Streets of Gotham: How Thomas Wayne Met Martha Kane, Part 1

[espanolbot]

Trigger warning for classism and racism.
In this part of the series, Tommy Elliot, aka Hush, was still impersonating Bruce Wayne, but Alfred and the fairly large number of people who were friends of Bruce, such as Katana and Zatanna, acting as... a means of ensuring he doesn't go off the reservation and do evil while pretending to be Bruce.

He's moved out of Wayne Manor though, and back into his families' mansion where he finds something that fills in more information about his own parents, as well as her fascination with the Waynes. Tommy's mum continues to be positively charming.






Coincidentally, a former gangster by the name of Judson Pierce, the man who bankrupted Martha's family, has a grudge against the Waynes that started around around this time period 37 years before the present. He explains to a nephew of a college of his the point that not only marked a turning point in his life, but evidently one that would lead to Gotham as a whole changing forever...





Back with Hush again, and Alfred has noticed how the supervillain has started to become restless again. So he assigns Zatanna to be his watcher, as she's more confident in the spotlight of the media event that she and Tommy are attending than his usual guard, Katana. And we once again get to see that Tommy picked up his mother's charm.




The next part, Thomas comes to apologise, the nephew remembers the time his uncle met the Joker, and how Sal and Pierce changed Gotham for years to come.

Comments

[jaybee3]

I really likes this story (and most of Dini's Streets of Gotham). I just wish it hadn't been accompanied by one of the dumbest plots in recent Bat-history - the whole Hush having perfect plastic surgery to look like Bruce Wayne and giving his millions (including a billion a month!) and Dick and Alfred actually going along with it (albeit under their control). It was a story that transparently made to explain away why nobody was concerned about "Bruce Wayne" when Batman died (so much so that Dini wrapped it up like yesterday's fish when Bruce turned up) and was also contradictory - Hush was supposed to be guarded 24/7 yet he was OK to go on a date (alone!) with Vicki Vale (who Alfred knew was onto Bruce being Batman and had been intimate with Bruce and knew Hush wasn't him), they let him live in the old Elliot mansion for awhile and he even was able to knock out Katana and others. Not getting into the tastelessness (as I saw it) of two of Bruce's former mind-wipers (Black Canary and Zatanna) playing the role of perpetuating this farce and further insulting Bruce's memory (as they saw it) by being taking part or of Alfred and Dick perpetuating literal legal fraud on the stockholders of Wayne Enterprises (and as we learned later Bruce had left his control of WE to Tim so Alfred and Dick were out of bounds). And they never said how long they were going to let Hush act as "Bruce" - indefinitely. They were certainly not talking about stopping it when Bruce came back - and we never got to see Bruce's reaction to whole plot either. Hush was skinned by Jane Doe and sent away but we never saw what Bruce thought of it (his friends/family letting the man who tried to destroy him, who killed Harold and who cut out Selina's heart act as him and give away Wayne money) - especially since he had outright told Zatanna for stay out of his business pre-death.

I wish the whole Thomas/Martha flashbacks had been part of another story.

[sailorlibra]

Yeah, I definitely agree.

[espanolbot]

He wasn't able to knock out Katana, as far as I'm aware. He did have a daydream where he murdered her and Bruce's other friends (interestingly he considered Katana to be the most dangerous out of a group that contained Zatanna, Metamorpho and the Creeper) but that was as far as he got.

And I think that the Vicky Vale date probably had several guards around in disguise to make sure he didn't get up to mischief.

[jaybee3]

Still the whole storyline was ridiculous (to the point of being lampshaded by how quickly Dini wrapped it up and forgot about it once Bruce was actually back). How long did they actually intend to let Hush pose as Bruce and give away his money, how long were his friends intend to take turns guarding Hush, did they actually think they were honoring his memory by doing this (to me it was rather the opposite considering all that Hush had done to Bruce). And then when Bruce did come back he literally had no comment on the whole thing.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Katana was probably the only one watching him that was willing to kill him without a moment's hesitation. So I can see why Hush would consider her the most dangerous one.

[ghosty732]

Dini and Nguyen are one of my favourite pairs for Detective Comics, but I never got into Streets of Gotham. I'm picking House of Hush up when it comes out in soft cover in a few months, is it any good?

[kamino_neko]

Yes. Very yes. Despite being all...Hushy, it's very good, just for the Thomas/Martha bits. (And Alfred.)

