Hush (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Hush is a DC Comics supervillain who first appeared in Batman #609 in January 2003. Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee created him for the twelve-issue storyline Batman: Hush. He was designed as a mirror held up to Batman. His background runs parallel to the hero's, and he shows what Batman might have become with an abusive family and a habit of using his gifts for malice. Hush belongs to Batman's rogues' gallery and lives in Gotham City. His real name is Dr. Thomas "Tommy" Elliot. What happens to a brilliant boy when envy hardens into a lifelong project? And why would a villain with every reason to destroy Batman put so much effort into taking over Bruce Wayne's life instead?

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• 2. A Rich Boy's Education

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  Before he was a villain, Tommy Elliot played a strategy game with Bruce Wayne. It used miniature figures and resembled Stratego. Tommy taught his friend to think like an opponent and to turn the opponent's own strengths against them. Those lessons proved useful years later, when Bruce became Batman. Both boys were born into wealth, and Tommy's genius for planning was already clear.

  Inside the Elliot house, the picture was darker. Tommy despised his abusive father. He also despised his frail, submissive mother, who came from poverty and endured every abuse aimed at her and her son to protect a lavish lifestyle. Still, his parents made sure he was well educated. His mother taught him the philosophy of Aristotle, hoping it would help her cope passively with her husband's cruelty without accepting it. As an adult, Tommy often quoted Aristotle.

  Driven by a wish for independence and money, Tommy cut the brake line on his parents' car. The crash killed his father and injured his mother. Dr. Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father, saved her life in an emergency operation, and that rescue enraged the young Elliot. Later, at a summer camp with Bruce, Tommy attacked a boy and ended up in a psychiatric ward. He blamed Bruce and his own mother for the outburst. An intern named Jonathan Crane, who would become the villain Scarecrow, released him.

  When Bruce's parents were murdered, Tommy resented the boy who inherited the Wayne fortune. It was the very prize he had hoped to take from his own family. Shortly before Bruce returned to Gotham City, Tommy befriended a young woman named Peyton Riley, who later became the second Ventriloquist. His mother never approved. After she recovered from cancer, she disowned him over the relationship and cut him off from the Elliot money. Tommy smothered her with a pillow. Peyton killed the family lawyer and destroyed the new will. The world believed Mrs. Elliot had died in a household accident.

  Now the sole heir, Tommy abandoned Peyton and traveled the world, as Bruce had. He attended Harvard University and became a successful surgeon. Even so, his irrational grudge against his childhood friend never faded. The spark that finally set it off came from a man who had learned a secret about Bruce.

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• 3. The Riddler's Bargain

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  Edward Nygma, the Riddler, was diagnosed with terminal cancer at some point in his career. He hijacked one of Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pits to regain his health. The pit's mystical treatment renders its participant temporarily insane. During it, the Riddler had an unexpected epiphany: Bruce Wayne was Batman.

  Soon afterward, the Riddler tried to sell that secret to Tommy for a large sum of cash. Tommy had by then discovered Nygma's criminal background, so he answered with a different offer. He would pay the Riddler to kill Bruce. The two men realized they shared a hatred for Wayne, and they decided to pool their resources.

  A lullaby, "Hush, Little Baby", finished what a joke had started. According to the Riddler, the name "Hush" began as a quip about keeping Tommy's identity secret. It became permanent when Scarecrow started singing the song. Tommy wrapped his face in bandages to hide who he was, and he built the persona as an antithesis to Batman.

  Their plan used Batman's own enemies as pawns. The Joker, Harley Quinn, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Killer Croc and Clayface all helped without knowing it. Close allies were turned against the hero as well, including Superman, Huntress and Catwoman. Poison Ivy's pheromones controlled Superman, while Hush appeared to fund Huntress's vigilante activities out of kindness.

