The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Comics Corner #18 ｜ Batman： Hush

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Comics Corner, broadcast, apparently, from Wayne Manor.

00:00:03.760 I am your host, Connor, joined by Harry.

00:00:05.880 Hello there.

00:00:06.460 And we're discussing a book that is not just one of my favourites,

00:00:10.460 but actually was my first comic, Batman Hush,

00:00:14.040 as well as its sequel was written by Paul Dini.

00:00:16.020 A little bit of Gotham Knights thrown in, which I will cover,

00:00:18.720 because it's not exactly a popular story,

00:00:20.920 but more for the sake of continuity.

00:00:22.400 And I think it was actually you that suggested we do this one next, wasn't it?

00:00:25.700 Well, we were brainstorming what to do,

00:00:28.280 and you know we have a number of options to go through but hush had been on the dock for a

00:00:33.180 little while uh i have it this was just sitting around on my desk at home uh and i thought why

00:00:38.640 not it's a classic story it's a very well-known story i imagine for a lot of people uh growing up

00:00:45.600 around our age that this like you was their first story because this was probably my first batman

00:00:50.940 story in the comics that i bought myself i have to uh say that i bought myself my first one was

00:00:56.360 the killing jokes my dad had all of his old 80s batman comics but when i went to go and get it

00:01:00.520 myself this was the one that i saw get it first yeah my mom used to drag me around market stalls

00:01:07.380 on like wednesday and saturday mornings and there was an old magazine stand and they were selling

00:01:11.380 single issue floppies this would have been about 2003 and i picked up two issues are being sold

00:01:17.560 and it was the issue where spoilers for all of hush if you haven't read hush do not watch this

00:01:23.880 video go and read hush first yes it's a great experience but two issues i picked up were the

00:01:29.940 issue where at the end jason todd comes back and the issue following where batman fights who he

00:01:34.640 thinks is jason todd and it turns out to be clayface though that's retconned later on and

00:01:38.540 one of the things that we're going to be discussing throughout all of this is where hush fits into

00:01:42.200 continuity what it did for batman and actually i think it's important to go over because hush was

00:01:46.880 published at a time where batman was spinning its wheels following the unbelievable success and

00:01:51.720 probably excessive ambition of the 1990s.

00:01:54.900 The year-long crossover of No Man's Land

00:01:56.760 featuring every Batman title

00:01:58.220 that turns people out trying to collect it all.

00:02:01.980 The 90s are a crazy period for Batman

00:02:04.120 because you do get things like Nightfall

00:02:06.580 and you get things even outside of the comic medium.

00:02:09.360 You get the Batman animated series

00:02:11.100 making a huge splash

00:02:12.480 and bringing a lot of people into the character.

00:02:14.700 You have the holdover of the fans

00:02:16.360 coming in from the Tim Burton Batman movies.

00:02:19.640 And, you know, Batman 89,

00:02:20.760 everybody loves. Batman Returns is a little bit more mixed on and then all of a sudden you start

00:02:24.980 to get the Joel Schumacher ones. And then No Man's Land, which I still desperately need to read.

00:02:30.540 It looks amazing. I've got the omnis of that one. You'll need to lend them to me at some point

00:02:34.580 because they look incredible. And then afterwards, what was the series they did afterwards? Was it

00:02:40.060 Bruce Wayne Murderer? So you're referring to New Gotham. So New Gotham was the 2000s

00:02:46.540 reconstruction of Gotham City as a city of lights and technology it sucked all of the sort of gothic

00:02:51.620 architecture out of Gotham they updated the art style oh well they definitely changed that for

00:02:56.040 this because this feels very gothic exactly they updated the art style to be more akin to the

00:03:01.300 success that Scott McDaniel had on Nightwing or Kelly Puckett had on Batgirl and so the Batman

00:03:06.820 titles were made a bit more manga-esque and a bit more kid-friendly and the stories had no staying

00:03:11.620 power they eventually had ed brubaker and gred rucker on the titles um brubaker did good team

00:03:17.620 comics they were but because of editorial changes at the time their storylines got cut short like

00:03:23.980 ed brubaker had a long-running detective comics arc called evolution he also had a side character

00:03:29.220 that was bruce wayne's bodyguard that he um had turned into a vigilante who then fell in love with

00:03:34.560 him and then she took the fall for the bruce wayne murder a fugitive they all they all all the dames 0.88

00:03:39.620 that all the dames got to fall in love with Bruce.

00:03:42.420 Besides one who is his constant,

00:03:44.380 which Hush cements in continuity, which was nice.

00:03:46.720 But essentially, Batman was spinning wheels

00:03:48.080 and they weren't very popular.

00:03:49.420 The sales were down.

00:03:50.260 And then Hush came in like dynamite

00:03:51.840 with the writing and art team of Jim Lee and Jeff Loeb,

00:03:57.080 as well as Alex Sinclair on the...

00:03:58.560 You can see why.

00:03:59.620 Jim Lee, ever since he made his...

00:04:01.640 Was his first big splash new X-Men?

00:04:04.280 It was X-Men number one,

00:04:05.320 which became the top selling comic of all time.

00:04:07.200 Yeah, X-Men number one.

00:04:07.960 he's always been associated with huge boosts in sales,

00:04:11.320 particularly around that 90s, early 2000s time period.

00:04:14.700 So you can see why if we can get him onto Batman,

00:04:18.300 if Batman's flagging a little bit,

00:04:20.220 that's going to be the huge boost.

00:04:21.560 And we also get Jeff Loeb,

00:04:22.960 the guy who wrote Dark Victory and The Long Halloween as well.

00:04:25.640 And we've already covered Long Halloween actually in the series.

00:04:27.660 We haven't covered Dark Victory yet,

00:04:29.480 but this is a useful sequel to Long Halloween,

00:04:32.980 even though they're currently doing a Long Halloween sequel

00:04:35.320 called The Last Halloween,

00:04:37.400 which I think is being collected in trades

00:04:39.320 at the time of recording.

00:04:40.320 Is it Jeff Loeb again?

00:04:41.360 It's Jeff Loeb, but obviously it's not Tim Sale

00:04:43.120 because Tim Sale died a couple of years ago.

