Batman: Hush
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Artist: Jim Lee
Many Memorable Moments, and the Greatest Comic Artwork Ever!
Ranking: 5 stars
From the criticism that I've heard about Jeph Loeb I was afraid that his writing would be cheap and cheesy, but it's actually very complex, thrilling, and challenging to understand sometimes (not in a bad way, but the way you might feel when you read a chapter book). I've only seen one other comic book writer who writes with much complexity: Brian Michael Bendis (ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN). His work on BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN was so thrilling that I decided to buy BATMAN: HUSH, which also sounded like a really good story to me. Even though it wasn't as widely praised as THE LONG HALLOWEEN, the clerk at my comic book store highly recommended it. I was right to buy this because it was an incredibly sensational story arc that had many memorable moments, and ultimate artwork!!!
Many scenes in the book were extremely powerful and drove deep into the heart and soul of Batman:
1: Batman forms a romance with Catwoman because they have a lot in common as vigilantes and it helps Batman feel less lonely. The price of being a crime fighter is having no one to love or care for him as he shields himself from the rest of the world to carry out his mission to destroy crime in Gotham City.
2: Batman nearly breaks his one rule as he tries to kill the Joker! The Joker has been responsible for many tragedies in the dark knight's life (shooting Barbra Gordon in the spine, paralyzing her, the death of Jason Todd, the second Robin, and murdering Sara Essen in the No Man's Land crisis) and has now killed another person close to Batman, bringing the dark knight closer to crossing the line between being a vigilante and a criminal!
3: We discover that Batman had a long lost childhood friend, Dr. Thomas Elliot, who know reenters Bruce Wayne's life, and gives us memories of Bruce's childhood before the night his parents were murdered.
4: A person, who was long thought to be dead, remerges into the life of the Dark Knight.
5: Batman's final encounter with the mysterious adversary Hush, a man whose face is wrapped in bandages, and has orchestrated a master plan involving a countless number of Batman's rogues. His sole purpose: TO KILL THE DARK KNIGHT!!!
The artwork by Jim Lee is the best I have seen in any comic book! The characters are defined very well to their personalities, and look extremely realistic!
Batman is extremely muscular and heroic, Killer Croc is more reptilian than human, Joker has the appearance a homicidal maniac, both Catwoman and Poison Ivy are sexy and seductive, Oracle looks very intelligent, and Ra's Al Gul truly looks like an immortal. The realistic, gritty, and astonishing artwork presented in this book has transformed me into a fanatic of Jim Lee's art, and I'm know on the hunt for more of his works! I used to think that David Finch's artwork was the greatest, but Jim Lee's might have surpassed David Finch completely!
At first the mystery and the plot may seem hard to follow or understand, but that's one of the strengths of Loeb's writing. Jeph Loeb writes creates complicated plots that are hard to understand at first, but they are easier to grasp once you look back at the story a couple of times. Reading Jeph Loeb's works can sometimes almost feel like reading literary novel, since it's that complicated. The main villain Hush has become one of my personal favorites in Batman's rouges gallery, and while he lacks an ulterior motive for his vendetta in this book, it's later expanded on in Paul Dini's HEART OF HUSH storyline. So while Hush lacked a plausible motive in his first story, I felt that every other component of the character Loeb established made him astonishing! BATMAN: HUSH is not the kind of story that you can read in one sitting, but it is an extremely powerful Batman tale that gives us new insight on the dark knight's life. Jeph, along with Frank Miller is one of the few writers who truly drives deep into the psyche of the dark knight!
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
-Aristotle
