The name “Kevin Smith” is bound to get a reaction from virtually any comics reader. Whether you love his work, or hate his tardyness, you can’t deny that he’s a polarising figure in the industry. After much-celebrated runs on Daredevil and Green Arrow, Smith seemed to bow out of comics after limping out the end of his Spider-Man/Black Cat miniseries, leaving Daredevil: Target entirely unfinished. A brief return to write a Clerks 2 tie-in aside, it seemed as though his comics career had come to an end.

So, when Batman: Cacophony was announced at a convention earlier this year accompanied by the presentation of 2 completed scripts, there was considerable surprise. Whether Smith’s star-power has dried up remains to be seen, but for some of us, Kevin Smith writing one of the industry’s biggest characters definitely warrants a look.

The series features a new villain of Smith’s own creation, and unfortunately, that’s the weakest element of the issue. The painfully-nomenclatured “Onomatopoieia” emulates the literary device of the same name, speaking in sound-effects, and otherwise, seems to act as a hired killer. His presence in the book is enigmatic, but uninteresting.

However, beyond that, the series actually looks quite entertaining. The joker features heavily - far more so than Batman, in this issue at least - and as you might expect, Smith really goes to town on the dialogue, cramming in enjoyable speeches for his (quite cartoonish) version of the villain, though every character has their moment.

The art comes from Smith’s longtime friend, Walt Flanagan. While this seems like a suspicious choice, when you hear it, it’s clear that Flanagan has the chops to succeed as a comic artist. He’s not as A-list as some of Smith’s previous collaborators, but he gets the job done in a fluid, cartoonish style which suits Smith’s Joker well, if not necessarily the rest of the characters. The only moment it really fails is when the script takes a fairly dark turn, and the art can’t really convey the twisted horror of the moment fully due to Flanagan’s limitations, but there’s definite potential here, and if the series shows anything it’s that he’s an artist with a future ahead of him.

While it has its high and low points, the appeal of Batman: Cacophony does ultimately rely on Smith himself. Divorced from Smith’s name, it becomes a fairly generic Batman story with some odd characteristics, and is really only elevated by its association with the movie-maker. For some, like me, that’ll mean you generally enjoy it. If you’re less interested in the cult of Kevin Smith, then you’ll probably find its weaker moments much harder to forgive.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

Maximum Security had the dubious honour of being Marvel’s first big crossover following Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, at a time when crossovers were considered one of the industry’s most deadly poisons. It was masterminded by Kurt Busiek, who was the writer of Avengers at the time, and unusually for Marvel, the crossover didn’t wind from issue to issue of existing series, but rather took place in a single “parent” series.

This was a remarkably DC-like approach which has become commonplace, but for the time it was a decidedly different matter, and a deliberate attempt at making crossovers viable again after much negative feedback over how they operated in the 90s. While Marvel’s other titles did tie in - often for just one issue - the main story played out entirely in the miniseries, which itself was only 3 issues long, and released over 2 months. Clearly, Marvel were being cautious.

The story saw Marvel’s various alien races clubbing together to decide that Earth was too much of a threat, and deciding to dump all of its criminals on the planet to keep them busy. Not a bad concept in theory, but it was unfortunate that it relied on some of Marvel’s niche-appeal cosmic properties to retain interest. Most of the tie-ins simply involved the title character fighting a loosely-affiliated alien from the backwaters of Marvel continuity. It’s fair to say that the crossover, while not hated, is at best barely remembered.

The first issue may have telegraphed the eventual reception. It featured a radically re-designed US Agent, who resembled Judge Dredd, and the main villains were revealed as Ronan the Accuser and Ego, the Living Planet. None of these characters are especially A-List, and while the idea of earth being transformed into the new host for Ego is a nice threat, there was never any serious suggestion it would succeed - and indeed, ultimately only succeeded in causing grief for, er, Quasar.

