Home > Letters to CR
J. Caleb Mozzocco On Why Batman: Cacophony Is Its Own Series
posted November 22, 2008
Hi Tom. I just read the responses to your post about why the Kevin Smith Batman story is being published as a standalone mini that essentially competes with the three regular Batman books (DC's also publishing a year long, 12-part Steve Niles/Kelley Jones series, so I guess there's technically four Batman monthlies at the moment).
Given the draw Smith is, it's sort of odd that it's not being published in the regular Bat-books (The upcoming Neil Gaiman two-parter will run in an issue of
Batman and an issue of
Detective, so it's not like DC never publishes shorter arcs with big-name temporary creative teams inside the monthlies anymore), especially since one of their monthlies is specifically designed to feature continuity-light story arcs from temporary creative teams. Tom Bondurant mentioned it in his response;
Batman Confidential was canceled for low sales, instead of hosting this Smith story).
Anyway, one factor I didn't see mentioned was Smith's reputation for lateness (the years that passed between the first half and last half of his Spider-Man miniseries, the fact that he started a Dardevil miniseries and then never wrote a second issue).
By putting Smith on his own series, it doesn't really matter if the third issue materializes in 2010 or 2052 or never at all, whereas if the story were running in
Batman, DC would be in the weird position they were in recently with the Richard Donner/Adam Kubert
Action Comics and the What'shisfaceTVwriterguy's
Wonder Woman relaunch, where they have to choose between halting publication, or time-killing fill-ins or publishing issues out of order or just forgetting the last chapter and moving on with new stories.
Sorry, that was longer than it needed to be. Short version? DC knows Smith's story will probably be late/might never get done anyway, so a miniseries is "safer" than an ongoing. But they might have put it in a miniseries anyway, because they do that all the time for some reason.
