Right before I read Hush, I read a mystery that was not afraid of the female gaze. There was a fair amount of commenting on men’s thighs. I was primed to notice the musculature of Batman’s thighs. Those are some powerful thighs.
Batman has always been a television or movie character to me. I grew up on Adam West’s Batman. I have watched every live action Batman film and many of the animated movies. I love Batman: The Animated Series. I haven’t been a Batman comic reader. I don’t have a firm idea of who Batman is, and much less if a sense of who his Robins are/were. I have a general idea of who Batman’s friends and antagonists are, but I don’t have definite ideas about how they ought to behave.
I enjoyed Hush a lot. In addition to Batman’s bulging thighs and the buoyant breasts of all the women, the story is engaging and the art is gorgeous. I did have to work to separate the tv show Arrow from Hush. That’s not the fault of the graphic novel, so I didn’t take off stars.
Hush moves Batman through a cavalcade of characters wham, bam, thank you ma’am style. Only Catwoman, Alfred and Batman’s unseen foe appear in most of the chapters. I liked the romance between Batman and Catwoman. I knew things would end the way they did, but it still annoyed me. As the title says, the answer is in plain sight, but getting there was a lot of fun.
Ah Hush. I remember when it came out, my husband was still collecting Batman comics in monthly issues. There are better runs of Batman out there, but this was a hugely promoted comics event by DC, and I think it covers pretty much all the characters in the Batman universe at some point during the arc.
If you liked Catwoman in this, you should check out the Ed Brubaker run of the Catwoman title, which is very good, especially the ones illustrated by Darwyn Cooke.
I figured that Hush probably wasn’t a huge favorite among Batman aficionados. I’ll add Brubaker’s Catwoman to my list.
I think it’s a pretty good jumping on point for readers, in that over the course of the arc, you pretty much get all of the major players in the Batman universe popping up. Of course, Hush being many years ago, I’m assuming the DC universe has been reset four or five times by now. They seem to have a big Universe-shake-up every two years or so.
My husband is a big fan of Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s runs on Batman and Detective comics (the art was absolutely amazing). Their work on Gotham Central is also highly recommended. He also likes Grant Morrison’s Batman run a lot more than I do (I never got round to finishing it – despite the memorable introduction of Bat-cow).