Batman #161 – Crickets On Repeat

I feel broken by this arc, as I find myself lost in my ability to say anything new about Hush 2 with each new issue. Batman #161 suffers from all the same problems the series has faced since the beginning, with little to no sign of retribution outside of Jim Lee’s art and the sheer pleasure that comes from seeing him interpret the modern Batman mythos. The story is as empty of novelty as my ability to critique it—or to point out its positives—is.

At the very least, this issue moves at a significantly faster pace than any of the previous ones. Its lack of writing depth is to blame for this; everything interesting on display amounts to nothing more than a diorama of out-of-character action figures lighting up panels with meaningless conflict. These fights will look excellent in a social media post one day, but they carry no literary weight themselves. There is no reason Barbara, at this point in her career, would snap over Bruce allowing the Joker to live—especially when that concept already been explored in relativity to current continuity, as well as having been handled with far more depth, setup, and impact.

Of course, on the surface, this story still operates within the bounds of continuity, but it clearly doesn’t understand it. Someone told Loeb what happened with Alfred, but he clearly didn’t care to explore the emotional weight of Damian coming to grips with his killer, Bane. The book cuts straight to them teaming up with a convenient handwave. Instead, Loeb leans on the trauma of The Killing Joke and crescendos that into the Bat-family standing up to Batman for his “mistakes”—mistakes, of course, that they would have all supported or even made themselves. It’s also something we’ve already seen, multiple times over the past eight years, and in far more effective and better-constructed ways.

To Jim Lee’s credit, there are isolated moments of grandeur in this issue that—when stripped of the stain Loeb’s script leaves on them—suggest the potential for a much more enticing tale than what we’ve gotten. The brief time Bruce spends with Gordon, though only a few panels, hangs in the air beautifully. It’s striking and immediately immersive. The fights are strong in terms of layout, even if the chatter of Lee’s modern style can at times distract.