BATMAN: HUSH

It may seem like I've been covering comics a lot here lately, but there are a lot I read that I just don't get around to posting about. This one probably would have fallen into that category if I hadn't checked out Sean Collins's nuclear f-bomb rant about it. It's funny--I wouldn't disagree with any of his criticisms, and most of them occurred to me in my own reading, but rather than come away from Hush with fire-breathing outrage, I actually found it stupidly enjoyable.

Of course Sean and I have different critical perspectives, but I'd guess our wildly divergent reactions are more rooted in the fact that he followed the story over the course of its year-long run in monthly floppies, whereas I polished off the graphic novel in a couple of sittings. I've devoted a previous post to the notion that some superhero events benefit from the monthly pamphlet format and actually suffer from being collected in a graphic novel (and I suspect Blackest Night will fall very firmly into that category), but Hush strikes me as the kind of pop-confection best consumed on a binge, and I can certainly understand how someone who's carried it around somewhere in their mind for a year would react exactly the way Sean did. I can't imagine it repaying that kind of investment, but wow, was it a treat to gorge for a couple of afternoons on the eye-candy Jim Lee served up here. He's always been about the power-poses, but I'm picturing a script with the word "ICONIC!!!" manically scrawled into the margin next to every other panel-breakdown or scene description. It's almost like a collection of disconnected pinups arranged into something like a narrative, with just enough other panels thrown in to serve as minimal connective tissue. Yeah, it's rubbish as far as story is concerned, but surface does matter in visual media, and there's something to be said for a surface as slick and appealing as we find in Hush.