  One trick involved a fake death. Clayface took the shape of Tommy's corpse, and Bruce was led to believe the Joker had murdered his old friend. Jason Todd, who had been believed dead for years, joined the pact and shared his insight into how Batman thought. Clayface built a decoy of the former Robin. At Todd's gravesite, the conspirators used Batman's guilt over his ward's apparent death against him.

  Harold Allnut, a longtime associate of Batman, was disfigured until Hush cured him. In return, Harold bugged the Batcave with devices that altered Batman's mind. He stayed loyal all the same, certain that Batman would triumph. Hush killed him in front of Batman and attacked at once. Batman was disoriented when his attacker quoted Aristotle, and he briefly wondered if he faced Maxie Zeus. Then he noticed the two-gun fighting style of Deadshot and guessed the man was either the assassin or a protégé.

  Harvey Dent decided the final clash. Tommy revealed himself to a worn-out Batman, and only Dent's intervention saved the hero. Tommy had unwittingly wiped out Dent's Two-Face persona when he repaired Dent's disfigured face. Back on the side of the law, Dent shot Hush twice and threw him off a bridge. Batman was sure the man was his childhood friend, but he could not unmask him.

  In 2022, a 20th anniversary edition of the original storyline added a new epilogue by its creators. Hush escaped to an air pocket in a sunken boat at the bottom of the Gotham river. He operated on himself to remove the two bullets from Dent's gun, then crawled ashore. There he ran into Harley Quinn and the Joker, who put a gun to his head. The epilogue ends with the words To Be Continued.

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• 4. The Pacemaker

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  Beating the Riddler to within an inch of his life announced Hush's return. He drove the Joker out of Gotham, proving he could be a threat to the Clown Prince. He also killed Poison Ivy for a time during a failed attempt to recruit her. After a short-lived alliance with Prometheus, a nemesis of the Justice League, Hush turned to tormenting Bruce Wayne with help from Clayface.

  Clayface's shapeshifting let Hush cast doubt on his own identity. It also let him frame Alfred Pennyworth for murder. Using samples taken from the new Clayface, Hush infected Alfred with a virus that would let Elliot control him. Hush also tried to duplicate the shapeshifting for himself without side effects such as losing a default human form. To perfect the analysis, he freed Cassius Payne from prison. Cassius was the only "pure" Clayface, the only one who had never been human. These events fill issues 50 to 55 and 61 to 72 of Batman: Gotham Knights.

  Clayface eventually realized he was being manipulated. He gave Batman a sample of himself so a cure for Alfred could be found. He also arranged for his final appearance after death to be a form whose fingerprints closely matched Alfred's, so detectives would assume they had made a mistake and clear Alfred's name.

  The Joker came back to Gotham City with an army of trained pigeons and struck back in Batman: Gotham Knights #73-74. He captured Hush and kept him sedated for three weeks. During that time he implanted a pacemaker in Hush's body, which gave him control of Hush's heart. Unable to remove the device himself, Hush turned to the one man he felt he could trust, or at least predict: Bruce Wayne.

  Bruce agreed to help on one condition. Hush had to be treated in Arkham Asylum and confined there. Hush accepted, then escaped the moment he was told the surgery had succeeded. Batman intercepted him before he could reach the Joker. Hush demanded permission to kill the Joker, and Batman seemed to agree and began to walk away. Then he revealed the trick. The pacemaker was still in Hush's body, and he had been allowed to escape. The Joker arrived, and Hush begged Batman not to leave.

  The issue and the Gotham Knights series ended without resolution. A later Man-Bat miniseries shows Hush remembering how painful it was to remove the pacemaker alone. He spent the time before his next story recovering from the damage, confirming that Batman had walked away from him.

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• 5. The Surgeon Returns

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  Detective Comics #846 through #850 told the story "Heart of Hush", which ties into "Batman R.I.P." and is set a few nights before it. This time Hush's career as a surgeon shaped how he worked. In the first issue, he says whispers of the Black Glove's coming attack on Batman hastened his return. He wanted to stop the Black Glove from killing Batman, because he saw that right as his alone.

