Graphic Novel Review: Batman: Hush/Heart of Hush

Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee

Batman: Heart of Hush by Paul Dini and Derek Fridolfs

Wendy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

These books are squeaking through a three star review almost entirely because they indulge my OTP of Batman and Catwoman, but only because I have let my imagination take that relationship where my imagination needs to take that relationship. Otherwise, I was very disappointed with that and with the story in general.

Hush introduces a new villain for Batman; someone who knows him extremely well and is able to manipulate his enemies into attacking him where it hurts most. The villain parade seems to be a thing for Jeph Loeb, culminating in a brand new villain that Batman must defeat. Hush is so clumsily and obviously shoehorned into Batman’s life that the outcome became quite obvious early on in Hush. Heart of Hush tries to give the character more depth and reason for his obsessive hatred for Batman as he goes after Batman’s “heart” : Catwoman, but ultimately fails because of the amount of exposition involved.

Like I said, I am a big fan of Catwoman and Batman’s romance, but the introduction of their relationship felt too much like an immature fanservice plot device, shoehorned in just like Hush and Bruce’s new bestfriend, Tommy Elliot.

I admit that I have not read much in the Bat-universe beyond the major story lines like this, so I don’t know how much has been established between the two characters prior to Jeph and Jim shoving them together, but I think they did a poor job of making their relationship clear within the context of Hush alone. For comparison, the nature of the new52 Batman/Catwoman relationship is evident from the start – and no, it’s not that they are merely ****buddies. Perhaps the key factor in the latter is that Catwoman actually gets to have a personality, whereas in Hush, she’s a plot device in a catsuit.

Both Hush stories also did a lot more show than tell, which is pretty disappointing in a comic. And what they showed was so fractured and filled with gratuitous splash pages that it all grew very tedious. I realized that my love affair with Jim Lee was long over. His art has not changed or matured over the years and his characters continue to look the same. Derek Fridolfs’ art was new to me, and I enjoyed it, but I would have preferred if Dustin Nguyen got to do more than just the covers of Heart of Hush.