The three pages that make Hush almost worthwhile.

[btravage]

Comments

[james.huff.myopenid.com]

"The three pages that make Hush almost worthwhile."

Really? These are great pages, but Hush is one of my favorite Batman stories. Loeb's story really targeted and exploited all of the "modern" Batman's weaknesses in a way that Morrison's R.I.P. could only dream of, and Jim Lee's artwork was phenomenal.

[okkult3000]

"Loeb's story really targeted and exploited all of the "modern" Batman's weaknesses in a way that Morrison's R.I.P. could only dream of"

Explain please.

[jlroberson]

Oh good lord, are we going to get back into the RIP debate? (I rather enjoyed it myself, start your brickbats now)

[james.huff.myopenid.com]

I felt that he targeted Batman's solidarity as one of his greatest weaknesses. As a hero who is known for not trusting, Loeb managed to use trust itself to wear down Batman to the point of loss and confusion. In a sense, he used one of Batman's most closely guarded emotions to break him.

Here's a review that I did a long time ago: http://splashpanel.com/archives/batman-hush/

Now, there were definitely some short comings immediately after Hush.

1. Hush, the character - Loeb set this guy up with a lot of potential, including a very personal (and somewhat psychotic) grudge against Bruce Wayne/Batman. Now he's just your run-of-the-mill bad guy currently playing the "evil twin" card.

2. Jason Todd - This reveal could have gone on for years, slowly tearing away at Batman (and perhaps the rest of the Bat Family) with "Is he alive or not?" but instead they chose to pull the curtain back way too soon.

[jlroberson]

I was going to snark, but you're right, these pages are great. I still remember being utterly unimpressed by HUSH, though. But I tend to feel that way when I read Loeb. He lost me for good with ULTIMATUM, but I'm not alone in that.

[intertobamf]

He lost me for good with ULTIMATUM

It was "Public Enemies" that made me realize that he's a terrible writer. Then I went back and read Loeb's older works and realized they weren't that good, especially "Hush".

[omgwtflolbbqbye.livejournal.com]

I think "Heart of Hush" made "Hush" worthwhile.

[espanolbot]

This is true.

[stig]

Nothing will ever make Hush worthwhile. He's Batman's equivalent to the Sentry - dull in characterisation, worthless in terms of what you can do with him, shoe-horned into continuity, and any extra character development you try to add is just water off a duck's back. Loeb could only establish him as a villain by retconning him into Bruce's past (a lazy and incompetent move), and Dini could only fail to develop him further by trying to support him with stronger characters - again, lazily retconning him into the Scarecrow's past, making that cretinous female Ventriloquist his old girlfriend, and making him partially fridge Catwoman.

(Yes, yes, yes, Dini was obliged to make Selina get one over him by the end, but that was by no means a victory. The damage had already been done - i.e., Bruce had been forced to realise he loved Catwoman because a partially-insane moron and some drugged-up hobos had somehow performed successful heart removal surgery on her - and the ending just seemed like a petty revenge fantasy, making Selina seem hardly any better than Hush himself. Besides, it completely refuted the ending to her series, in that Pfeiffer's Catwoman run ended with her feeling stronger and independent, and Dini's Sirens begins with her thinking "A maniac briefly had possession of one of my organs...so I've lost all sense of self-dependence and must move in with two more maniacs for my own protection!". And, again, Hush's credibility is only built up through other characters rather than himself.)

[chipsnopotatoes]

"Besides, it completely refuted the ending to her series, in that Pfeiffer's Catwoman run ended with her feeling stronger and independent, and Dini's Sirens begins with her thinking "A maniac briefly had possession of one of my organs...so I've lost all sense of self-dependence and must move in with two more maniacs for my own protection!"."

In hindsight, that is the saddest part of Heart of Hush. I want Catwoman out of Sirens as of yesterday!

[thokstar]

worthless in terms of what you can do with him

Hush is possibly the only Bruce Wayne villain (in the sense that he's designed to go after Wayne rather than Batman.) Once you understand that, his skills and stories start writing themselves.

[sailorlibra]

Besides, it completely refuted the ending to her series, in that Pfeiffer's Catwoman run ended with her feeling stronger and independent,
The ending to Pfeiffer's Catwoman run was utter trash. He tore her down in almost every way possible, giving her a child with a random man, having her give up being Catwoman, having her give up her child. Then he introduced a conclusion in which she came to the realization that she had given up her child for selfish reasons and freaked out and stole Batman's car in an attempt to pretend that she was back to her old, undamaged self. That's not independence, that's pain.

and Dini's Sirens begins with her thinking "A maniac briefly had possession of one of my organs...so I've lost all sense of self-dependence and must move in with two more maniacs for my own protection!".
I agree with this completely. Sirens has been a serious disappointment, mainly because of Selina's dependence on two people who have been her villains in the past. It's Selina is not the strong, independent one I've been hoping for. However, the Selina in R.I.P. was quite good. I personally see her experience as a subverted fridging, since it bears all the hallmarks of one until the end.