  In the second part, Hush teamed up with Scarecrow. He performed routine plastic surgery on his own face, and the result was later revealed to be nearly identical to Bruce Wayne's.

  Catwoman scratched away part of Hush's facial bandages and recoiled in horror at what she saw. Hush ambushed and subdued her. He cut out her heart, placed her on life support supplied by Mr. Freeze, and delivered her to Gotham General Hospital.

  Doctor Mid-Nite took over Catwoman's care while Batman learned the location of Hush's headquarters from Scarecrow. There Hush hit him with a paralytic gas and showed him the room where Catwoman's heart was kept alive by artificial means. Then he confessed his plan. With his new resemblance to Bruce, he would kill and disfigure him and steal his identity. He would also eliminate the people who knew Bruce best. Afterward he would retire with the Wayne fortune, reasoning that Batman's fellow heroes would accept that Batman had earned the right to end his career.

  Batman fought off the gas, recovered the heart and warned Alfred about the deception. Alfred disarmed Elliot, but Hush reached the Batcave and nearly killed Batman. Alfred's continued interference and the arrival of Nightwing and Robin turned the tide. Hush fled on the Whirly-Bat, a one-man helicopter, until his bandages tangled in the rotor and the craft exploded.

  Only bloody bandages turned up. Batman, Nightwing and Robin concluded that Hush was dead. Doctor Mid-Nite surgically restored Catwoman's heart but noted she would probably never regain her physical prowess. While she convalesced, she and her allies found all of Hush's secret bank accounts and looted the money. She recorded the theft on video and left it for Hush to find, in case he had survived. He had. Wounded and on crutches, he watched the video and limped away.

  Posing as Bruce Wayne, Hush later traveled to Australia and Vietnam to loot the cash accounts of Wayne Enterprises subsidiaries. Catwoman, along with Nightwing and Robin, captured him and locked him in a secret safe house. Still wearing Bruce's appearance, he decided to fake a surrender and wait for the right moment to escape.

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• 6. Wearing Bruce's Face

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  A chess game began Hush's next chapter. In Streets of Gotham, Damian Wayne, Batman's biological son, visited the cell as the new Robin, and the two played. When Damian left to deal with a new crisis, Hush guessed that Firefly was behind the attack. He also noted that Gotham City had fallen apart in Batman's absence, and he began to think about how to profit. He faked spontaneous combustion, overpowered Alfred when the butler came to help, and escaped.

  He then re-emerged as Bruce Wayne, promising to donate a billion dollars a month to Gotham until its financial crisis ended. Dick Grayson and Damian, along with the Outsiders and other heroes, told him he would always be watched. The other heroes would act as a "board of directors" to supervise his financial dealings, and someone would always be ready to take him down. With no other option, Hush reluctantly agreed to play Dick's puppet. His impersonation kept the public from realizing that Bruce was dead. It ruined his plan to drain the Wayne fortune, but he kept scheming and sat on the Gotham Shield Committee, making connections.

  Ra's al Ghul came to Gotham promising to ruin the Wayne family in revenge against Red Robin, and he sought out Hush at once. Tim Drake feared that Hush might turn on the Bat-family with Ra's al Ghul's support. He activated a contingency plan that Wayne himself had arranged, which transferred controlling interest in Wayne Enterprises to Drake "if something should happen". That left Hush with no official standing in the company.

  The arc "House of Hush" began in Streets of Gotham #14. In his role as Bruce, Hush pushed boundaries, such as recommending that convicted criminals be allowed back on the streets. The plan backfired. A criminal known as Jane Doe, a woman who had lost her face in an accident and had taken to cutting off the faces of others, became obsessed with "Bruce Wayne" after he had her released. She took the face of his new assistant to infiltrate his life, then cut off Elliot's new face, intending to become Bruce Wayne herself.

