Comics – Batman: Hush Vol 1 & 2

Hush Vol 1: Collects Batman #608 – #612 

Hush Vol 2: Collects Batman #613 – #619 

  

I have to confess that I picked these 2 trades up because of Jim Lee. He is probably my favourite penciller since I saw his work on the first few issues of X-Men. If someone could draw Wolverine in that brown costume so menacingly, it was Jim Lee! So with a knockout combo of Batman and Jim Lee, it was a no-brainer to pick this up!

Being out of touch with comics for many years, I had forgotten how Catwoman looked like in the comics. The only Catwoman I remembered was Michelle Pfeiffer’s. Seeing Catwoman in the opening pages of volume 1 made me understand why Takara’s CG Catwoman had those goggles! Now it made me want to get that figure!

Hush is a conspiracy story that has a mysterious villain manipulating many characters in an elaborate scheme of revenge. I mean, you have Ra’s, Superman, Joker, Poison Ivy, Huntress, Riddler, Killer Croc, Catwoman, Scarecrow and Robin all mixed into this story. It was good to see the Gotham detective solving mysteries again.

However, the story wasn’t that riveting. It just did not leave a deep impression on me. I could see where they were going with this story mid-way through volume 2. The idea was… if you have the muscles, you kidnap… if you have the charms, you influence so-and-so’s mind to make a twist in the plot… if you have a reputation to murder, murder… if you cause hallucination, cause hallucination to have a fighting scene between the good guys.

Ironically, in their efforts to use different characters to throw the reader off the identity of Hush, they created similar plots. Good guys fight among each other because one of them had been mentally influenced. This happened twice. Is there no other way to make the good guys trade blows?

Another similarity would be the same villain at one point make someone seem dead. And later, he uses his power to make someone who’s dead alive!

But I loved the art.

I will avoid going more into the story because of potential spoilers.

Reading the story was a made a greater pleasure because of the beautiful pencils of Jim Lee. I loved the way he made characters look so damn good!

Did I mention that Todd McFarlane was one of my favourites too?