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A review by unladylike
Batman: Heart of Hush by Dustin Nguyen, Paul Dini, Derek Fridolfs
3.0
****spoiler alert****
Shortly before reading Heart of Hush, I read Kevin Smith's Cacophony and The Widening Gyre, both of which I loved, and both of which were torn to shreds in many of the reviews I read. It seems long-time Batman fans couldn't stand seeing him bent into a potentially softer character with long-term love interests. I bring this up because the critiques I've read of Kevin Smith's writing of Batman seems to apply much more to this Paul Dini story. Overall I enjoyed this story very much, but some of the characteristics I consider to define Batman most - namely studying all the angles and being one step ahead of his opponent in hand-to-hand combat - were pulled out from under him by a villian who hasn't fought a fraction of the battles as Bruce Wayne. Sure, Tommy might've beat Bruce in childhood war games, and has grown up preparing to torment and kill Bruce, but that doesn't equal tactical advantages when it comes to fighting The Goddamn Bat-man. And if we are to believe Hush's fighting and planning is on a par with Batman's, why on earth would Dini use the slow, giant mechanical T-Rex in the Batcave to disarm the villian? Of all the things that could have given the upper hand back to Bruce, we're to believe it's a robot, that its sheer loudness warrants a complete shift of attention from the villian, and that he would empty all his bullets into this robot dinosaur rather than continuing the fight he was winning? That's some silliness right there.
Shortly before reading Heart of Hush, I read Kevin Smith's Cacophony and The Widening Gyre, both of which I loved, and both of which were torn to shreds in many of the reviews I read. It seems long-time Batman fans couldn't stand seeing him bent into a potentially softer character with long-term love interests. I bring this up because the critiques I've read of Kevin Smith's writing of Batman seems to apply much more to this Paul Dini story. Overall I enjoyed this story very much, but some of the characteristics I consider to define Batman most - namely studying all the angles and being one step ahead of his opponent in hand-to-hand combat - were pulled out from under him by a villian who hasn't fought a fraction of the battles as Bruce Wayne. Sure, Tommy might've beat Bruce in childhood war games, and has grown up preparing to torment and kill Bruce, but that doesn't equal tactical advantages when it comes to fighting The Goddamn Bat-man. And if we are to believe Hush's fighting and planning is on a par with Batman's, why on earth would Dini use the slow, giant mechanical T-Rex in the Batcave to disarm the villian? Of all the things that could have given the upper hand back to Bruce, we're to believe it's a robot, that its sheer loudness warrants a complete shift of attention from the villian, and that he would empty all his bullets into this robot dinosaur rather than continuing the fight he was winning? That's some silliness right there.