  The returned Bruce Wayne, once again acting as Batman, caught her and Hush. Both went to Arkham. Bruce declared that he was Batman's financial backer, which made any attempt by Hush to expose his identity basically irrelevant.

  In Batman: Gates of Gotham, a new villain called the Architect freed Hush from Arkham. Red Robin, Batman and Blackbat realized that the Elliot family was linked to a series of bombings that destroyed three historical Gotham bridges. Batman found Hush, whom the Architect had betrayed and strapped to a bomb. To save his life, Batman had to sacrifice Wayne Tower.

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• 7. Rewrites and Alternates

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  In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity, and Hush entered the new timeline in issue twenty-one of Batman Eternal. He appeared as the apparent mastermind behind Commissioner Gordon's downfall and the return of Carmine Falcone. After injecting Alfred with fear toxin, he was seen discussing with Jason Bard how to take control of Gotham.

  Issue twenty-six revised his origin. He was still Tommy Elliot, but his killing of his parents was now explicitly a way to get closer to Bruce, who had started distancing himself from Tommy after his own parents died. It no longer served as a route to an inheritance or an escape from abuse and neglect.

  Hush turned public opinion against Wayne Enterprises by blowing up one of Batman's hidden weapon caches under Gotham. The cache was known to be linked to Wayne Enterprises after the events of Batman Incorporated. Using DNA taken from Alfred Pennyworth to get inside, Hush killed an unknown number of civilians, police officers and military personnel. After a second explosion, Julia Pennyworth shot him through the shoulder with a grappling hook. Hush then gave Batman his location, wanting a final showdown. They fought in a weapon cache beneath the Martha Wayne Foundation hospital, which Hush had rigged to explode as a backup. Batman won, but learned that the government had seized Wayne Enterprises and its holdings because of the explosions. Hush taunted him: "Maybe you're right Bruce, maybe I'm not you. But right now, who would want to be?"

  Kept prisoner in the Batcave, Hush broke out with help from the then unknown mastermind behind the current threat. He sabotaged the equipment of several Batman Family members through the Batcomputer while they fought other villains, even crashing the Batwing with Batman inside. Alfred ambushed him and put him back in captivity.

  In All-Star Batman #10, Hush secretly allied with Penguin, Black Mask and Great White Shark. Together they tricked Batman into obtaining a MacGuffin called the Genesis engine. The ruse worked, but the new villain Nemesis then ambushed the group and nearly murdered them.

  After the Rebirth relaunch, Hush appeared in a single panel of Batman (vol. 3) #19 as an Arkham inmate beaten up by Bane. In the one-shot Batman: Prelude to the Wedding: Nightwing vs. Hush #1, the Joker tipped him off to Batman's upcoming wedding. Hush attacked the bachelor party, using an explosion to distract Superman. His attack disrupted a dimensional gate meant to carry Batman to a peaceful pocket universe, and Hush and Nightwing were trapped in an in-between place for people who have lost all sense of identity. Hush's rants showed he could not build a life outside his obsession with Bruce. He had even given himself plastic surgery to look like Dick Grayson, hoping to recapture his old friendship with Bruce. In the end, he was left behind in the pocket dimension.

  Batman (vol. 3) #70 showed Hush back in Arkham, one of several villains Batman beat up while escaping. He later served in the police force Bane created after taking over Gotham's institutions, probably kept obedient by the Psycho Pirate's hypnosis. In Detective Comics #1031, Hush used the chaos of an anti-vigilante riot to drug and kidnap Batwoman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Signal and two Batgirls, Barbara Gordon and Cassandra Cain. He planned to harvest their organs for the black market, but Batman and Damian Wayne stopped him. The story also revealed that Hush had tried to have Bruce murdered as a boy. A GCPD detective named Catherine covered up the attempts by botching the investigations.