[thosefew]

Does classism normally get a trigger warning? I understand racism getting one, but the bulk of the Court of Owls story has classist tones and I don't recall trigger warnings there.

Sorry if this is off-topic.

[salinea]

Probably not unless a poster tells us they'd want us to use one.

[eyz]

I just <3 Nguyen's art so much!!! :D

[mrstatham]

Can Nguyen draw Zatanna more often please? Can we have him and Dini doing a new Zatanna series in the DCnU? That would be nice.

[damar148]

I never liked Hush, and especially not when he's constant silently insulting everyone he sees. That isn't an trait of a villain, that's a trait of a pathetic loser.

Red Skull hates everyone, but he's doing it out of a sincere belief he is superior to all, while Hush here comes over as this extremely petty douchebag who's all bark but no bite.

[espanolbot]

That's kind of the point though, it's meant to demonstrate that despite all of his posturing and reputation as being The AntiBatman or Batman's One True Foe... he's actually just something of a sociopathic snob with an entitlement complex and massive issues with his mother

Due to the lackluster characterisation of Hush prior to Dini getting a hold of him, he didn't really have much of a personality as they didn't seem to know who he even was for a significant time. Was he Elliot? Was he Jason Todd? Was he both?

With the Dini retcons, we at least get an explanation why he disliked Bruce so much and why he attempted to murder his own parents, besides the flat explanation of "I'm AntiBatman, so rather than my parents being murdered by a criminal, I WAS THE ONE THAT KILLED 'EM! MWHAHAHA!".

The Dini one has an actual understandable personality and motivations, which the previous version didn't. This isn't the same as his personality being a likeable one, but it's better than him being just generically evil, just 'case.

[shadowpsykie]

oh i agree. i kinda liked this about him. really he was just a snob with delusions of grandeur and Bruce wayne envy

[icon_uk]

Wasn't the eventual reveal that Hush was, technically, the Riddler all along? (With Elliott/Hush as more or less a distraction/stooge)

[espanolbot]

Pretty much.

For such a popular Batman story Hush... wasn't really that good.

[icon_uk]

Oh I thought it was bollocks from the outset, so painfully contrived as to be unreadable, and the Jim Lee's art didn't impress me one iota.

But for the Hush character to be treated as a major recurring threat, when he was never more than a pawn in the much lauded introductory maxi-story NAMED for him.. that's just sad.

[espanolbot]

It kind of struck me that it had the same kind of problem as Amazons Attack, Countdown and a large amount of the reboot. In they had people who weren't really that great at plotting writing stories while at the same time publicising the heck out of it to the point that people kind of get swept up in it.

I mean, there are good parts of it, Selina and Bruce getting together in a more official capacity which was that carried on in later stories, be really it seemed to be more of an exercise to fit as many Bat Characters into the story as possible, including Harold the Hunchback.

Oddly no Spoiler nor Batgirl though, but I think that was more the choice of Jeph Loeb more than anything. As he decided to use Barbara as Batgirl in his Supergirl run instead (it was Clayface in disguise, which then asks the question of why didn't he have updated information about the new Batgirl?), while the only time he actually used Cass (no Steph) was in his Batman/Superman storyline, where he had Lex Luthor gas her and hit her in the face with no actual effort.

[jaybee3]

Technically Dini himself plotted Countdown (he even said in the beginning he had written a whole story bible detailing the plot points) but given how Countdown turned out (and Dini himself has never brought up since) I have my doubts about that. Amazons Attacks, Countdown and the new reboot all share one singular thing in common - they seem to have been entirely thought out by Editorial (Didio, Berganza, Harras) and then given the writers as a fait accompli (this was certainly the case with Amazons Attacks whose writer Will Pfeiffer said as much). When you have that much interference in the story process and the writers are reduced to just adding bits of dialogue, the story is (more often than not) not any good.

[icon_uk]

Also, whilst I agree that this Hush has more character, he doesn't strike me as being in any way more interesting as a result. It's like a sort of trompe l'oiel, giving an illusion of delth and substance when there is now.

[moetushie]

Hey, isn't this the story that gave the origin of the Joker -- as the little kid who hung around Leslie's clinic? I remember being very upset at the implications of it, tbh.

[blackruzsa]

I enjoyed Streets of Gotham, and this bit of Hush seems pretty interesting. I guess Nguyen art makes it twice as appealing, idk.

I fully support the posting of these arcs :3