Been away from comics for awhile.
Someone bring me up to date with this storyline…please.
SPOILERS GALORE!
Batman is injured badly during a nightly patrol, causing some sort of brain swelling, IIRC, and he has to turn to a boyhood friend, Tommy, who is now a renowned neurosurgeon, for help. Tommy’s mother had died when Tommy was a boy – Bruce’s father was unable to save her after a car crash, but did save his father.
Meanwhile, a kidnapping that was unusually intelligent by the Killer Croc leads Batman to Metropolis, where he finds that Superman has been swayed by Poison Ivy, just the first of many attacks on people close to Batman’s secret identity who shouldn’t be aware of the Wayne/Batman connection.
Batman stumbles into a romance with Catwoman, which proves fortuitous as she helps him escape some close calls. He reveals his true identity to her, needing to reach out to someone, and together they attempt to find who it is that’s tearing his life apart.
And they find Hush – who is Jason Todd. But it’s not Jason Todd, it’s Clayface pretending to be Jason Todd. Jason’s grave is empty, and Batman is terrified that whoever has Jason’s body might place him in one of Rha’s Al Ghul’s pits and ressurect him.
Further tracking and fighting runs him and his friends, including Jim Gordon and others, through a wringer. He’s saved by Harvey Dent when in one tight spot – and it’s really Harvey Dent, plastic surgery has repaired him.
Eventually, Batman finds Harold, his old handyman, who has also been restored by a [ahem] skilled surgeon (getting obvious yet?) before being killed, leading to a final confrontation where Hush is revealed to be Tommy. Tommy had hated Bruce for years – not because Bruce’s dad had failed to save his mother, but because he’d saved his father. Tommy had wanted his parents to die in the rigged car so that he could get everything.
Once he found out that Bruce was also Batman, he concocted this plan to destroy him. Ruckus ensues, Hush escapes. Harvey Dent is arrested for murdering the Joker (I believe) in the tight spot Batman had been in earlier, but it was, again, Clayface, so the charges aren’t going to stick. Batman realizes who it was who had been pulling the strings all along:
The Riddler, who had been involved in one strange little heist early in the story, but conveniently got himself caught. He figured out Bruce’s real identity, and tracked down Tommy. They directed the other madmen, but never let them in on the secret. Riddler tries to blackmail Batman, but Bats isn’t frightened – his true identity is the greatest riddle the Riddler has ever solved, but if he told everyone, then the riddle and its answer would be valueless. His psychosis won’t allow that. Batman is safe.
However, he’s also increasingly paranoid, having been betrayed by his best friend, and he breaks off his relationship with Selina after she tells him to “hush” at an inopportune time. Hearts rend, tears are shed, and the Dark Knight goes off on his own.
I’m not going it justice. This was a brilliant arc. Frankly, I’d like to see all Batman and Superman stories be handled as well – take the main titles and turn them into creative team vehicles, and give us 12-issue arcs that draw from the entirety of a character’s universe, while still evolving it and adding to the canon. I loved it.
Read it.
If you were nearby, I’d lend you my copies.