00:04:44.980 So every issue has a new artist

00:04:47.220 who is one of Tim Sale's favourite artists

00:04:49.060 all playing tributes to Tim Sale.

00:04:50.580 So it's actually a nice idea.

00:04:51.300 Oh, all right, okay.

00:04:52.000 Can't vouch for the quality of the story.

00:04:53.240 I do feel, even in this, obviously,

00:04:54.700 Jim Lee has that very distinctive style.

00:04:56.360 I would say he's the only one who's been able to,

00:04:58.460 for me, convey what the 90s art style should have been

00:05:03.320 in its platonic ideal,

00:05:05.540 because he has all of the heavy, intense cross-hatching.

00:05:09.540 Everything is very exaggerated.

00:05:12.800 All of the men are as huge and muscular as possible.

00:05:15.560 All of the women are as sexy as possible. 0.78

00:05:17.940 And it's so over-the-top and exaggerated. 0.75

00:05:20.240 But he makes it work.

00:05:21.760 He's just that good at it.

00:05:23.180 And it's awesome.

00:05:24.500 The only other person that I think does it successfully

00:05:26.320 is Ed Benes in Gail Simone's Birds of Prey,

00:05:29.720 which succeeded this when Huntress got added to the team.

00:05:32.480 I'm not familiar with his art.

00:05:33.660 Ed Benes' art is spectacular.

00:05:35.000 But one of the main problems that was had,

00:05:38.300 and I think you can see this in the Gotham Knights sequel to Hush,

00:05:41.400 is that at the time there were many people trying to copy Jim Lee,

00:05:44.040 one of the most infamous being Greg Land, famous for...

00:05:47.360 Oh, the tracing.

00:05:48.820 Yeah, he was tracing not just movies,

00:05:51.420 but some very explicit kinds of movies and taking some shortcuts.

00:05:55.580 But he also pioneered the very static, flat, widescreen,

00:05:59.040 pseudo-cinematic art style, whereas Jim Lee's art is very dynamic.

00:06:02.640 And it's one of the main selling points of Hush,

00:06:04.460 as well as the writing, which for some reason in recent years

00:06:07.980 has been revised as being controversial.

00:06:10.040 People have said it's mediocre, overhyped.

00:06:12.840 I profoundly disagree.

00:06:14.380 I'd say going back even longer than recent years,

00:06:17.320 some of the articles, because I decided to look up

00:06:19.220 when you reminded me that a lot of people aren't big fans

00:06:21.660 of the storytelling in this.

00:06:23.040 I decided to look it up, just type in a few keywords,

00:06:26.120 you know, like Batman hush sucks, 0.96

00:06:27.520 Batman hush overrated and stuff. 0.93

00:06:29.140 And I was finding articles back from like 2013, 2014

00:06:31.900 of people complaining about it.

00:06:33.340 so it seems that after the initial splash it's always been somewhat contentious in terms of

00:06:39.080 its storytelling it's never diminished how popular the story is though and the fact that like frankly

00:06:45.080 it is a great starter for anybody who wants to get into batman comics but the clearly the thing

00:06:49.480 that i was going to say even jim lee i feel like does have a little bit of a tribute here and there

00:06:55.020 to the art style of tim sale in some of the art like particularly in the first issue you can flash

00:07:01.120 this up on screen when it comes uh when it comes to it when batman is chasing um chasing catwoman

00:07:07.060 across the rooftops there's a few images where he's clearly like in silhouette that seemed to

00:07:12.980 be trying to well i think it must be the second issue actually where it seems like he's trying to

00:07:17.180 sort of like to pay a quick little tribute to the kind of gothic exaggerated art style that tim sale

00:07:23.200 had in his work with jeff lobe and uh of course darwin cook's influence is now just on catwoman

00:07:28.880 the character because at the time shortly before hush came out ed brubaker and darwin cook took

00:07:34.320 over the catwoman title revolutionized her costume created the iconic costume she now has after the

00:07:38.860 purple one of the 90s darwin cook famous for not just creating comics like batman ego but also for

00:07:45.300 working on the art style of batman the animated series oh yeah yeah and darwin cook of course

00:07:49.360 someone else who we've lost far too soon um one of the other problems that happened in the early

00:07:53.320 2000s as well shortly before batman hush is um and they had the editor on this um bob shrek came in

00:07:59.420 as the new batman editor and bob shrek had very little experience on batman and the creators at

00:08:04.000 the time hated the changes that he was making to the batman comics to the extent where they created

00:08:07.500 a new prison calling it the shrek to insult their editor but the reason the bob shrek came in is

00:08:12.840 because denny o'neill retired and he was sort of pushed into retirement and they had developed the

00:08:16.800 story called officer down which is why in this story commissioner gordon's actually retired

00:08:20.100 as police commissioner where commissioner gordon is shot by a dirty cop and the bat family try and

00:08:24.140 find out who was behind the shooting and the story is meant to be an allegory for how denny o'neill

00:08:28.100 was pushed out of his position as batman editor from both one of the most famous batman writers

00:08:32.800 in the late 60s 70s with neil adams revolutionizing batman making him the the dread avenger the the

00:08:38.340 the the gothic guardian of the night the sort of uh caption that's um uh emulated at the start of

00:08:43.480 hush uh where batman says you know i took this vow criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot

00:08:48.040 and I am the Batman, that sort of operatic tone that they're raping.

00:08:51.260 And then Denny O'Neill was the Batman editor from post-crisis

00:08:54.180 all the way through to the early 2000s

00:08:55.700 and oversaw all of those crossovers like Nightfall, Contagion, Legacy, No Man's Land.

00:09:00.340 He oversaw the massive boost in sales.

00:09:03.400 He created the sort of the miniseries within running continuity

00:09:07.720 with Ten Nights of the Beast that allows you to tell stories over multiple titles.

00:09:11.300 And so it felt he was pushed out in an undignified fashion.

00:09:14.320 And so one of the things that meant that the creators at the time

00:09:17.140 were spinning their wheels on the Batman title,

00:09:18.760 well, they didn't like the editor,

00:09:19.800 and it was changing hands.

