Ugh… Awful. Okay. I take it back. This book wasn’t awful… I'm just disappointed. I was expecting a lot more from Paul Dini. I am, in no way, shape, or form, the least concerned about Bruce’s safety from the “threat” of Hush. How can someone who has so completely misjudged Bruce’s character, motivations, and goals throughout his entire life be expected to predict his every move? If Hush thinks Batman has had some personal axe to grind against him his entire life (when we all know he clearly doesn’t and never has), won’t that affect what he thinks Bruce will do and why?
And please, enough with the flashbacks. The ten year old Tommy Elliot was a creepy, egomaniacal, psychotic, murderous brat. I get it. And I have no interest in hearing any more about it. What I know so far stretches my believability tolerance to the limit, so, please, let’s just move on with the present storyline. (I get that the flashback in this issue set up the Scarecrow reveal, but if Hush is calling him his “mentor,” shouldn’t he have been a little more heavily involved in the original Hush storyline? And doesn’t that mean Scarecrow should probably know that Batman is Bruce Wayne, too? I might be nitpicking, but if you’re going to have a villain so heavily involved in Batman’s past, you better make sure everything lines up precisely.)
Plus, this book had even less to do with Batman RIP than Nightwing did. It’s clearly not happening concurrently, so why even throw the RIP logo on there? I was not impressed. I’ll keep reading to see how this turns out, but there’s going to need to be a serious ramping up of the awesomeness for this story arc to be redeemed, and I’m a little less than optimistic.
Story: 1 - Poor
Art: 3 - Good
