Batman #161 review

Within Batman comics there are a number of topics that get brought up pretty frequently as a way of questioning the character’s core premise. I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of them before, if not in comics themselves then in countless fan arguments. “Why doesn’t Batman kill the Joker?”, “Does Batman work better alone?”, etc. They’re the sort of questions that are especially popular from the outside because the real answer often relies on the realities of the superhero genre. The thing about this sort of discourse is that if you’ve read even a moderate amount of comics, you’re probably sick to death of them. They’re never going to be fully addressed, and yet writers can’t help themselves from revisiting them again and again.

That’s why this comic is so frustrating to read. The story is meant to ultimately build up to a civil war within the Bat Family, (which alone is something we’ve seen far too often recently) and needs to come up with justifications for why these allies would suddenly be fighting. As is often the case when this plot is used, there are no good justifications, so what we get are contrivances based on those sorts of tired question. The story is all but forced to simply go down the list, one by one, and explain why each member would feel the need to fight Batman.

First up on that list is Damian. Last issue left off on a couple of big cliffhangers, the first of which is the attack by Hush and his henchman Silence. Hush threatens a scalpel to Damian’s neck, mirroring what Hush/Jason/Clayface did to Tim in the first Batman: Hush story. What this is meant to do is make Batman believe that Damian (and by extension his other allies) are too much of a liability to keep around. Except they clearly aren’t. Pretty much every member of the Bat Family has had to go through the “prove themselves to Batman” phase followed by an extensive solo career, so having him question their abilities just feels like tedious regression. These aren’t civilians caught in the crossfire; they are an obvious asset. In fact, Damian takes care of Hush all on his own with a bird version of the bat sonar lure from Batman: Year One.

Batman’s paranoid tone seems to imply that the growing distrust between him and Damian is all part of Hush’s master plan. For the story to work, the reader needs to buy into the idea that he’s this supreme genius that can manipulate everyone else like pawns on a chessboard.  In fact, that chess motif is behind the naming convention for the individual issues. This would all work better if it seemed like Hush knew how to play chess. I’m by no means Garry Kasparov, but I know enough that the metaphors Hush keeps making about things like en passant and castling don’t actually make any sense.

This would be an incredibly petty and minor thing to criticize about the story, except that it’s emblematic of the fact that throughout the whole thing Hush comes off as a pretentious pseudointellectual. Nothing he does convinces that he’s smarter than everyone else except that everyone else is acting incredibly dumb. I’ll fully eat my words if by the end of this it turns out to be masterfully laid plan, but as of now it’s just scene after scene of Hush talking about how smart he is, and then Batman talking about how smart Hush is. Most of the time this is conveyed through overwritten, purple prose like how Hush’s plan is “more and more like a Russian nesting doll wrapped inside an enigma”.

The other cliffhanger was the fact that Damian brought Bane along with him to help rescue Batman. This was a shock because it raised so many questions. How could Damian be working with the man who killed Alfred? How did he get him out of prison? Now that he’s out, what role will he serve? In my last review I said I was eager to know how the story would answer these. Well let me save you the time: “he just needed someone to help punch the bad guys”, “he just did”, and “nothing, he just gets put right back”. I’m honestly surprised at how much of an anticlimax this subplot ended up being. Why even include Bane in the story? Was seeing him punch Silence for a couple panels that important?

Speaking of unsatisfying cliffhanger resolutions, we can now move down the list to Dick and Jason. Last we left them, their fight was interrupted by Joker waking up and pointing pistols at both of them. Once again, the cliffhanger rests on a pressing question: how will they get out of this alive? Also once again, I will save you time and tell you Joker just misses and they run away. Never mind the fact that they were maybe only ten feet away and Jason was running towards Joker, he just doesn’t hit them.

Part of what makes this scene fall apart is the way Lee draws it. The hows of Batman avoiding gunfire is always a bit of a dance by artists because in any “realistic” scenario, he would have been shot by now. Because this is a superhero comic, genre convention means that you just need to give enough plausible deniability via implied stealth and misdirection for the reader to suspend their disbelief. This does not do that. Jason charges at Joker who fires wildly, missing every shot. In fact, the misses are so wildly off target that you almost get the impression that it’s on purpose (but if so, then why?) Moreover, Dick somehow tackles Jason away from Joker despite being behind him. Jim Lee’s pencils are very pretty to look at, but the first goal of art in a comic is to convey the story, and this fails at that.

Finally we get to the last Bat Family member on the list and see what has turned Barbara against Batman. Theoretically this should be the easiest one, as of all his allies Barbara is the one Bruce has kept most at arm’s length (after maybe Steph). Unfortunately, this is where we dip into the “why hasn’t Batman killed the Joker?” discourse. I won’t disagree that, of anyone short of maybe Jason, Barbara has the most reason to want him dead, but also just like Jason, we’ve already done this. Not only is the question pointless from a meta perspective where we know the Joker will never die, but comics have already addressed the fallout from The Killing Joke and Sarah Essen’s death numerous times. To have it suddenly be an enormous issue where they come to blows because of the nonsensical way Batman saved the Joker last issue feels contrived and out of character for everyone involved. It’s that sentiment which really just summarizes the whole story.

Are there any allies Batman hasn’t done this to at this point?

Recommended If

• You just need any justification to see the Bat Family fight
• Hush is like, super smart you guys
• You love old drama revisited

Overall

If the first Hush story was a showcase to introduce all the characters in Gotham to new readers, H2SH is shaping up to be an demonstration of why you should hate them. It dredges up old drama settled decades ago coupled with nonsensical character behavior in order to manufacture a reason why they would all turn against one another. All of this in service of a plot where the Bat Family once again fights in a sort of civil war, but this time it’s all being orchestrated by Hush, who we know is a genius mastermind because they keep telling us so.

Score: 2.5/10

DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.