"Hush" to Judgment: A critical look at Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee's Batman
Written by Sean T. Collins
Published October 01, 2003
Published October 01, 2003
Making the solution to your mystery painfully obvious, obscuring it by the basest and most-braindead tricks of narrative and genre available to you, then whipping it back out at the end and calling it a twist isn't clever--it's fraudulent. Inserting plot and character developments that hold the seeds of their own negation and proscription within them is a cop-out. And calling your story "Hush" should never, ever stop anyone from telling you to, in writing terms, shut the hell up.
Sean T. Collins is a superstitious, cowardly writer. He blogs at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, where this post originally appeared.
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- "Hush" to Judgment: A critical look at Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee's Batman
- Published: October 01, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: Comics and Graphic Novels, Books: Mystery, Books: SF
- Writer: Sean T. Collins
- Sean T. Collins's BC Writer page
- Sean T. Collins's personal site
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Well said.
I've enjoyed a lot of Loeb's work ("Superman for All Seasons," for one, and, yes, the "Yellow/Red/Blue" origin retellings, too), but this just plain reads too much as "I'm going to put my stamp on things, badly, no matter how much I stomp all over continuity, 'cause, man, I've got Jim Lee drawing this stuff!"
And, tell me, was it a cheaper trick to pretend that Jason Todd (!) was back, or to have it turn out not to actually be Jacon Todd?
The "anyone can be the villain, and we'll pretend everyone is for one or more issues" schtick was passable in "The Long Halloween," but here it just got wearisome. I was more than ready for Part 12, and was most disappointed to find it the weakest issue of the series.
Bah.