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“Batman R.I.P” takes another step toward total disinterest.

Everyone in the comics world knows that other than Spider-Man, the superhero with the best Rogue’s Gallery is Batman. And we also know that the world of Batman is defined not so much by the hero, but by the villains. If you haven’t watched “Batman: Gotham Knight” yet, you should. Not only because it’s really frickin’ cool, but the second disc has a great run-down of Batman’s rogues. And you know what I think is so cool about that particular segment of the disc? It does NOT have my two least favorite Batman villains: Bane and Hush. The reason that I hate the two of them is that they’re marketing gimmicks. Bane, like Doomsday in Superman, was introduced out of nowhere, to temporarily incapacitate Batman and shake up his status quo. Hush was a few years later and maybe had some more talent behind it with Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, but it was still the same type of character. He shows up out of nowhere, screws with Batman’s head, knows his secret identity, makes him paranoid, and then he disappears. Now that the “Batman R.I.P” storyline is revving up to go… somewhere, hopefully, the Powers That Be at DC decided to bring back Hush again. And current Detective Comics writer Paul Dini is given the dubious task of creating an interesting side story to Grant Morrison’s work that involves Hush, much like he had tried to do with “The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul” storyline. That didn’t work out well for Dini, and now, it’s looking like déjà vu all over again with the second installment of the “Heart of Hush” arc in Detective Comics #847.

This issue deals with more of Hush’s origin, which is actually a little more interesting than I would have thought. If my memory serves, Dr. Tommy Elliot became Hush, because he was an evil little boy who hated his rich parents and tried to kill them both, but Thomas Wayne saved his mother, so he hates Bruce and wants him dead or suffering. Yeah, interesting villain there. Well, many years ago, a young Bruce and a young Tommy are away at summer camp and Tommy mentions to Bruce that he may have been the victim of abuse by his father. They are about to have a heart-to-heart when Tommy’s mother comes to take him back. Some little boy calls Tommy a ‘mamma’s boy’ and Tommy nearly kills him with a canoe paddle. Tommy is taken to some kind of asylum and a young intern at the hospital, one Dr. Jonathan Crane, takes an interest in Tommy, and actually is excited at the prospect of a young potentially homicidal child back out on the streets and Crane recommends release.  In the current day, Hush is biding his time, killing men dressed as Batman and watching Selina Kyle and Zatanna from a distance and judging them. Batman assembles Nightwing and Robin to make sure that everyone’s watching each other’s backs now that Hush is back. Also, Gotham Children’s Hospital has apparently become the psychotic playground of Dr. Crane in his much more insidious guise of Scarecrow.

The one nice thing about this particular “R.I.P” tie-in is that I don’t need to use Wikipedia to figure out what the hell is going on. Really, the only things that I liked about this issue are the scene with Zatanna and Selina where they discuss their own romantic feelings about Bruce, and the art team of Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs and John Kalisz, which is really working. This is the fourth time that I’ve reviewed Detective Comics since I’ve been reviewing here, and overall, with Dini at the helm, it’s really been great. But when you have these crossovers and tie-ins, like with “The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul”, it seems to bring out the worst in Dini as a creative force because he just can’t seem to get his head around these expansive, wide-spread ‘event’ comics. He is an amazing writer when he’s doing more intimate character-based work where you can tell that he cares about the characters. Here, he’s working off of Morrison’s ideas, which are off-the-charts bizarre, and he just seems like he hasn’t a clue as to where to go next. And for now, he’s just trying to keep this ship afloat.

Unfortunately, with a dull, one-dimensional villain like Hush, that’s really all you can do.

Detective Comics #847
“Heart of Hush - Part Two of Five: The Last Good Day”
Written by Paul Dini
Pencils by Dustin Nguyen
Inks by Derek Fridolfs
Colors by John Kalisz
Letters by Travis Lanham

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