4. Bad Plotting Rules Everything In Hush
So Batman tediously faces classic villain after classic villain but why? What are they supposed to be doing? What was Poison Ivy's role in intoxicating Superman to fight Batman was she meant to kill Batman via Superman? But that would make the rest of Hush's plan obsolete not to mention ruin his ego he wants to be the guy who defeats Batman/Bruce Wayne. So why are the villains fighting Batman, what's their goal - to distract him? Get him onto the next villain for another pointless fight and on and on until he gets to Hush? No idea. It's completely arbitrary. These are a series of disposable encounters we've seen Batman face a thousand times before that have no point to them. If Hush is designed for readers who don't normally read Batman and just want to pick up a standalone book to read, it goes through the Batman catalogue trotting out his greatest hits for their benefit, but this still doesn't excuse the flaws in the story. New Batman readers shouldn't be condescended to: look, here's Batman fighting Superman/Joker/whoever, that's good right?! No, it's shallow, rushed storytelling at best and tells you nothing at all about the character. The Batman/Catwoman romance was utterly trite and of course fizzled out into nothing their on/off romance is "on" in this book until it's "off". The Jason Todd bait-and-switch was cheap. Loeb's writing and plotting in this book is among the worst writing Batman's ever had.