00:09:20.860 It's why Chuck Dixon and Devin Grayson left.

00:09:23.340 It's why Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucker left

00:09:25.340 under pretty hostile terms with Bob Shrek.

00:09:29.280 And so they felt that they needed some new blood injected,

00:09:31.680 which is why they got Jeff Loeb and Jim Lee.

00:09:33.860 The story of actually how Hush came about,

00:09:35.300 Jeff Loeb told this in an interview relatively recently.

00:09:38.620 So he claims that Mark Chiarello,

00:09:40.660 who at the time was the head of art at DC Comics,

00:09:42.200 phoned him up one day and said,

00:09:43.760 we've got Jim Lee on the line.

00:09:45.300 He will only work with you to do a Batman mystery story.

00:09:50.020 Are you down for it?

00:09:51.140 And Jeff Loeb was like, yeah, I love Jim Lee's art.

00:09:52.740 Of course I'm up for it.

00:09:53.940 He then immediately rang Jim Lee and said,

00:09:55.580 I've got Jeff Loeb on the line.

00:09:56.940 He's got this idea for a Batman story

00:09:58.540 and he'll only work with you.

00:09:59.860 Are you up for it?

00:10:00.360 They had no idea that it was going on.

00:10:02.020 They were just both conned into doing it.

00:10:03.720 Well, you know, good work him.

00:10:05.800 Yeah, very persuasive of him.

00:10:07.780 They had a deadline provided

00:10:09.400 and they were told that they had to finish

00:10:11.640 seven issues ahead of publication.

00:10:14.420 I think the deadline was something like October 2002

00:10:17.600 and Jim Lee had a $100 bet on it with Editorial

00:10:21.620 as to whether or not he would complete the deadline

00:10:23.640 and that's the only reason he got it out in time.

00:10:25.480 The reason that's relevant is because at the time of recording

00:10:27.440 there is a sequel to Hush called H2SH.

00:10:34.180 Yeah, they went for the Fant4 stick treatment with that one.

00:10:38.580 Yeah, it's not great.

00:10:40.020 It's currently suffering massive delays

00:10:41.700 because apparently Jim Lee has health issues,

00:10:43.300 you know, pray for his recovery.

00:10:45.060 And at the same time, it is running in the relaunched Batman title,

00:10:49.140 thanks to Tom King.

00:10:50.240 It's between, like, Batman 158 and 163,

00:10:52.520 and we're waiting for the next six issues.

00:10:53.900 And in the midst of that, they gave Batman to Matt Fraction,

00:10:56.880 allowed him to relaunch it from issue one,

00:10:58.580 and now Batman's giving therapy to Killer Croc,

00:11:01.280 and, like, one of Alfred's relatives is his new butler,

00:11:03.640 because Alfred's dead.

00:11:04.640 Matt Fraction is that kind of millennial writer

00:11:07.120 where everything just needs to be therapised away.

00:11:09.540 Batman, he just needs...

00:11:10.840 If he'd only seen the proper shrink

00:11:12.880 after his parents were killed then all of this could have been avoided like what you what you

00:11:18.220 described to me before we started recording like made me feel almost sick to my stomach the idea

00:11:23.440 that batman just thinks maybe if i just like talk to killer croc or something we can understand one

00:11:29.200 another and they end up going to an observatory and looking at the stars together the giant man 0.99

00:11:32.780 eating cannibal he eats children he's like fat bastard in austin powers like just i eat babies 0.98

00:11:39.280 who in pre-crisis continuity 1.00

00:11:41.100 fed Jason Todd's parents

00:11:42.880 to alligators

00:11:44.560 I didn't know that

00:11:45.440 I wasn't aware of that

00:11:47.440 we should probably do

00:11:48.180 an episode of Jason Todd

00:11:49.040 at some point

00:11:49.540 this is a good feed in

00:11:51.160 Jason Todd's like

00:11:52.320 such a huge part

00:11:53.300 of the Batman mythos

00:11:54.340 and comic mythos

00:11:55.300 in general

00:11:55.980 and how he left a mark

00:11:58.020 particularly with

00:11:58.980 vote on whether 0.94

00:12:00.320 he gets killed or not 0.98

00:12:01.780 it's pretty mental

00:12:03.060 to think on

00:12:03.520 we should definitely do that

00:12:04.280 they're about to put

00:12:04.760 Doug Mench on the bus

00:12:06.320 by the way

00:12:06.640 collecting all of his

00:12:07.380 early appearances

00:12:08.020 that's a good excuse

00:12:08.900 but um the reason that it was called hush is because it came from a code word around the

00:12:13.620 office because they didn't want to leave the artwork just lying around and spoil the marketing

00:12:19.800 materials and spoil the spoil the twists and turns in the story so they just titled it hush

00:12:24.540 like a working title as you would for a movie and then what ended up happening was jeff lobe

00:12:28.740 called up jim lee and said i think we've got both the title for the book and the name of this new

00:12:32.360 villain that we've designed because they came up with the design and and tommy elliott's character

00:12:36.180 before they knew what the plot was going to,

00:12:39.020 how it was going to finish and what it was going to be called.

00:12:40.400 And he just said, hush, it works.

00:12:41.760 And that's why they've got the hush little baby lullaby

00:12:43.860 that the Scarecrow sings.

00:12:44.800 Yeah, yeah.

00:12:45.140 Much like he was singing nursery rhymes

00:12:46.480 in Long Halloween and Dark Victory as well.

00:12:48.600 Yeah, true.

00:12:49.100 So it works with Loeb's characterization of these characters.

00:12:52.920 Yes.

00:12:53.300 And it was always intended to be Tommy Elliot

00:12:55.800 because there are a few red herrings

00:12:57.160 and a few creative Mr. X that are used in the story,

00:13:00.420 but they always intended Tommy Elliot to be hush.

00:13:03.460 And they just looked at the character design

00:13:04.620 and went, wow, that's fantastic.

00:13:06.060 Jeff Loeb actually says,

00:13:07.400 if it were up to me, Jason Todd would have stayed dead.

