Shhh! I Mean, Hush!

It’s time to tell you what you need to buy for Hanukkah .  We’ll start with a review of Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb’s better-than-porn graphic novel, Batman: Hush .

It took me a while to finally finish this one (the second volume was released back in 2004), but that’s what happens when you spend an entire ten minutes salivating over each page. For you see, Batman: Hush isn’t just a comic book — it’s a bible for all future bat-scribes to refer to, a new unreachable bar that officially gives Lee and Loeb the exclusive rights to the Dark Knight and all but erases Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s names from the character’s entire publication history.  It’s awesome.

Hush begins the way all good Batman stories do — Our Main Man saves a young boy as Killer Croc barges in, screaming, “I’M GONNA EAT YOU ALIVE!”  But there’s something a little off about this scenario.  Croc doesn’t act this way, and when Catwoman and Poison Ivy start deviating from their usual MOs, The Knower of All Things starts to feel like a pawn in a chess game.  Things are changing all around Him; old friends become suspects and new friends become old.  Batman understands that He has an enemy, working to manipulate specific events that would eventually cause His downfall, but the identity of this invisible antagonist is the recurring confilct of Hush.

Meanwhile, the chaos that follows Batman from Gotham to Metropolis to North Africa only forces Him to create even more distance between Himself and the ones He loves.  Huntress, Robin, Catwoman, Superman, Talia Al Ghul, Harvey Dent, Tommy Elliot.  Does His enemy use these links to destroy the Batman from within?  Or does the very idea of a Batman cause a lifetime of solitude for everyone who plays by the rules?

Hush!  You’ll ruin the ending!

Lee’s art is amazing as always.  His interpretations of each character evoke the words “elegant,” “simple,” “realistic,” and “unique” on every single page.  His artwork adapts as Batman must adapt to his new enemy, a concept I never would have understood unless I read the prologues for each volume multiple times.

Loeb is a god among writers, or at least a demigod, or at leaster a Romantic poet severely anachronistically ignored.  The twists, the themes, the characters who all seem equally important — this is no easy feat for mortal men who write their “stories” at 3 AM on the back of Denny’s menus.  Jeph Loeb has crafted a story that deserves — no, needs – to be told alongside the likes of Hamlet, Great Expectations, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

So, that’s it.  Five batarangs out of five.  Go buy it .  Happy Chanukkah.

Read more at What Would Batman Do?