By: Paul Dini (writer), Dustin Nguyen (pencils), Derek Fridolfs (inks), John Kalisz (colors) & Steve Wands (letters)
Two-Face Back-up Story: Ivan Brandon (writer), Ramon Bachs (pencils), John Lucas (inks), Nick Filardi (colors) & Travis Lanham (letters)
The Story: With Bruce Wayne “coming back” someone is going to have to do something about Hush who has been posing as Bruce for the last year or so…
What’s Good: For as all-inclusive as Morrison’s epic Bat-story has been, I find it very odd that he has left this piece almost completely alone. Namely, since Bruce’s “death”, Paul Dini has had Hush assuming Bruce’s identity. I thought it was a clever bit of storytelling because it has certainly avoided the public question of “What happened to Bruce Wayne?” and Dini did some neat things with the story when he had Hush attempt to spend the Wayne family into oblivion by donating ALL of their money to charity.
This story arc is very clearly someone at DC reminding Dini that he needs to clean up his toys before Grant “Daddy” Morrison gets home from work and finds Hush living as Bruce Wayne. How awkward would that be? But, where Dini excels is in making this more than a “taking out the trash” level of story. He manages to have Hush continuing to do dastardly things right up until the (apparent) end as he is using his influence as “Bruce” to get psychos released from Arkham. At least Bruce/Dick/Tim/Damien/Steph will have a lot to do in the months ahead!
Also excellent is the Ivan Brandon-penned back-up featuring Two-Face. I’ve never loved Two-Face, but this series of back-ups from Brandon has made him a lot more interesting for me. I won’t spoil the pay off, but it starts to answer the question of whether Two-Face’s psychotic cup is really half-full or half-empty.
I didn’t think that Nguyen’s art was quite as vibrant as I’ve seen in the past. He’s also the incoming artist on Batgirl, so it could well be that he had double-duty this month and had to rush a bit. He remains a real master of using heavy blacks as negative space (much like Chris Samnee) which is a different look and one that I enjoy. Also, who knew that Zatanna owned such a modest dress? Or did she wear that get-up because she was revolted by wearing her normal attire around Hush?
What’s Not So Good: Although I did appreciate the effort that Dini put into this story, I just don’t enjoy the angle of a long-lost gangster being used as a plot device to remove Hush. I found this gangster and all the old back-stories about how all these people have been intertwined for decades to be boring and that kinda pulled the whole story down a few notches for me. Sorry….
Conclusion: Necessary house-keeping is going on in this issue. Lots of fun if you want to see Hush get his or if you want to see a neat Two-Face story, but not essential reading.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion