Shut Up and Read
Hush 2 kicked off in Batman 158 with the return of the original team and an attention grabbing first chapter.
When did this trend of sequels 20 years too late become a thing? Bad Boys, Indiana Jones, Jurassic World, Mad Max, Top Gun…you guys get the idea. What do all of these have in common besides being later than an OnlyFans girl’s period? They all sucked. Admittedly I haven’t seen Top Gun 2, but the first one is shit how could a sequel 30 years later be any good?
This first Hush run ran from 2002-2003, and I’m such a boomer I still think of Hush as a “newer” Batman story. It is one of the best Batman stories written, with fantastic use of Bat’s rogues gallery, some light if straightforward mystery and blockbuster action. As far as Batman comics go, it has everything you could want. Ignore other stories like Heart of Hush, they don’t exist. Hush fuckin’ 2 is here.
Jim Lee might be the most influential Batman artist since Neal Adams. The man hasn’t missed a beat; he may be a shit CCO for DC, but dammit the man can draw.
Loeb, known for such fantastic films such as Teen Wolf, Teen Wolf Too, Model by Day and motherfucking COMMANDO, has quite the comic book resume: Hush, Long Halloween, and Dark Victory with Batman as well as All-Star Superman, Spider-Man: Blue and Catwoman. He does exactly what he needs to get hype for a sequel two decades after the fact: try and startle you into reading the next issue. How do we do that in Batman? Include the Joker. We can never, ever…ever…fucking ever get enough Joker…right?
Spoiler: Yeah, yeah we can.
I’ve bitched in the past about the over-reliance on Joker as a villain by Batman writers, especially when they make Bats retarded over Joker and do dumb shit like stop Gordon from shooting him or be upset that Joker might be dead…cuz then Joker…wins? I guess his newest hundred victims can go fuck themselves, what sort of down syndrome logic is that? Anyway, I may have given some light spoilers here, but at least Loeb makes Batman self-aware of this stupid writing trope. I actually think Loeb is just doing this entirely for fun, even starting off with a bit of a meta comment about this story being out of date.
Full disclosure: you may think this issue sucks, but you’re wrong. How do I know? This statement right here:
Crime and lawlessness is chaos. Political and bureaucratic corruption rotting the system is chaos. Batman represents the purity of incorruptible true morality (regardless of your thoughts on no-kill rules). No half-baked boo-hooing about how criminals are misunderstood or pontificating about how bad he is for stopping these violent psychopaths with room-temp IQ Marxian philosophy. No, right is right and wrong is wrong. This has been missing from Batman for years.
This is pretty typical of an arc-starter issue, it’s there to grab attention and only lay the bare framework of the story. This is slated for 6 issues compared to Hush 1’s 12, so I suspect it will be short and direct. But Commando is short and direct and it is freaking Commando. Recommend, the end