  Other worlds reshaped him further. In Batman Beyond (vol. 3), two Hushes appear: Tommy Elliot and a clone of Dick Grayson. Years earlier, a homeowner shot Elliot after he broke into the house to escape Bruce. Bruce could not examine the body and feared Elliot had faked his death. In the present, the clone becomes a masked vigilante who hunts Bruce's rogues' gallery, believing that will orphan Bruce again. Terry McGinnis resists, but Grayson's memories let the clone outmaneuver him. Amanda Waller had created the clone from the original Grayson's DNA and memory readings taken on his last outing as Nightwing, hoping for someone easier to control. Her associate Doctor Nora Reid, the clone's co-creator, turns out to be Elliot's granddaughter, seeking to atone for his sins. When the clone tries to cause an earthquake to destroy Gotham, Terry accidentally kills him, and Waller forces Reid to take the blame.

  In Flashpoint, an alternate Hush makes a cameo among criminals killed by Batman. In Superman/Batman #17, Batman uses the Legion of Super-Villains' time-travel technology to avert his parents' deaths. He creates a timeline in which he and Elliot stay friends as adults.

  The darkest variant appears in Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Batman - Hush. There, the driver Elliot hired to kill his parents killed Thomas and Martha Wayne by mistake, and Elliot's family adopted the orphaned Bruce. Bruce seemingly succumbed to psychosis and was sent to Arkham Asylum. Elliot inherited Wayne Industries and became a senator in the oppressive city-state of Gotham. Bruce deposed him, having faked his psychosis and used his time in Arkham to train himself as a vigilante called Batman the Silenced.

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• 8. On Screen

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  Hush has had a surprisingly rocky road to the screen. He was once planned for a cancelled release connected to The Batman. He was then set to appear in the episode "Rumors", but the series replaced him with an original character named Rumor, voiced by Ron Perlman.

  Cole Vallis played Tommy Elliot in the first season of Gotham, and Gordon Winarick took the role in the fourth. This version is a student at Anders Preparatory Academy who bullies Bruce Wayne at first, then apologizes and becomes his friend. In Batwoman, Gabriel Mann plays Tommy Elliot / Hush, and Warren Christie plays him while he is disguised as Bruce Wayne. That version is a real estate mogul with a grudge against Wayne Enterprises, who indirectly helped cause the death of Lucius Fox.

  In film, Dave B. Mitchell voices a cameo of Hush in Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs. Mutants. The 2019 film Batman: Hush features Tommy Elliot, voiced by Maury Sterling, and an original incarnation of Hush in Edward Nygma, voiced by Geoffrey Arend. In Batman: Death in the Family, from 2020, Jason Todd is the original incarnation of Hush, voiced by Vincent Martella.

  Video games gave him the most room. J. Shannon Weaver voices Hush in DC Universe Online, and he is a character summon in Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure. In Batman: Arkham City, Kevin Conroy voices Tommy Elliot as a serial killer nicknamed the "Identity Thief". He dissects his victims' faces to reconstruct Bruce Wayne's face and graft it onto himself. Elliot joins the super-prison's medical team to steal anesthetics before cutting off his own face. After he kills several inmates to complete the artificial face, Batman discovers his work, but Elliot escapes.

  Conroy returns in Batman: Arkham Knight. While Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight take over Gotham City, Elliot infiltrates Wayne Tower by impersonating Bruce and holds Lucius Fox hostage to steal Bruce's fortune. During the rescue, Batman unmasks himself, disarms Elliot, knocks him out with Lucius's help and detains him in the tower's vault. A prequel comic shows Elliot, after escaping Arkham City, receiving a sample of Clayface's body from the Arkham Knight in exchange for an alliance. He uses it to quickly heal his surgery scars.

  Hush is also a playable character in the mobile version of Injustice 2. In the Lego games, he is an unlockable character in Lego Batman: The Videogame and Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. Cam Clarke voices him as an optional boss and unlockable character in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes.

  The most unusual appearance is on a podcast. Taran Killam plays Hush on WHO ME?, a Batman podcast hosted by Bobby Moynihan. Killam's version walks in to "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo.

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