00:13:10.180 However, when Jim Lee drew Jason Todd in the harsh outfit,

00:13:14.140 which is a spectacular character design you need to bring back,

00:13:17.820 I wish they'd stuck with it instead of going with the Red Hood,

00:13:20.460 to be honest.

00:13:21.140 I like the Red Hood design.

00:13:22.740 I don't like the modern Red Hood design

00:13:24.160 where he looks like a Mortal Kombat character.

00:13:25.200 No, I like the Red Hood design, but it ain't got nothing.

00:13:30.120 The trench coat goes on.

00:13:31.040 It ain't got nothing on this bad boy right here.

00:13:34.420 It's so iconic and it's so sick.

00:13:37.620 I was so spoiled as a kid to that being my first comic

00:13:40.540 because the first impression I got of Batman

00:13:42.340 was from those two issues.

00:13:45.180 Batman is a dad who's lost a son.

00:13:47.700 He's in a relationship with Catwoman.

00:13:49.220 Great Jim Lee art and he has some of the coolest villains.

00:13:52.040 It was like immediate immersion in that.

00:13:53.920 And obviously Jim Lee is a fantastic artist all around

00:13:56.380 but for this comic in particular,

00:13:58.220 I feel like he was just going 110% for every single page.

00:14:02.680 It's so dynamic.

00:14:03.740 all of the characters designs look so iconic he goes with some different art styles for the

00:14:09.920 flashback sequences going with watercolors and other such things the more sketchy styles in

00:14:14.280 places where which you don't often see from him and the fact that he was able to actually get it

00:14:18.740 all out on schedule as well is pretty impressive for jim leo i mean you you mentioned that and

00:14:23.080 it's relevant for you know i still have all of the single issues for um all-star batman robin

00:14:30.340 No.

00:14:31.100 That was heavily delayed, though.

00:14:32.280 Well, I remember that.

00:14:33.160 Did they ever even end up releasing the last two issues?

00:14:35.420 I think it got cancelled, didn't it?

00:14:37.160 It was a mercy killing.

00:14:38.800 Yeah, someone at editorial finally actually read one of the issues

00:14:41.580 and went, oh, this is terrible.

00:14:43.700 It was the...

00:14:44.700 What was the one he did on Superman with Scott Snyder?

00:14:47.460 Oh, Superman Unchained.

00:14:48.920 Yes, I have all of the single issues for that.

00:14:51.340 And that took...

00:14:52.080 It was 12 issues, if I remember.

00:14:53.880 That took ages to come out

00:14:56.300 because Jim Lee was taking months at a time

00:14:58.820 to get a single issue done.

00:15:00.120 And I do sort of empathise with him as well,

00:15:02.440 working with Scott Snyder,

00:15:03.920 whose work I enjoy.

00:15:05.200 But when he was first teamed up with Greg Capullo

00:15:07.440 for his Batman run,

00:15:08.340 which was actually the last good Batman run,

00:15:10.220 Batman hasn't done anything good

00:15:11.200 for about 15 years, maybe.

00:15:13.980 Greg Capullo complained that Scott Snyder's scripts

00:15:16.500 were so detailed that it was akin to drawing

00:15:18.720 a horse riding 10 horses on top of buildings.

00:15:21.740 God forbid he ever works with Alan Moore.

00:15:23.920 Yeah, exactly.

00:15:24.540 We've all seen the killing joke scripts.

00:15:25.940 Anyway, Jeff Loeb always wanted Jason to stay dead,

00:15:30.460 but left the strategic ambiguity of the mystery of Jason Todd's body

00:15:34.020 at the end of the story, as the Riddler explains,

00:15:36.160 to leave the door open for subsequent artists to develop on it.

00:15:39.780 And similarly, within the story itself, the clues,

00:15:43.800 which I will say I do have some issues with some of the writing in here,

00:15:50.380 particularly with the mystery elements of it,

00:15:52.080 that being how the hell were you supposed to put together the clue of the bat rope was hit by a

00:15:59.520 batarang and the the wheel that was shot out specifically was not randomly chosen because

00:16:05.280 it just happened to be one that you could get the shot off on it but was also the wheel that

00:16:09.280 jason todd was trying to steal from the batmobile back when he first met batman i like that i do

00:16:14.920 i think it's a little bit esoteric and a little bit indecipherable unless you're working on like

00:16:20.560 400 IQ giga brain inference um either way having those kinds of reveals makes kind of no sense if

00:16:31.160 they didn't get some of this info from jason todd because who other than jason todd would know that

00:16:36.240 that was specifically the wheel that he was trying to steal it's not like tommy elliott

00:16:39.400 or even the riddler had been observing batman when that event was happening but it is it is

00:16:44.640 retconned that jason was intimately involved with the scheme and did parts of it well it's even i

00:16:49.740 would say it's even implied near the end because you do get the you get the oh god how am i going

00:16:54.920 to wrap this whole mystery up a couple of pages where it's just like it's just text boxes like

00:17:01.660 oh crap i need to wrap the mystery up and explain the whole thing i'm just gonna tell them i'm just

00:17:06.880 gonna have riddler explain if you're gonna do it with a character though it's justifiable it's

00:17:10.660 riddler yeah yeah because he's trying to gloat so it makes it makes more sense but there is the

00:17:15.040 moment here where i believe they point out yeah one last thing why jason why bring the boy into

00:17:22.100 it his grave is empty where is jason's body now that is a riddle isn't it and then batman to dex

00:17:28.160 yeah and then he punches him straight into the face so you you can feel that lobe is taking that

00:17:32.840 lead in and leaving the thread open for writers in the future which is something that happens with

00:17:38.320 a few other things in this storyline particularly with like harvey dent being revealed to no longer

00:17:42.900 be two-faced. And Hush himself. Like, all they did was they created intriguing character. A great

00:17:47.780 design. But you don't get much of Hush's motivations or backstory. That's filled in by

00:17:51.780 probably the best Batman writer ever, Paul Dini. Paul Dini is an absolute legend.

00:17:58.020 And we will get onto Paul Dini's sequels. Yeah. Well, that's the funny thing about Hush.

