just_fighting_censorship 's review for:

Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison

3.0

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Warning this is not your average Batman comic. This is a surrealist symbolic nightmare. The plot is very simple, the inmates of the Arkham Asylum have taken over and Batman must journey through the asylum facing several of his famous foes. At the same time the reader is kind of getting an Arkham Asylum origin story.

The artwork in this book is what really sets it apart. The graphics are edgy to say the least, very creepy and unsettling but interesting and beautiful in a kind of horrific way.

This edition, the 15th anniversary edition, is split into 2 parts, part one is the comic and part two is the script version of the comic with footnotes from the author. The dreamlike art and imagery can be disorienting combined with the amount of symbolism and allusions make this second part a necessity in order to fully appreciate what the author was trying to achieve.

This book really can’t be read from a plot or canon standpoint it has to be taken in as an art expression more than anything else.

This book was interesting, different, fast paced, eerie, creepy, violent, scary, intense, strange, and visually enticing.