Reviews: Push #1 and Batman: Cacophony #1

Push #1
The writing team of Adam Freeman and Marc Bernardin do a passable job on Push, yet another Wildstorm tie-in comic, this time serving as a marketing leader on a movie that I didn’t even know was coming out. As a prequel, I have no idea how it relates to the source material, but as a comic on its own, it’s actually fairly well put together. Character bits buoy up the slightly-clichéd government-agency-with-hidden-motives plot and the visuals by new-to-me Spanish penciller Bruno Redondo (with inks from established erotic cartoonist Sergio Arino) has hints of several other artists whose work I’ve enjoyed while still hewing to what’s become a sort of house style for the DC imprint. Inoffensive and readable, but I forgot about it almost immediately.

Batman: Cacophony #1
Boy, Kevin Smith’s not a very good superhero comic book writer, is he? Characters chatter on and on; Batman’s wildly out-of-voice in his narration, which is saying something, considering how many interpretations of the character are out there and worst of all, there’s no reason to care unless you think Onomatopoeia was the great character find of 2002, as the execution leaves so much to be desired. Smith seems to be aiming squarely at the arrested development cases that ensured that Clerks 2 paid for itself: there’s a painfully extended anal sex joke and Batman calls Zsasz’s slaughter of two people an “unholy briss [sic]” because – get this – he used a scalpel! Even some nifty technobabble involving Deadshot’s costume and a Joker who somehow manages to recall the classic Englehart take on the character can’t save this sloppy mess that smacks of an inside joke (note artist Walt Flanagan‘s presence) that somehow went a bit too far up the editorial chain.