A review by lordenglishssbm
Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb
2.0
Hush feels like an essentially random series of events loosely held together by an admittedly somewhat interesting framing device. It's a trick Loeb pulled before, and one I liked when he did it in The Long Halloween, but the difference is that arc is a bit more cohesive, tonally and in terms of what its framing device leads its characters toward.
Long Halloween is fundamentally a mob story, and while Batman spends individual issues fighting a villain picked at random from his rogues gallery, the action is at least kept to the street level and the cast of characters never grows so big that it becomes hard to focus on the narrative underpinning it. Hush, on the other hand, is a story about someone trying to kill Bruce Wayne that spans two different cities and involves half the major figures in the DC Universe (including current president of the United States Lex Luthor, because DC comics are weird and comics continuity was a mistake. It's worth noting here that Last Halloween remains relatively detached from canon and can be read with relative ease as a standalone).
Like, I understand that this isn't an academic complaint, but Batman fights Superman one third of the way through this series, and the fight lasts less than an issue, and it only happens because Poison Ivy is controlling him, and all of that just feels viscerally wrong. Nightwing and Huntress and the Scarecrow and Clayface all appear and all of them take center stage for at least a bit, and their motivations and personalities are treated as important to the story, and the effect is just disorienting to anyone who hasn't read the comics, even though the narration spends time informing the reader of everything that has transpired in previous series. I played the first two Arkham Games, which at least gave me a good idea of who was whom, and clued me in to the character motifs that foreshadow certain plot points. I can't imagine what the experience would be like for a newcomer, and no, I don't think knowing who Batman is will cut it.
The part of the story exploring Batman's relationship with Catwoman was legitimately well-written, but it feels like such a minor part of the story rather than the main narrative thrust because so much of the story's energy is spent on fight scenes with characters whose presence feels incidental, even as the moment-to-moment action requires we know who they are and what they want. The fights are fun for a bit, but the stakes usually aren't there, and when you're fighting a different guy every issue it's hard to become invested in any specific rivalry (particularly because the main character has already fought Superman), which doesn't matter so much when the action is just allowed to flow but does matter when the fight scenes get a bit dialogue-heavy.
It really does feel like watching one of the later Marvel movies: There are a hundred characters running around and you might know half of them because you're not interested in watching every single superhero movie that came out over the past decade. If nothing else, Hush demonstrates the problem with forcing legitimately skilled writers (again, I like The Long Halloween) to function in a system that forces them to spend half of their stories trying to drive up sales for other stories. Even if Loeb had pulled it off, it wouldn't have been better for having to work under these constraints. I don't even blame Loeb for this; Had I written this story it would have been just as bad, and for pretty much the same reasons. The one thing I think Loeb could probably have done better is that the reveal of the killer's identity feels predictable and anti-climactic, and the twist that follows isn't much better, in part because it implicates a character who is relevant to the larger Batman mythology but is a bit player here until the very end.
I hate comics continuity.
The art is fine. It handles motion well and comes alive during the fight scenes, though the way it frames its female characters serves as a constant, nagging reminder that this series was written for teenage boys.
Long Halloween is fundamentally a mob story, and while Batman spends individual issues fighting a villain picked at random from his rogues gallery, the action is at least kept to the street level and the cast of characters never grows so big that it becomes hard to focus on the narrative underpinning it. Hush, on the other hand, is a story about someone trying to kill Bruce Wayne that spans two different cities and involves half the major figures in the DC Universe (including current president of the United States Lex Luthor, because DC comics are weird and comics continuity was a mistake. It's worth noting here that Last Halloween remains relatively detached from canon and can be read with relative ease as a standalone).
Like, I understand that this isn't an academic complaint, but Batman fights Superman one third of the way through this series, and the fight lasts less than an issue, and it only happens because Poison Ivy is controlling him, and all of that just feels viscerally wrong. Nightwing and Huntress and the Scarecrow and Clayface all appear and all of them take center stage for at least a bit, and their motivations and personalities are treated as important to the story, and the effect is just disorienting to anyone who hasn't read the comics, even though the narration spends time informing the reader of everything that has transpired in previous series. I played the first two Arkham Games, which at least gave me a good idea of who was whom, and clued me in to the character motifs that foreshadow certain plot points. I can't imagine what the experience would be like for a newcomer, and no, I don't think knowing who Batman is will cut it.
The part of the story exploring Batman's relationship with Catwoman was legitimately well-written, but it feels like such a minor part of the story rather than the main narrative thrust because so much of the story's energy is spent on fight scenes with characters whose presence feels incidental, even as the moment-to-moment action requires we know who they are and what they want. The fights are fun for a bit, but the stakes usually aren't there, and when you're fighting a different guy every issue it's hard to become invested in any specific rivalry (particularly because the main character has already fought Superman), which doesn't matter so much when the action is just allowed to flow but does matter when the fight scenes get a bit dialogue-heavy.
It really does feel like watching one of the later Marvel movies: There are a hundred characters running around and you might know half of them because you're not interested in watching every single superhero movie that came out over the past decade. If nothing else, Hush demonstrates the problem with forcing legitimately skilled writers (again, I like The Long Halloween) to function in a system that forces them to spend half of their stories trying to drive up sales for other stories. Even if Loeb had pulled it off, it wouldn't have been better for having to work under these constraints. I don't even blame Loeb for this; Had I written this story it would have been just as bad, and for pretty much the same reasons. The one thing I think Loeb could probably have done better is that the reveal of the killer's identity feels predictable and anti-climactic, and the twist that follows isn't much better, in part because it implicates a character who is relevant to the larger Batman mythology but is a bit player here until the very end.
I hate comics continuity.
The art is fine. It handles motion well and comes alive during the fight scenes, though the way it frames its female characters serves as a constant, nagging reminder that this series was written for teenage boys.