00:18:01.940 And the thing that I saw a lot of people get annoyed about, but I was less annoyed about

00:18:06.020 personally, which was a lot of people were very frustrated that for it being called Batman Hush,

00:18:11.620 Hush is kind of a side character in his own story.

00:18:14.820 He's a persistent presence.

00:18:16.740 Yes.

00:18:17.700 Tommy Elliot is established early on.

00:18:20.180 You get the red herring of Joker killing him to throw you off the scent,

00:18:24.580 because, I'm sorry, it suffers a little bit from the same criticism

00:18:29.060 that we all have of the Arkham Knight,

00:18:31.380 which is the new mystery villain is introduced.

00:18:34.980 Could it be this other character that we are only just bringing up now

00:18:39.060 for the first time in this story,

00:18:41.780 it's probably the new character that we're only just bringing up now in this story.

00:18:45.700 My annoyance with The Arkham Knight though,

00:18:47.540 and it's important that Paul Dini did not write that one.

00:18:49.940 No, he didn't. He was off the writing team by that point,

00:18:52.420 much to Arkham Knight's detriment, especially Hush, the character himself,

00:18:56.100 being completely wasted. Ruined.

00:18:59.220 Jason Todd is Red Hood, and so it felt shoehorned

00:19:02.420 that you used the identity of Jason Todd for The Arkham Knight

00:19:04.660 instead of generating your own novel character.

00:19:07.540 Whereas at least they did create a new character with Hodge.

00:19:10.420 Oh, no, no, I'm not going to criticise that.

00:19:12.500 I think the mystery is just a little bit too obvious

00:19:14.300 because it's like Batman's new villain has shown up

00:19:17.060 and also his old childhood best friend you've never heard of,

00:19:20.040 Tommy Elliot, has just shown up as well.

00:19:21.800 I wonder who the new guy could be.

00:19:23.200 But it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the rest of the story.

00:19:25.940 I thought...

00:19:26.400 Because you still get all of the cool stuff with Croc,

00:19:28.540 you still get all of the adventure going to chase down Poison Ivy

00:19:31.920 and the great character moments with Catwoman.

00:19:34.080 Yeah, you get all of that great character stuff.

00:19:35.720 Fight with Superman.

00:19:36.580 Yeah.

00:19:36.780 the only other thing is one that i've seen pointed out a million times over so it would be

00:19:41.380 wrong for me not to say it now um the fight against harley quinn where she knocks down the uh the

00:19:47.060 weighted bag onto his head and he's like oh i left my kevlar cowl at home because i said i'd be fine

00:19:52.900 to alfred it's like why wouldn't you just wear that all the time anyway bats that's a kind of 0.68

00:19:58.000 stupid decision but that's that's just obviously just trying to him trying to increase the tension

00:20:02.540 a little bit so i don't i don't really hold that against them it still it still draws you along 0.97

00:20:07.020 and my god like i was saying this to you before after reading watchman that it was so nice to

00:20:13.900 read a comic and then heart of hush and house of hush afterwards so nice to read comics that just

00:20:18.340 breezed by i actually enjoy it yeah that i enjoyed and didn't feel like i was slogging through a tar

00:20:24.140 pit just trying to get through all of the unnecessary dialogue and captions because that

00:20:29.540 comic whatever else you want to say about no people talk about how innovative the art isn't

00:20:33.440 yes the art in it is very good but it's so it doesn't flow it's so slow to get through when

00:20:40.840 every single panel it's like it's like um what's his name uncanny x-men christopher claremont

00:20:46.820 christopher claremont every single panel has to have an entire essay written in george perez's

00:20:51.520 wonder woman is exactly like yeah yeah so it's so nice to read one that just breathes straight

00:20:55.800 through i got through this in a couple of hours same with the paul dini ones as well because they

00:20:59.460 I would argue, using the comic book medium more effectively than Alan Moore ever did.

00:21:06.920 And that's why it sold unbelievably well.

00:21:09.200 So apparently, the first issue was selling around 60,000 units.

00:21:12.600 By the end of Hotch, it was selling about 300,000 units.

00:21:15.260 And comic stores were just selling out their trade paperbacks.

00:21:18.120 So it seems to have revolutionized Batman sales in the early 2000s.

00:21:20.780 So the thing you've got to think about when it comes to stories like this,

00:21:24.200 these stories are not just good for the industries themselves.

00:21:27.100 they're also great for the brick-and-mortar stores which trade which live and die off of how much

00:21:32.220 people want to read these stories so when this when the comics decide i know who's going to sell

00:21:38.540 batman comics famous sex criminals author matt fraction after giving it to chip zadarsky oh yeah

00:21:45.160 after chip zadarsky what people are clamoring for comic book fans are clamoring for this

00:21:49.980 and nobody buys it you're also damaging all of the brick and mortar shops where normal people

00:21:54.960 are just trying to make their money

00:21:56.720 and sell cool stories to people.

00:21:59.060 You're damaging their ability

00:22:00.200 to keep the doors open as well.

00:22:01.700 Well, that's why they booted Tom King

00:22:02.680 off the book prematurely

00:22:03.640 because he was going to go for 100 issues

00:22:05.040 and then Batman sales started to tank

00:22:07.200 after his wedding fake-out.

00:22:09.120 We're going to have to do Tom King's Batman.

00:22:10.580 He did a wedding fake-out?

00:22:12.300 You haven't read Tom King's Batman yet?

00:22:13.860 No, of course not.

00:22:14.840 Oh, future episode.

00:22:16.400 Like you said,

00:22:18.260 Batman hasn't had any new interesting stories

00:22:21.360 realistically since Scott Snyder's.

00:22:24.100 Yeah. I would say maybe Endgame.

00:22:26.620 I read Scott Snyder's run up to about the end of year zero.

00:22:32.400 Zero year, I think it was called.

00:22:33.540 Right. Endgame was after that, and it was a fun joke.

00:22:35.120 Yeah. I never read Endgame,

00:22:36.920 because for whatever reason, I just lost track of it.

00:22:39.340 But Scott Snyder's was good.

00:22:40.760 I read all of Grant Morrison's up to the end,

00:22:43.040 which we'll also have to cover at some point.

