Ok, here's a question for the Batman fans in my readership, is Hush actually a good Batman story? There are a lot of good elements in Hush, to be sure, and there are so many iconic Batman characters and locations that the story certainly "feels" big, but is it really? At the start of Hush, Batman is basically where he will be at the end of the story, despite the monumental events that will take place between those two points. Although I keep a copy of Hush on my shelf, I'm finding that each time I go back to it, I come away a little more frustrated than the last, and I may be giving the book up at some stage. Starting with a rescue of a young boy held for ransom by Killer Croc, right at the end of his being a criminal and not yet a cannibal monster phase, Batman has a great moment where he tells the boy to lie about it being Superman who saved him, but soon ends up chasing after Catwoman. The relationship between Batman and Catwoman is the heart of Hush, but it gets sidelined at time for assorted Batman nonsense, and sadly, doesn't continue past this story.
What I like most about the romance in Hush is that it truly grows Batman as a character, a point even discussed, though somewhat obliquely, by Alfred and Nightwing throughout the story. Batman having to negotiate the relationship, even dealing with Catwoman's being unwilling to follow his lead in a manner of another Robin or Batgirl, lift the story out of the pre-adolescant world of the caped crusader and show genuine growth in a character that rarely sees it. The rest of Hush is mostly pretty good, but as I hinted above, tends to run as something more of a highlight reel of Batman than a cohesive story. There's that scene where Batman almost snaps and kills Joker, before being stopped by Jim Gordon, and it is tied into the plot, but you could cut Joker out and drop the scene and not really lose anything. I'm not kidding that Hush hits most corners of the Batman universe at least once, from the League of Shadows/Assassins (I'm not sure which they're called in this particular instance), Batman's friendship with Superman and even a maudlin aside from Alfred.
The titular villain, a childhood friend of Bruce's, warped by years of resentment into hunting down Batman and... making his life confusing for a couple of weeks? The details of Hush's actual plan are pretty nebulous, as Batman's life doesn't really change all that much and all of the new characters are dead. Hell, Huntress goes through more of an emotional journey, in that she ends up somewhere different to where she started, rather than Batman continuing on as he did before. Probably the only 'lasting' element of the story, in that it lasted until the next reboot, was the reveal that Riddler had figured out Batman's secret identity. I like this because it places Riddler on a similar intellectual level to Batman, with now only his compulsions keeping him from winning out over the Caped Crusader. The hand-waving over why Riddler doesn't capitalise on the knowledge is a little disappointing, as that would have been a story I was interested in reading, and would have given Riddler a role in the story other than delivering exposition. I'm really keen to know if other people have the same experience with Hush as I do, does it hold up, or does each new reading lessen the narrative?