Between Jerry Ordway’s art and Busiek’s writing, the issue does have quite an old-school superheroics feel to it, and Busiek’s Avengers run always had the benefit of feeling quite timeless. This series didn’t really bring out the best in either, though, and they both seem to struggle with such a massive cast. USAgent is a poor lead, too, for someone like Busiek whose slightly wistful, nostalgic style can’t really portray brutalist nutcases very well.

It’s worth remembering that all of this cosmic stuff was happening at a time when cosmic titles were the least popular they’ve ever been. Perhaps it was an attempt to revive them, but in retrospect, it was a failed one - the Annihilation crossover was far more successful.

Brian Reed’s Ms. Marvel series recently became an unfortunate casualty of the global economic slowdown, as it became prudent to drop the title from my pull-list rather than endure a multi-issue arc about Carol’s past that I had no interest in. Still, it was an entertaining series for a while, and I’m still interested in both the character and Brian Reed’s writing, so when the opportunity came up to read a one-shot story which sequelises a nice little Ms. Marvel Special released a year or two ago, I gave it a go.

The story features the return of Gavin, a child created by AIM to have the same reality-warping powers as the scarlet witch. Now in control of his powers, he’s going wild with them in a similar fashion to the Twilight Zone’s “It’s a wonderful life” where his captive friend has no choice but to go along with his illusions. Ms. Marvel gets wind of all this, and goes to sort him out. It’s a pretty standard story, and like the original special, there’s never any real indication given as to why this one is a one-shot rather than an issue of the proper series.

The art on this issue is by Giuseppe Camuncali, and it’s largely disappointing when compared to the standard, superhero fare of the Ms. Marvel solo title. His figures are distorted and ugly, and overall the art just has the wrong tone for superheroics. It could work well in other contexts, but it’s just not right for Ms. Marvel. The colouring and inking also seem a little sub-par, and the pallette seems almost a little too washed-out for the kind of vivid cartoonish images being presented.

In fairness, there’s nothing offensively bad about the comic - it’s just that when you come out of it, you’re going to be left wondering what the point of it is. The cliffhanger ending means that if they do any more issues, it’ll simply be the world’s slowest miniseries. If they fold it into the main title, you’ll wonder why the instalments weren’t always there to begin with. And if the character of Gavin never appears again, well, no story has been told - and that’s what’s the major crime here.

Over the years, there have been so many comics featuring Spider-Man, so many featuring the X-Men, and so many featuring both, that it’s hard to get hugely excited about yet another crossover miniseries. Certainly, at first glance, there’s little to make you suspect that X-Men/Spider-Man (can’t they come up with some more distinctive titles for these, by the way?) will be any different. Christos Gage at least comes up with a hook for it – four issues hopping between different eras in Marvel history – although even that feels a little tired nowadays, “retro” being one of the company’s favoured tropes right now (we’re barely past the end of 1985, after all).

To be fair to Gage, he instills a good sense of nostalgic fun to proceedings – it feels like exactly the sort of thing the “Brain Trust” have been aiming for in Amazing, further strengthening the argument that if they wanted to live in the past, they should have just bloody wound the clock back – although I strongly doubt that anyone likely to pick this up is in need of quite the amount of exposition given in the early pages. It’s enough to know that Gwen Stacy’s still alive, we don’t need a whole page of Peter agonising about his double life and telling us that “the police and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms”. Nor do we really need him to be quite so heavy-handed with the foreshadowing – Gwen sitting in front of a certain bridge, J. Jonah Jameson calling for “some form of registration, perhaps”.

But it’s got a light, fun air about it, and the X-Men scenes are fairly strong (but then, I’ve always had a soft spot for the dynamic of that original Lee/Kirby lineup). The story’s pretty inconsequential – oh, look, it’s Kraven the Hunter – and despite the introduction of a surprising figure in the closing pages, suffers from the fact that you can never do anything major with these characters when you know how things are going to turn out in the long run. All of this points to a fairly passable series, which would be enjoyable enough if you chose to read it, but no loss whatsoever if you gave it a miss. At least, it would be, were it not for the artwork.

