Comic book fans are well acquainted with Kevin Smith. His films “Mallrats” and “Chasing Amy” contained oodles of great riffs on classic characters, and just about every year he stops in for wildly popular Q&A’s at the San Diego Comic-Con.

In 1998, Joe Quesada hired him to revive Daredevil, resulting in a popular run that re-established the character and led to mammoth, defining runs from Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker and opening the doors to let Hollywood writers such as Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski to get runs on major comic characters. After acclaimed runs on Daredevil and Green Arrow, Smith became notorious for delays on his other comic book projects, one of which was delayed so long after only its first issue that it was finally canceled years later. But hot of the heels of one of his finest movies, Smith is back in the comic book world with a promising new miniseries, Batman: Cacophony.

*Minor spoilers after the break*

Cacophony is a wet dream collection of characters, from the Joker to Zsasz to Deadshot to Smith’s own mystery villain Onomatopoeia. Leave it to the King of Comic-Con to so thoroughly geek-out with the bad guys. The issue opens with Deadshot breaking the Joker out of Arkham Asylum in order to kill him. But nothing is ever simple in comics, and soon Onomatopoeia jons the fray with his own plans for the Clown Prince of Crime.

The main plot of the issue- and possibly of the miniseries- is a war between The Joker and Maxie Zeus. Zeus found a stockpile of the Joker’s deadly laughing gas and converted it into a strong narcotic. This enrages the Joker, who feels that simply crippling Gotham with addiction isn’t nearly as fun as killing, and he sets out to get even.

Smith is clearly having a lot of fun with the crazier side of things. Batman first appears tracking down Zsasz, who jitters paranoid ramblings as he corners his next victims. The Joker expresses a desire to violate Batman’s corpse, and he cracks dark jokes throughout. Batman is a little off, but then he’s not so present in this first installment; it’s about the villains, baby.

The biggest surprise of the issue is the fantastic artwork from Smith’s close friend Walt Flanagan, who uttered the immortal line “Tell ‘em, Steve-Dave” in Mallrats. Flanagan, who also runs Smith’s comic book store in New Jersey, is the man who got Smith into comics in the first place, so it’s no surprise that he’s tagging along this time. He gives the characters a warped feel to match the insanity of the characters; Zsasz in particular looks eerily like the Sandman version of Doctor Destiny.

Overall, this is a fun issue, but for such a short arc, it takes its sweet time getting to the point. There’s too little Batman, but the villains fill the void nicely. The artwork is great, and the pitch-black dialogue will make you consult a therapist for finding it so funny. Here’s hoping there are no delays on the other two issues.