Chances are that if you’re a Batman fan, you’ve read Batman: Hush. The twelve-issue storyline, which began in 2002, was a blockbuster event that highlighted the “greatest hits” of Batman’s rogues gallery within the sort of satisfying detective story we’ve all come to expect from the Dark Knight. Now, the original creative team is back for H2SH, a sequel storyline kicking off in today’s Batman #158. To give us a sense of what to expect, we sat down with writer Jeph Loeb, penciller Jim Lee and colorist Alex Sinclair to discuss everything about their forthcoming story.

“The first issue of H2SH, I give Batman longer ears,” Lee laughs. “I know Jeph likes the longer ears,” alluding to Loeb’s collaboration with artist Tim Sale on stories like Batman: The Long Halloween.

Of course, for most readers, it’ll take a bit more than tweaking the ears on the Dark Knight’s cowl. Before starting on a sequel to Hush, the creative team reflected on what made the original such a hit with fans. Along with its extensive cast, featuring just about all of Batman’s most popular rogues, Hush, in Jim Lee’s words, “covered all the bases.”

“It touched on all the key moments that make Batman so special to fans,” he points out. “And Jeph made it an evergreen story where you can read it at any time and understand what it is through the story’s spotlight on the Caped Crusader’s relationship with Superman, Jim Gordon and Catwoman.”

Speaking of Catwoman, the original Hush storyline infamously shook up the status quo for Batman when he revealed to Selina Kyle that he was Bruce Wayne and the two began a romance that still impacts their stories today. Deeply conscious of this legacy, the H2SH creative team looked for ways to build upon it.

“I think that was the fun part of this—how do we give the fans what they know and expect from a Hush sequel, but also do something that feels different from what we did twenty years ago?” explains Lee. “And also, add something new to the mythology? I think changing that status quo right off the bat signals to the reader, ‘Hey, you're going to go on another crazy rollercoaster ride and you don't know where this is going to end up, but we have it under control. Just strap yourselves in and trust us.’ I don't think there's any facet of the mythology that we're not going through and saying, ‘Is there a better version of this? Is there a different version of this that feels more fresh or dynamic?’”

Creating a sequel to a story more than twenty years later is no easy feat, but for Loeb, Lee and Sinclair, H2SH provided ample opportunity to show how their craft has developed over the last two decades. For Loeb, it was important for the world to see how much Lee has grown as an artist.

“The thing that Jim said to me that makes me smile the most is, ‘How do I do this where I haven’t done it before, when I’ve done so much?’” he says. “This is somebody who’s looking at it like, no, let’s do it [in a way] that no one’s ever seen it before, with regards to the line work and angles in the artwork.”

Loeb’s also quick to praise the work of Alex Sinclair, who he believes has also pushed himself in a similar manner to Lee. For Sinclair, it was important for the colors of H2SH to not look like the colors from the first story, but rather, evoke a similar feeling “with a new look to it.” Sinclair limited his palette “so that each scene is dictated almost by a single color.”

Speaking with the team, it’s clear that the experience of creating H2SH has been one fueled by mutual admiration and collaboration.

“I have an amazing, gifted collaborator in [inker] Scott Williams, in that he still cares,” Lee enthuses. “And I think that, more than anything, is what robs people of their creativity later in life. It gets harder to care the same way you cared when you were 20 or 30, breaking into this business. What do you do after you’ve been doing that now for decades? How do you keep that passion alive? And Scott is just the consummate professional and draftsman. It’s just wonderful looking at the inks and comparing the pencils and seeing what he elevated, what he tweaked, what he defined, and he’s just killing it right now.”

This element of care permeated the original Hush, and it’s a driving force behind H2SH. To believably create a villain from Bruce Wayne’s past that could seamlessly fit into the Dark Knight’s 21^st century universe, Hush required a great attention to detail. Two decades later, H2SH is continuing in that tradition. As Lee notes, “It’s going to be a wild ride of a story.”

In other words, when you pick up your issue of Batman #158 today, remember to strap yourself in.
 

Batman #158 by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair is now available in print and as a digital comic book.

Jules Chin Greene writes about comics, TV, games and film for DC.com, and his work can also be found at Popverse, Nerdist and Multiverse of Color. You can follow him on Bluesky at @JulesChinGreene and on Instagram at @infinitevibes.