing for this blog, and if I didn’t get 20% off of new books, I wouldn’t have bothered.  I can’t say, “it was worth every penny, thank God I bought this book.”  But I will say, Kevin Smith does a very good job of writing a Batman story.

The story opens with someone breaking into Arkham Asylum. The person is Deadshot. He has been hired to kill the Joker because a parent lost their teenage son to a drug called Chuckles. Maxie Zeus is using a diluted version of Joker Venom and getting kids high. Why the parent wouldn’t hire Deadshot to kill Maxie I don’t know. Deadshot breaks open the Joker’s cell and is about to kill him when the villain Onomatopoeia shows up and puts a bullet in Deadshot and steals the Joker himself.

I won’t give away the rest of the plot, but I will say that Smith writes a very good Joker. He does a good job of balancing the evil and the humor of the character. He’s doing horrific things, but you still find yourself laughing. Mr. Zsasz also makes an appearance in a very chilling scene. You feel for the victims and cheer when Batman puts his fist through a wall to stop Zsasz from killing a child.

I didn’t read the Green Arrow issues that introduced Onomatopoeia so this is my first introduction to the character. I’m interested in seeing how he’s tied into all of this. Is he working for someone?

The art work was done by Walter Flanagan. It was pretty good. Good panel-to-panel visual story telling.

I’ll be picking up the next issue. Again it was very good, but not the best Batman story ever. Have fun with it and let’s hope we see the remaining two issues soon.