00:22:45.220 I'm really dreading going back to it,

00:22:46.940 because I don't want it to be bad.

00:22:48.380 I have such fond memories of it.

00:22:50.480 New X-Men. Grant Morrison's New X-Men.

00:22:52.420 surely that's going to be a winner when I go back to that.

00:22:54.820 That was the first ever omnibus I ever bought,

00:22:58.500 so I'm sure that's going to hold up.

00:23:00.340 Don't look at me like that.

00:23:01.380 I can see the can of copium being wheeled into the room.

00:23:03.780 Please, please, I need half. I need half, please.

00:23:06.660 Yeah, but since then, like you say,

00:23:09.060 nothing really interesting has been happening with the character,

00:23:11.140 so I never read it.

00:23:12.340 I heard people talk about Tom King's run,

00:23:14.740 and then I saw some of the panels from Tom King's run.

00:23:17.060 It was being outsold by Immortal Hulk towards the end.

00:23:19.300 Oh, dear.

00:23:20.180 So, yeah, actual brick-and-mortar stores were worried about closing.

00:23:22.960 Like, Batman should be the premier, alongside Superman, flagship DC character.

00:23:29.320 Yes.

00:23:29.900 The one who is the big premium seller,

00:23:33.620 so that he can basically fund all of the more experimental stories

00:23:37.180 that are going on with other titles.

00:23:38.720 Yeah.

00:23:39.340 But was Tom King the guy who wrote him as an Antifa ally?

00:23:43.400 No, that was in Batman Urban Legends a little bit later.

00:23:47.400 Though there was a Chip Sadarsky villain

00:23:50.640 who was posing as a fascist in Gotham

00:23:53.340 who was blaming everything on Antifa

00:23:54.900 that Batman account was willing to take down. 0.99

00:23:56.000 But Batman is a fascist.

00:23:57.640 Batman is the most reactionary character in comics. 0.82

00:23:59.700 Yeah, I mean, the guy...

00:24:00.700 Actually, Hush Money and Heart of Hush

00:24:03.020 and House of Hush proves that.

00:24:04.740 Yeah.

00:24:05.480 And also, again, another comic that we covered,

00:24:08.220 Kingdom Come, he literally has Gotham

00:24:10.460 as a surveillance state under his private ownership

00:24:14.100 by the time he's old.

00:24:15.240 with Batman robots beating up urban scholars.

00:24:18.320 Should we get into the actual story of Hush?

00:24:19.740 Yeah, sure, we've mentioned plenty of it.

00:24:20.860 Let's go beat by beat.

00:24:22.120 Right, so Hush opens with Batman trying to track down

00:24:27.120 a young boy who is the heir to a pharmaceutical company,

00:24:31.980 Fortune, who's been abducted by Killer Croc

00:24:33.540 because Killer Croc has been mutated

00:24:35.380 into this massive lizard-like monster

00:24:37.940 away from his usual form when he was introduced in the 80s,

00:24:40.440 which is basically a guy with a skin condition

00:24:42.820 in the trench coat.

00:24:43.880 And he was a bit more of a ruthless mobster.

00:24:46.500 I remember from the animated series.

00:24:48.220 That was the more typical depiction of him.

00:24:50.880 Yeah, in the animated series, 1.00

00:24:52.340 he was depicted as kind of retarded. 1.00

00:24:55.540 Like, if you remember the Almost Gotten episode 0.94

00:24:57.200 where Batman is pretending to be Killer Croc,

00:24:58.820 his elaborate scheme is. 0.99

00:24:59.980 Oh, yeah, he's super dumb in the show. 1.00

00:25:00.980 And I hit him with a rock. 1.00

00:25:03.140 Great line.

00:25:05.600 It was a really big rock.

00:25:07.800 One of my favourite depictions

00:25:08.860 is actually Ron Palman's in The Batman, where...

00:25:11.460 Oh, I watched that back in the day.

00:25:13.140 Where he's got the Cajun accent, and he is a ruthless gangster,

00:25:15.560 but he actually looks like Croc in the opening of Batman Harch, 0.78

00:25:18.060 this sort of big mutated lizard.

00:25:19.240 Yeah, I think of the Arkham depiction of Killer Croc as well,

00:25:22.900 where he has become an enormous mutator.

00:25:25.100 In Arkham Knight.

00:25:25.880 Yeah, well, even in Arkham Asylum, he's still huge and mutated.

00:25:30.980 It's just progressed even further by now.

00:25:32.840 Yeah, so this has been done to Croc,

00:25:35.100 and he's looking to steal money to synthesise a cure.

00:25:38.200 The briefcase is obviously confiscated by a Catwoman

00:25:40.180 who's working under the influence of Poison Ivy.

00:25:43.140 Hush is watching

00:25:44.260 sort of all of this

00:25:45.360 and when Batman

00:25:45.940 goes to swing

00:25:46.700 after Catwoman

00:25:47.400 after subduing

00:25:48.860 Killer Croc

00:25:49.640 his bat line is cut

00:25:51.240 and he crashes down

00:25:52.160 into conspicuously

00:25:53.300 Crime Alley

00:25:54.300 so this has been done

00:25:55.860 to him at a very

00:25:56.700 notable time

00:25:57.760 and when the thugs

00:25:58.440 try to unlift his mask

00:25:59.780 a series of

00:26:00.700 automatic defense

00:26:01.900 elements in his suit

00:26:03.580 decide to put them at bay

00:26:05.000 until a member 1.00

00:26:05.800 of the Bat family

00:26:06.400 can arrive on scene

00:26:07.240 as prompted by Oracle

00:26:08.180 Barbara Gordon at the time

00:26:09.240 this is after she's

00:26:10.080 shot in the spine

00:26:10.660 during the killing joke 0.92

00:26:11.460 she's been paralyzed

00:26:12.160 as is before

00:26:12.920 The new 52, when she becomes Batgirl again,

00:26:14.940 this is in the midst of her being in the Birds of Prey, 0.94

00:26:18.100 Huntress gets to the scene.

