Cacophony and The Widening Gyre are GREAT. Am I the only one??

[Rocketman]

As much as I dislike Kevin Smith as a filmmaker (not my personal taste in movies), his work with Batman in these two stories is fantastic. Everyone needs to lighten up for crying out loud.

In my opinion, a great Batman story isn't afraid to mix things up and make things interesting. I love it when a writer can shake everything up, see what's fresh, while some things work and some things don't. And by God, not everything has to be so damn serious all the time!!

I like a Comics-Batman that isn't too Nolan, but isn't too Schumacher either. Kevin Smith is right there in the middle somewhere. Not too serious, not too ridiculous. Just the way I like it.

And, believe it or not, this is going to sound stupid and I know you'll flame me, but Cacophony and The Widening Gyre are two of my favorite Batman graphic novels ever.

Before you say I haven't read enough, I assure you, I've read most of them. The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Hush, Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, The Man Who Laughs, Knightfall, Ego, Tower of Babel. All great stories, absolutely. But some of them wouldn't make my personal Top 10. For those curious...

My Top 10 Favorite Batman Graphic Novels:
Birth of the Demon
Haunted Knight
Snow
A Death in the Family
Under the Hood, Vol. 1 & 2
The Killing Joke
The Man Who Laughs
Cacophony
The Widening Gyre
Knightfall - 1, 2, 3

Again, this is just my personal taste.
But I feel frighteningly alone on this topic, because it seems like Kevin Smith's work is largely hated around here. That simply baffles me.

Anyone?

 

[CConn]

Cacophony was average, IMO. But I did like Gyre a lot. Smith did some really weird things in it, but overall, it really captured the essence of 70s/80s/90s Batman comics in a lot of ways...and paid homage to a lot of Batman's history. And that made it pretty cool.

 

[Cain]

I gave Cacophony a chance and I'm the type of guy who doesn't mind quirky & outlandish **** (for pete's sake I enjoyed All-Star Batman & Robin) but it just really sucked to me. Seemed so empty headed and plodding at times and the art was just downright nasty. So for that reason I didn't give the other one a shot.

I tend to not bother with follow up works on any property from people who's first shot at the property I really did not enjoy. It's the main reason I never saw any of the Transformers sequels.

 

[Mace Dolex]

I've read The Widening Gyre because I wanted to read what was so controversial of the one panel in which Batman admits to peeing on his first night out intimidating mob bosses.

The art is decent by Walt Flannagan although there are a few panels that look amatuerish.

 

[CConn]

The art definitely was the book's weakest point.

 

[metalhead_dave]

I picked up Cacophony and Batman's dialouge was way too wordy, like Smith was forcing Batman to be angry ALL the time. I read his dialouge and thought bubbles and I kept thinking "Batman wouldn't say that." And that killed the story for me, I couldn't finish it.