Published on September 24th, 2003
The website Bleeding Cool posted an article a few weeks ago about how comic book stores have seen a rise in popularity in the last year. A few workers at comic book stores commented that it was true and that it was mostly younger kids and that they weren't buying single issues. One new item that's apparently very popular is the DC compact trade paperbacks. They're meant to copy the Japan anime trade paperbacks, which are smaller and cheaper than the usual American comic book trade paperbacks. One of the first DC compact books released was Batman: Hush (the first was Batman: Court of Owls and the second was Watchmen). For $9.99 you can get a small version of all 12 issues of the "Hush" storyline, which is a good price considering single comic books these days are usually $3.99 or $4.99. The "Hush" storyline is a popular Batman story, and I guess will always be. They haven't made a live action movie about it yet, but they did make an animated one. There's been two sequels that I know of, one currently still running (Batman #162, which is technically #927, and part 5 of "Hush 2" is coming out this week). This is part 12 of "Hush" and the big finale. Since it's so popular even all these years later, is it actually any good? No, not really. The fantastic Jim Lee art is truly what saves it. The story is a muddled mess. In this finale, we finally learn that Hush is Dr. Thomas Elliot, which was fairly obvious all along. The reason he went after Batman is because he tried to kill his parents years ago but Bruce's father, who was a doctor, saved his mother. This meant that Tommy had to wait until his mom died of cancer to get his inheritance. Kind of a lame reason to become a villain, truth be told. Hush gets shot by Two-Face, who was surgically repaired by Dr. Elliot. Two-Face is now just a regular, one-faced good guy. Hush falls off a bridge and is swept out to sea. There's more in this issue: The Riddler had cancer and was cured by Dr. Elliot so he helped him go after Batman. Hush put a subliminal message onto Batman's computer so that he would think about Tommy Elliot. Dumb. A few people noted that the sequel, "Heart of Hush," that Paul Dini wrote and was in Detective Comics, is a better story. I guess we'll have to check that one out (a lot of people online rave about Dini being one of the best Batman writers). And I'll have to start reading "Hush 2" which started this year. It's so late that a new Batman book already started. That means that last week Batman #3 came out and this week Batman #162 comes out. And they wonder why comics are so fucking hard to get into. ** (out of ****)