00:26:19.560 And this, if people are wondering

00:26:21.300 why Batman hates Huntress at this time,

00:26:23.460 it's because Huntress took on the mantle of Batgirl

00:26:26.380 without his permission during No Man's Land,

00:26:29.140 was revealed to be the new Batgirl.

00:26:31.180 He then confiscates the Batgirl mantle, 0.90

00:26:32.620 gives it to Cassandra Cain, the daughter of David Cain.

00:26:35.220 She becomes the new Batgirl.

00:26:36.580 And Huntress strikes out on her own

00:26:37.860 because, of course, Huntress does kill people. 1.00

00:26:39.780 She's the daughter of a mobster. 1.00

00:26:40.740 She grapples with it because she's a Catholic.

00:26:41.940 Like, very interesting character.

00:26:43.700 Batman doesn't condone her behaviour.

00:26:45.060 So she's the black sheep of the Bat family.

00:26:46.800 She arrives on scene in a brand new and very striking costume

00:26:49.500 illustrated by Jim Lee, which I'm quite partial to, 0.97

00:26:52.800 beats the absolute snot out of all of the gangsters

00:26:56.240 and lowlives that are trying to unmask Batman,

00:26:58.520 puts him into the Batmobile,

00:26:59.840 and it speeds away back to the Batcave

00:27:01.760 where Alfred tends to his wounds.

00:27:04.420 And Batman has got a fractured skull,

00:27:07.240 yeah, severe cranial trauma,

00:27:09.820 and starts tapping out in Morse code

00:27:11.320 the name of his childhood friend who has never been introduced before but has been invented for

00:27:14.840 this book uh dr thomas elliott i did find though an interesting bit of continuity again i like to

00:27:19.940 nerd out about all this stuff um one of the he's got spreadsheets i genuinely do one of the doctors

00:27:25.420 the alfred mentions to oracle as trying to get on the line to help batman recover is dr chandra

00:27:31.120 kills kinsolving do you know that name no okay chandra kinsolving was batman's physical therapist

00:27:41.320 talking to her in the lead-up to Batman, 0.72

00:27:43.380 having his back broken by Bane,

00:27:44.840 saying, I'm burned out and I'm tired all the time,

00:27:46.900 even though I've got a new Robin

00:27:47.900 and I'm in the prime of my life. 0.70

00:27:49.520 Chandra Cairnsolving is a black woman,

00:27:51.780 so she was a very progressive character at the time, 0.97

00:27:53.980 and Batman started... 1.00

00:27:54.660 She's the equivalent of that, like, Malaysian dude 1.00

00:27:56.880 who punches his back better in Dark Knight Rises, then. 1.00

00:28:00.580 Because that's how you solve a broken back, right?

00:28:02.760 Do you know how Batman gets his back fixed in Nightfall?

00:28:05.240 Does he get it punched better?

00:28:06.820 It's worse.

00:28:07.580 Oh.

00:28:08.900 Wait, Nolan improved it for...

00:28:11.320 Only marginally, right.

00:28:12.960 Only because he makes it less creepy.

00:28:17.260 So, Chandra Kinsolving gets abducted

00:28:19.980 alongside Tim Drake's father.

00:28:22.140 And she is also Tim Drake's father's physical therapist

00:28:24.240 because Jack Drake at this time,

00:28:26.740 at the start of the Robin comics

00:28:27.860 and in Detective Comics,

00:28:29.660 Jack Drake and his wife are in a plane.

00:28:32.260 They're wealthy.

00:28:33.000 They live in the Wayne. 1.00

00:28:33.560 So they go down in Haiti 0.94

00:28:34.440 and Robin's mom gets killed 0.99

00:28:36.480 by a villain called the Obay Man, 0.91

00:28:37.960 who's like a voodoo guy. 0.90

00:28:38.760 And he puts Jack Drake in a coma. 1.00

00:28:39.780 Jack Drake's slowly recovering.

00:28:40.900 and he's in a wheelchair.

00:28:42.060 Chandra Kilcholving is helping him

00:28:43.400 with physical therapy.

00:28:44.700 They get abducted,

00:28:45.780 taken to Santa Prisca.

00:28:47.260 Batman and Alfred go

00:28:48.480 and attempt to find them

00:28:49.780 because obviously he wants his back fixed.

00:28:51.560 Also, little continuity bit there.

00:28:53.640 Catwoman at the time

00:28:54.500 sneaks aboard their private jet 0.99

00:28:55.840 to also travel to Santa Prisca 0.86

00:28:57.040 because she's hunting something

00:28:58.220 in her own solo series.

00:28:59.400 And it's implied that she and Batman

00:29:00.920 don't know each other,

00:29:01.700 even though in the long Halloween,

00:29:03.380 which I suppose was published after,

00:29:04.600 but they were dating.

00:29:06.620 And yeah, so it's really, really, really confusing.

00:29:09.180 Anyway, what happens is, they find out Chandra Kinsolving has been abducted by her adopted brother, called Benedict Asp,

00:29:17.920 and Benedict Asp wants to weaponise Chandra Kinsolving's secret psychic powers, combine them with his own, to kill loads of people.

00:29:26.460 She's got secret psychic powers on her. 1.00

00:29:28.060 Yeah, it's dumb. 0.95

00:29:28.860 So, what ends up happening is, she accidentally kills Benedict Asp out of rage when he's using her powers. 0.93

00:29:35.980 and then batman goes to comfort her and the captions in the boxes imply that she has weird

00:29:44.900 psychic sex with him which fixes his back because she gets on top of him and then the house that

00:29:51.060 they're in starts to shudder and creak and moan from the storm and the next morning batman is 0.94

00:29:55.920 going for a walk on the beach um the worst part about this though is the psychological trauma of 0.69

00:30:00.360 killing her brother using her psychic powers and allegedly having sex with batman regresses her to 0.99

00:30:05.240 There's a mental state of a nine-year-old. 0.99

00:30:08.200 Which is why in Hush, they mention that,

00:30:11.320 and Oracle just handwaves away with, she got better. 0.99

00:30:14.240 Immediately brushes her, look, I need to...

00:30:16.480 It's better not to talk about that.

00:30:18.040 I am going to find the panel.

