Kevin Smith is a lot like that funny friend you have who doesn’t know when to quit. At times he’s right on point and hysterical then suddenly you just want to smash his face in to get him to shut up. Smith’s last Batman mini-series Cacophony was the on point side but issue one of his new series Batman: Widening Gyre is clearly the other. If I had to venture a guess it would be that Smith spent too much time reading Frank Miller’s failed All Star Batman And Robin title.
I say that because Smith loses all sight in writing Batman from a dialog standpoint. There are too many pop culture references and way too many snappy one-liners that Batman just wouldn’t use. For instance referring to a foe as a “Don Post” reject falls way out of anything Batman would know about much less say. Batman also doesn’t say things like “I don’t sweat it”, “Sunuva” and “The kid pulled a me”. I’m not trying to be a stickler here but if you’ve read Batman for long enough it becomes apparent what he would say and not say. Most of his dialog in this issue would sooner come out of Dick Grayson as the new Batman than Bruce Wayne.
Story wise I’m going to give Smith the benefit of the doubt and say it’s interesting and provocative as opposed to a big mess. What starts as a flashback to Bruce and Dick stopping an Aryan bad guy ends with Batman being saved from the demon Etrigan by somebody in a Batman costume that looks like it was stolen from an over budgeted Shakespeare production. In between you get Nightwing, more racists, The Joker, Arkham Asylum and Poison Ivy. The issue reads as disjointed as it sounds but I have to have faith that Smith will wrap all the loose ends together by issue six.
I’m hoping that while tying the storyline together Smith can re-think his dialog approach to pretty much every character he’s introduced. Along with Batman’s newfound love of modern slang we also get an overly quippy Nightwing, an overly sexualized Joker, a bizarrely “Sopranos” sounding Killer Croc, Smith even manages to overdo Poison Ivy, which is a pretty tall order. Somebody at DC needs to remind him that a Batman series isn’t Clerks 3 or Mallrats 2 so stop writing it as such.
The one saving grace is Walter Flanagan’s art, which is crisply comic book looking. I enjoy artists like Flanagan, Romita JR, and others who draw understanding these are comic books, they don’t need to look hyper-realistic. Comic book art is it’s own unique thing and sometimes the need for extreme realism robs us of that type of Jack Kirby comic book joy. I would also be remiss if I didn’t give a nod to colorist Art Lyon who brings the art off the page with a glorious color palette.
Overall Widening Gyre is entertaining and great to look at but falls short due to the dialog. A comic scriptwriter’s job is to incorporate the vast history of the character and then give it his own voice. However that doesn’t mean you reinvent whom the character is or put words into his mouth that sound completely unlike him or her. If Smith can tie the loose ends up and calm the dialog down I can see Widening Gyre shaping up to be a very cool and complex story.
