Kevin Smith is a film-maker and self avowed comic fan. He has written several Clerks comics and some mainstream comic works. As far as I am aware, his mainstream works are a run on Daredevil called Guardian Devil, two story lines for Green Arrow and two Batman mini-series. I've already written a review for Guardian Devil which was under-whelming at best. I recently read all six issues of his new Batman mini-series The Widening Gyre, and I must say I officially have zero respect for Smith as a writer of comics. To put it mildly, Batman: The Widening Gyre is garbage.
To start with, we'll go over the good. Because nothing is all bad. The covers are very evocative. A sort of Gothic Batman image, an invitation to a journey into horror and macabre, especially the cover to the first issue with prominent Goat's head. The "story" itself is completely not anything the cover would imply, but that's probably more the editors fault than anything.
Some of the humor works. There are some genuine funny moments between Bruce and Dick and Bruce and Tim. I liked the artist's depiction of a shirtless Bruce as being gruesomely covered in scars.
Now on to the rest of it. Having read the whole series it is safe to say there really is no story. This is apparently Volume 1, will Volume 2 develop a story? I suppose it's possible, but I'm not holding out much hope. The only purpose of all six issues is seemingly so Smith can take us to his twist ending, up to that point a good 80% of everything is filler. Smith throws in as much random crap as he can think up to try and make us a feel a passage of time, to get that big shocker ending. This fails, utterly, but we'll get to that later.
For an example of a comic consisting almost entirely of filler, we turn to the first issue. We start with a flashback of Dick and Bruce fighting Baron Blitzkreig and the Atomic Skull inside a synagogue. There is some very out of character narration where Batman refers to the Atomic Skull as a loser. To quote: "But Skull is so inept, you almost feel bad for him." I'm not sure what depiction of Batman "almost" feels bad for criminals that don't successfully commit crimes, but it's none that I'm familiar with. This is the same kind of dialog found in Guardian Devil, where self-aware superheroes and supervillians diss on each other for being third stringers and C-grades. In other words, Kevin Smith can't not write like Kevin Smith, even his superheroes talk like self aware comic book nerds.
Anyway, back to the filler. Bruce and Dick defeat the two bad guys, then we flash forward to Bruce and Dick (this time as Nightwing) defeating someone else in the Baron Blitzkreig armor. At this point you might be thinking: A story about Baron Blitzkreig? Batman fights white supremacists? Nope, it's just filler. Keep moving.
Bruce investigates a person who died with sprouts all over themselves by going to check on Poison Ivy. We find that Poison Ivy has covered Arkham with plants to try and barricade herself in, because Etrigan is trying to kill her. Why she thought plants were a good defense against someone who can breathe fire, I have no idea. At this point, a reader might think: A story about Poison Ivy and Etrigan? Nope. The whole thing is to build to Batman being rescued by a new character, the guy with a goat head on the cover. He shows up on the last 3 pages. That's the only thing that any of this contributes to the plot. So why in God's name didn't we just meet the new guy within the first five pages and skip the rest of these heavily narrated random Batman fights? I have no idea. Like I said, it's filler. All but the last three pages.
The rest of the series keeps with the same shtick. There are only two plot elements that go anywhere: the re-introduction of 60's/70's love interest Silver St. Cloud and the new guy with the goat head. Because these are the only two things that consistently appear, we the reader realize this almost immediately. Instead of focusing on these two elements however, we get lots of filler of Batman beating up on random villains in between returns to Silver and Goat-Head. The whole six issues could easily be cut to maybe three issues of story, and even that is a bit generous.
Moving on to what "story" there is, we have Goat-Head and Silver St. Cloud. Batman proposes to Silver. Immediately, two thoughts occur to me: either she dies or turns out to be evil trying to destroy Batman. You and I both know Batman is not really going to get married, period. So instead of falling for Batman and his happy romance, I'm just turning the pages waiting for Silver to report to a shadowy overlord or an anvil to fall on her head. Because that's how bad comics are written. Similarly for Goat-Head, either Smith just thought it would be nifty to come up with a new good guy and throw him into the Bat-family, or, more likely, there is a twist with this character. A mystery to be solved. So again, I keep turning pages, wading through filler waiting for the inevitable answer. (speaking of filler, Smith sees fit to include Fun Land, a serial killer from the serial killer convention from Sandman as a "filler villain." Why? I have no idea, but Neil Gaiman should punch him in the face for it.)
And then the ending, which Smith has (apparently, I haven't listened to it) said the likes of which have never been seen before in Bat comics. Um, sure. Bruce invited Goat-Head to the Batcave and reveals his secret identity. To some guy he's know for what? A few weeks. When did Batman suffer brain damage? Is any super hero that stupid? Nonetheless the Dark Knight of Serious Logic himself? At this point Goat-Head turns out to be Smith's pet villain Onomatopoeia and slits Silver's throat. *yawn*
After I finished not being impressed by the totally shocking ending, the implications of all this occurred to me. So we're supposed to believe that this pet villain of Smith's constructed a cover story so great the World's Greatest Detective couldn't figure it out? He is such a great actor that the World's Greatest Detective couldn't see his through ruse? No one even suspected? Again, any superhero would have to be stupid to fall for this, but it's even more out of character for Batman, who is consistently been written as some kind of genius. I guess Smith just amuses himself by coming up with Gary Stu villains and having them outsmart more popular characters, and sadly DC editorial indulges him in this.
The ending itself, Silver's throat being graphically slit, doesn't bother me for the blood, but there does seem to be a bothering thread of misogyny. Out of four mainstream comic works, two out of them have the main character's girlfriend's being murdered as a plot point. Is that his only idea for a superhero story? I can imagine the pitch session:
"I've got an idea for a Batman story: get this, Bats gets a girlfriend...and then someone kills her! Oh, don't like that? I've got a great Superman story here. This will blow your mind: someone kills Lois Lane! Awesome, huh? Still not buying? How about someone kills Aquaman's wife? Or Sinestro kills Carol Ferris? Aren't I a genius?"
If DC asked him to write a Wonder Woman story God knows how confused he'd be.
If that were all the bad parts it would be a bad story, but to be truly awful there has to be more terrible, and there is.
His characterization of Catwoman is awful. And I mean, really really awful. Catwoman breaks down into tears twice during her scant three appearances. She comes pawing after Batman like a love sick puppy when she finds out he is seeing someone and then again when he gets engaged. Someone who has hundreds of solo issues to their credit acts like a 14 year old schoolgirl that's going to go home and totally rip up all the Batman posters on their bedroom wall.
There's more. Bad dialog, for example. Stuff like this:
That's Silver St. Cloud making a goofy face. I guess it's supposed to be funny. Hard to say.
If you are truly curious, download it off of a torrent, but please, for the love of god, don't pay your hard earned money for it. There is supposed to be six more issues of this, but after Silver is dead and Batman is face to face with the villain I have no idea what the next six issues are supposed to contain, because, as I said above, there is basically no story.
P.S. I was not familiar with the title and looked it up on wikipedia. The Widening Gyre refers to the coming of a dark apocalyptic event, which as far as I can tell relates not a whit to this mini-series, unless that event is the foregone conclusion of Silver being put in a refrigerator.