Mario Alberti is a name that’s new to me, and I understand that this is in fact his first major American comics work. In which case, I have to offer a hearty handshake to whichever Marvel hotshot got their hands on the Italian, because he’s one hell of a find. Melding a Milo Manara-esque European romance style with a clear sense of the basics of classical American storytelling, it’s a visual feast. The self-coloured job absolutely leaps off the page – it’s a stark contrast to the muddy colours blighting the likes of Ultimatum, instead looking more similar to the style of Paul Cornell’s Fantastic Four : True Story; but where Horacio Domingues’ panels felt over-packed and unclear there, this is vibrant and dynamic.

His character design, too, is excellent. There’s more than a hint of Tim Sale about his Peter and Kraven, while Spidey in costume swings and contorts through the air just as he’s supposed to (the bottom half of the third page is a particularly arresting image). What really jumps out, however, are his women. In a way that couldn’t be further removed from the likes of Ian Churchill and Greg Land, his Mary Jane, Gwen and Jean are beautiful in an entirely realistic and non-gratuitous way (and actually look, you know, different to one-another facially). If there’s a criticism, it’s that he doesn’t quite get some of the action beats as fluid as they should be – we’re not talking recent Chris Bachalo territory, but it’s a little slow to pick up everything that’s happening in what should be a quick action scene. But it’s a minor quibble when you consider the way the book looks, and it really is an absolutely terrific debut.

It’s rare that I recommend (or even buy) books solely for the artwork – after all, Frank Quitely tends to draw stuff written by the best – although JRJr was admittedly the catalyst for my finally starting to buy Amazing again recently. Alberti’s work here, though, elevates a charming enough but ultimately rather pointless-feeling nostalgia romp to one of the best-looking comics I’ve seen Marvel put out in a long time – and as the beginning of a potentially very exciting career in the American industry, it’s well worth getting onboard now.

This week: Reviews of Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #1, Invincible Iron Man #7, Iron Man: The End and Wolverine: Chop Shop.

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This is easily the weakest issue of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s Authority, but paradoxically give renewed hope for the series as whole. While the main story is an inconsequential run-around, the cliff-hanger revelation underlines both the creative team’s understanding of the book they inherited and how to tell a story in this unusual setting.

With Swift cornered by the remains of the British military, much of the issue is devoted to showing the Engineer’s ongoing scavenging in the derelict Carrier. There’s little character progression here aside from a brief moment of resolve by Jack Hawksmoor, and the re-cycling of the Warhol Virus from the first issue adds to the feeling that the action outside of Rendlesham is merely padding. Simon Coleby deserves credit for keeping to a monthly schedule with no sign of a dip in quality, but not even he can make Angie’s temporary opponent a source of interest. The end of the issue, however, takes a sharp turn leftfield, adding some much-needed intrigue to the post-apocalyptic world. The inclusion of an extra-dimensional “Door” in the final splash page is a sensible inclusion, given that some readers may not immediately recognise the figure revealed.

Given that successive writers have strip-mined Warren Ellis’s twelve issues on the title, it’s odd that the most perfect concept for further exploration has been ignored until now. First Mark Miller seized on the Jenny Quantum thread, before Winter was prised out of the sun by Robbie Morrison and Ed Brubaker built an entire maxi-series out of Henry Bendix’s temporary resurrection. Since Grant Morrison brought back Kaizen Gamorra in the pages of Wildcats, he’s become one of the Wildstorm universe’s foremost villains. Until now, however, Sliding Albion has been left untouched. The psuedo-British imperial aliens featured in Ellis’s second arc, before being dealt a heavy blow at the hands of Jenny Sparks and the Doctor. Their inclusion here makes perfect sense, with the Wildstorm Earth being exactly the sort of weakened target that would attack their attention, but more importantly, the concept itself still crackles with potential. It seems likely that Albion will be the permanent opposition in the book, providing structure to the threats to the team’s protectorate. Although the amount of plot filler in this instalment rankles, it’s hard not to look forward to the next issue.