00:30:20.440 So they're talking about, yeah, yeah, what to...

00:30:23.000 I can have Dick wreck the Porsche, blah-de-blah.

00:30:26.600 Thomas Eliot, oh, he's tapping away.

00:30:29.960 Where, where...

00:30:30.720 It's the bit, it's, I think...

00:30:32.440 Oh, yes, Alfred, I've contacted Chandra Kinsolving.

00:30:36.500 Her experience with mending Bruce's Batman-proof benefit...

00:30:39.760 Don't ask how.

00:30:40.940 Begging your pardon, miss,

00:30:42.680 but I believe Dr. Kinsolving is not quite right in the head.

00:30:45.680 She got better.

00:30:46.540 It's literally just she got better.

00:30:48.840 Right here.

00:30:49.920 That's all the explanation you're going to get. 1.00

00:30:51.900 Screw you. 0.99

00:30:53.340 Now, you know what? 1.00

00:30:54.160 You know what?

00:30:54.800 Jeff Loeb, this is the first time that he was...

00:30:58.120 Is this the first time he was writing for the mainline Batman series?

00:31:01.240 he wasn't just writing a limited series kind of within continuity but within very early in the

00:31:07.160 continuity so this is i appreciate i respect it i appreciate that he's just like probably

00:31:13.560 speaking to the editor all right what kind of thing do i need to know about the batman or is 0.99

00:31:18.100 it stands right now what kind of stuff am i gonna have to mention she fucked him better oh what the 1.00

00:31:23.080 she's nine years old oh fuck that yeah yep i i would appreciate if they would have done that in 1.00

00:31:28.520 in a harsh sequel, but for the death of Alfred. 0.99

00:31:30.640 Because that has been a problem since Tom King's run.

00:31:33.120 Tom King killed Alfred.

00:31:34.840 Dan DiDio killed Alfred. Okay.

00:31:36.320 Oh, okay.

00:31:37.320 Big continuity dump here.

00:31:38.720 Basically, Bane takes over the city

00:31:40.200 while Batman is in the whole prison from the Dark Knight Rises

00:31:43.160 because Flashpoint Batman comes back

00:31:44.600 and decides to ruin his son's life. It's stupid. 1.00

00:31:46.840 While he's there, Damien tries to break into Wayne Manor 1.00

00:31:49.520 and rescue Alfred, who's being an hostage too.

00:31:52.280 Yeah, Damien's been back for ages. Damien's Robin.

00:31:54.720 Oh, okay. I assume Lazarus Pit?

00:31:56.960 Oh, yeah, no, he got resurrected by some circuitous scheme on Apocalypse.

00:32:02.660 Anyway, what ends up happening is Bane then snapped Alfred's neck,

00:32:06.200 and it was, I know, yeah, he just...

00:32:09.760 He just does it, okay.

00:32:10.600 It's the least dignified thing in the world.

00:32:12.040 Tom King planned to have it be a Scarecrow Fear Toxin fake-out,

00:32:15.300 but Dan DiDio called him when the books were on the shelves and said,

00:32:17.780 Tom, I love it, we're keeping it.

00:32:19.300 He's like, you can't kill Alfred like that, they'll kill me.

00:32:22.460 And he's like, no, love the twist, it's great.

00:32:24.120 This is the same Dan DiDio who's tried to kill Nightwing multiple times

00:32:26.760 because he thinks sidekicks age superheroes.

00:32:30.260 He also, he's no longer working at DC.

00:32:32.800 And after he stopped working at DC,

00:32:34.380 Joshua Williams, Joshua Williamson, I think it's,

00:32:38.160 wrote a Justice League side character arc

00:32:40.940 based on characters from Multiversity and Final Crisis.

00:32:43.980 And two of them get straight, 0.83

00:32:45.120 the black Superman allegory, 0.60

00:32:46.520 you know, the Obama Superman guy.

00:32:47.860 He gets stranded on an earth where there's no superheroes

00:32:49.940 and he starts working for a comic book company.

00:32:51.980 And then he finds out that his evil editor

00:32:53.620 was actually Darkseid in disguise.

00:32:54.920 And it's literally just down to Dio.

00:32:56.640 Fair. I respect that.

00:32:57.980 See, this is the thing about Western comics sometimes,

00:33:01.040 is that the editors love to have the characters

00:33:03.440 in a perfect level of status.

00:33:04.960 I mean, all you have to reference is Spider-Man One More Day.

00:33:07.860 Yeah.

00:33:08.460 Joe Quesada completely ruining all of the character development

00:33:12.060 of Spider-Man so that he could get it back to square one,

00:33:16.440 because that's where he preferred the character to be.

00:33:18.900 One of the reasons that people tend to like a lot of manga

00:33:22.340 in the West, even outside of anything else,

00:33:25.540 is that the characters and stories are allowed to linearly progress without an editor saying that

00:33:32.700 and there's plenty of editorial interference in manga i mean most notoriously if you've ever

00:33:38.700 watched dragon ball uh the cell saga the reason that the main villain of that changes like five

00:33:45.660 times in a row and then the final villain has three separate forms that hastily get stapled

00:33:51.620 on to the story, it's because the editor of that particular story arc was like, you can't have

00:33:56.360 these as the main villain, they look like an old man and his clown. You can't have these replacements

00:34:01.680 as the villain, they just look like a pair of kids. You can't have this guy as the villain,

00:34:05.500 he just looks like a big bug, until eventually the villain ends up looking like a variation of

00:34:11.540 the last main villain from the last story arc. But still, even with all of that said, they're

00:34:16.940 not forcing you to revert everything back to square one all the time they don't need the

00:34:21.440 characters to be in status stasis all of the time you're allowed to have an evolving storyline and

00:34:27.680 so annoying when the editors are like oh you've had all of this you really love this storyline

00:34:32.680 involving Batman and all the trials he's been through and the ways that his character and

00:34:36.520 relationships have developed screw you that's done now if you would like to see the full version of

00:34:42.200 this premium video, please head over to lotuseaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of

00:34:47.640 our premium content.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 01, 2026

PREVIEW： Comics Corner #18 ｜ Batman： Hush

Episode Stats

Transcript