You call it a petty revenge, but you're forgetting two things. One is that it's exactly like Selina to enact something like that. She reacts to being vulnerable by making her opponent vulnerable. See the Catwoman scene from this post for another example. Another, and more important point, is that the revenge was not petty at all. That revenge is the only thing that has ever hurt Hush. Every other member of the bat!family has failed to enact any permanent harm upon him. Selina, on the other hand, destroyed the only thing he had ever cared about, making her revenge quite significant to him.

The Sirens storyline does not work as a continuation of that story at all. R.I.P. ends with Selina establishing her dominance and independence again, whereas Sirens makes Selina more dependent than it's ever been in character for her to be. She doesn't even trust Bruce completely and he's more or less always had her back, but she trusts Harley and Ivy? One of whom attempting to brainwash her in a moment of weakness and the other who manipulated her during the Hush storyline? Oh hell no. There I agree with you.

[bj_l]

Jim Lee's watercolours are just gorgeous.

[zordboy]

My biggest problem with Hush was that he was so mind-numbingly unoriginal. It was like Loeb took all the best bits of all the major Bat-stories for the last decade, and mashed them all together. Batman versus Superman? That's a trope by now. Batman seriously injured so that Alfred has to wreck the Ferrari to fake Bruce Wayne's car accident? Did better in "Knightfall". Batman taking down that gang in issue one was was almost panel-for-panel for something Devin Grayson did (and did better) 12 months ago. The Joker randomly popping up to get almost beaten to death, again?

And, far more of a failing given the whodunnit nature of the mystery, was there anyone in the *world* who didn't have Tommy picked as the badguy from the get-go?

[sistermagpie]

All I'm going to say is wow, Thomas Wayne was a strict parent. You take two kids to a different city for a weekend and then NEVER let them leave the hotel room because they ran off down the street and came back when you told them to wait by the car? So there's basically no point in them even going?

[yaseen101]

The dialogue indicates that Martha wanted Bruce to go and asked him to take a friend along.

I'm more frustrated that this scene is basically *another* 'stuff I did before my parents were murdered' one.

[milleniumrex]

There have been a lot of flashback stories indicating that the late, sainted Thomas Wayne was actually quite the ass. I remember one Batman Chronicles story that pretty much showed that Alfred raised Bruce even before the Waynes were killed.

[retro_nouveau]

I liked the Hush story and loved the art so much that I bought the trade. I had problems with the story, but they weren't so huge that a truck could pass through. I will concede that Lee has a really bad monoface issues, but it's so damn good for me in all other ways.

I had to stop and think when Bruce and Tommy were talking about Alan Scott being from Gotham, like I could easily say that Jay Garrick is from Keystone. I like that the kids didn't know either, so I didn't have to feel quite so dumb this time. :)

[yaseen101]

Me too. I loved it when it first came out since I was just getting into comics. It's not a great mystery, no but it's entertaining and it's basically a nice romp through the Bat-verse; The Bat-Family for Beginners basically.

[3goodtimes]

What ruined Hush for me was the complete and utter lack of chemistry between Selina and Bruce. It seemed to pop out of nowhere despite their years of canon history. But it was also a lifeless sort of 'going through the motions' love story.

Tim was basically a cardboard Robin stand-in and Lois Lane was too blatantly sexual with Bruce.

I quite liked the flashbacks (beautifully drawn/colored) and Helena saving Batman though.

[3goodtimes]

That being said... it wasn't even close to the worst of recent Batman runs. It was just meh.

[jaybee3]

Now that you mention it since Hush (and prior to it) Lois has never been as touchy-feel and flirtatious as Bruce as she is in Hush. Maybe Loeb was trying to use some of the Superman Animated Series characterization where Lois was Bruce's love-interest for 3 episodes, although that type of relationship never existed between them in the comics. Even though he was the boss of the Daily Planet for awhile, Lois usually treats Bruce as "Clark's friend".

But I appreciated Hush for what it was - an excuse to look at pretty Jim Lee art as Jeph Loeb crams as many Batman villains in one-story as he possible can. It's the kind of story you give to introduce someone to Batman (unlike R.I.P.) but it has a ton of holes that make the experienced Bat-reader cringe (not the least of which is the Selina/Bruce relationship and the seeming ending thereof at the end of Hush - which Ed Brubaker basically ignored in the Catwoman series)

[sleepymax]

I actually like Hush too. Sadly, we never got anymore Jim Lee Nightwing after the story ended.

[flidgetjerome]

Yeah. These three pages made Hush worth it for me.

Though I was generally pretty annoyed that Tommy Elliot was Hush. You could see it coming a mile a way.

I was hoping the entire story they'd swerve and then establish him as part of the Batfamily's support staff. Leslie Thompkins is an awesome character but she's a general practitioner, not a surgeon, so it could have made it make sense.

[team_mummy]

All the water coloured bits in Hush were the greatest. This story is mostly special to me because it got me back into comics for life.
But yeah in retrospect I was really digging the mystery of who Hush was; first Clayface, then Jason Todd. But then you find out it's just some dewsh from Bruce's past. It was a fun ride tho