Everyone here is criticising Dini about a character that Jeph Loeb created?!?!

Give Dini a chance! We’ve often seen really crap characters turned into gold by a different writer with a new take… Cat-Man anyone??

Yes, Hush was a bit obvious, but it was still great fun… And Jim Lee’s artwork on the villians was gorgeous!

Looking at the quote from Dini… “Seminal” translates as “best-selling”… The “nuances” he’s referring to may not even be anything that Loeb/Lee did intentionally, but rather something that Dini read into it himself, and that he realised that he could write with…

And… remembering a brilliant interview with Alan Grant for the Judge Dredd Megazine, the Bat-Editors are/were notoriously bad at actually listening to writers, rather they would try to push their own plots/ideas on the writers and re-write accordingly…

Let’s see how it turns out before we slag it off?

and SMILE!

Howard Mackie could take Loeb in a crap write-off, easy.

Howard Mackie is damn awful, but he actually wrote 7 panels in a row once that didn’t have a ridiculous plot hole so even he is somehow more competent than Loeb, sadly.

Loeb’s fault? Not really, but I’m sure the follow-up arc that never materialized would’ve been better than Gotham Knights.

I highly doubt that. I’m sure Loeb’s follow-up would have been even worse, just because it’s rare to find a worse writer than Loeb in ANY medium. I think only Ben Raab seriously has a shot at writing a worse story than Loeb.

Loeb’s fault? Not really, but I’m sure the follow-up arc that never materialized would’ve been better than Gotham Knights.

Well it’s either Loeb’s or the editors – maybe he should of checked with editorial first to see if any of this would be followed up, and if it wasn’t editorial should have told him ‘no’, OR, at least done a few issues to unravel or at least use some of his changes.
Of course, this is the downside to creators doing shorter arcs instead of longer one’s – the next guy wants to tell his own stories instead of finishing someone else’s.
Maybe there should be a rule of thumb for writers (or editors, it’s hard to know who’s at fault these days) – if you don’t want to actually deal with a consequence of your story, then no one else does either, and you shouldn’t put it in there.

And, of course, there’s Countdown, which was pretty much The Diniverse Presents: DC’s Most Forgettable Characters.

“Nuanced” isn’t really the word that comes to mind.

(That said, honestly: some of the stupidest opinions on comics I’ve ever read have come out in interviews with creators whose work I’ve enjoyed. So Dini doesn’t somehow stop being a masterful Batman writer just because he didn’t reject Hush out of hand.)

Was Hush a great story? No. But it was a decent story

No, it wasn’t. Decent is WAY too strong praise for a Jeph Loeb story. Only two levels of Loeb quality: (1) obvious crap and (2) decent on the surface but actually really crappy once you actually think about it.

BRIAN: “Nuh uh!

That is why this piece was accompanied by the snark free goodness of the celebration of Archie Comics Great Experiment of 1989-90!”

So, if one provides snark-free goodness, one is allowed to be snarky at other times? Is there such a thing as Snarkarmic Balance?

What? Fight Club? What is…a movie? Nope, we’ve never heard of it…”
Actually, Bruce Wayne had already done that story WAY before Fight Club, in ‘The Untold Legend of the Batman’ (which anyone who’s enjoying ‘Batman R.I.P.’ should really pick up). Of course, ‘Fight Club’ was written slightly better…

I think you should go stand in a snark free corner for awhile, Brian.

Nuh uh!

That is why this piece was accompanied by the snark free goodness of the celebration of Archie Comics Great Experiment of 1989-90!

Also, I know I’m in the VAST minority (as in, probably the only person ever), but I really liked the Hush Gotham Knights stuff. I mean really, really liked it. I followed Lieberman and Barrionuevo to the Martian Manhunter miniseries, which I also enjoyed.