Lee at his worst is not unlike Neal Adams at his worst, obsessed with "realism" yet divorced from reality, consumed with what and how he is drawing yet never really stopping to consider why. Why, for example, do we need to see painstakingly accurate portrayals of the bottom of Batman's boots not once but twice? Unlike the identity of Hush himself, that one really is a mystery.

So you had the offensively stupid and badly-constructed "twist," the plotless plot, the occasionally Yngwie-Malmsteenish art. What else is there? Oh yeah--the fact that not a goddamn thing that happened in this book matters a goddamn bit. Sure, Batman and Catwoman are now "together," but if you asked nine out of ten non-fanboys (they're easy to spot--they're the ones who didn't read this book) I'm sure they'd tell you that Bats and Cats were already an item.

Capitalizing on the sexual tension between two gorgeous PVC-wearing nocturnal vigilantes--ooh, that's a tough row to hoe! And sure, the brand new character (whose name was Thomas Elliott, if that matters, which I assure you it does not) was killed too--no, for real this time, it was in the last issue after he'd already come back from the dead so they couldn't possibly bring him back again, hey we all saw him get shot right in the bulletproof armor and fall off the conveniently placed bridge into the flowing river that i guess moved his body downstream and out to sea where no one could find it, but he's got to be dead, I mean, would Jeph Loeb lie about something like that?

Another major, sure-to-be-permanent change in the Bat-mythos is that Two-Face is now one-faced once again. (Funny thing, though--why does this plot development seem so familiar? Oh, right.) Yes, a little plastic surgery and the bipolar baddie is suddenly handsome and one of the good guys, pretty much. Gee, that'll last--about as long as the Supermullet. Indeed, Loeb has threatened promised to deal with the ramifications of "Hush" (hee hee! oh wait, he's serious) in his return to Batman a few months from now, and if he doesn't re-two-face ol' Two-Face, I'll eat my mammyjamming hat. So the only realy difference made in the lives of Batman, or any other character for that matter, is that Catwoman and the Riddler (turns out he was helping old Tom do all this bad stuff to Batman--see, now the Riddler's a threat as he never has been before! All that stuff had his fingerprints all over it!

Oh wait, no it fucking didn't) joined the I Know Batman's Secret Identity Club. This exclusive club already has had more members than Jenna Jameson's jellyroll, so you'll pardon me if I say "whoop-de-shit." Anyone who's ever even put on a Halloween costume in Gotham City knows how Bruce Wayne spends his Saturday nights. This pathetic "change in the status quo" is rendered even more pathetic by the lengths to which Loeb goes to assure the reader (and presumably AOL Time Warner) that nothing will really change: Catwoman's firmly (heh heh) on the side of the angels now, so she won't use this new information for evil (and again, every normal person on earth, to the extent that they think about such things at all, already thinks that Batman and Catwoman are BFF, so who gives a shit?); Batman makes a point of telling the readers his nervous editors Paul Levitz the Riddler that the green-wearing villain's secret vis a vis Bats is useless if he actually tries to do anything with it, because Batman will essentially have him killed if he squeals. ("Wait, isn't that, like, against Batman's entire moral code?" "Um...no one draws women like Jim Lee draws women!")