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A review by jacobg
Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison
3.0
For a while when I was younger I considered this to be my favourite Batman comic. It was the first one that made me realise how Batman isn’t as high and mighty as he believes himself to be, how hellish his fight really is, and how the line between him and the bad guys is very blurred at times. But as I got older, I realised just how often this story was told and just how well it has been done in other places. I think the best display of this would be in The Dark Knight or the Killing Joke, but it tends to be an underlying theme. However, this might be because of this comic, so go you Grant…But how does this comic hold up then?
Well…not as well as you’d hope.
Ok, so the plot is simple but effective. Batman’s rogue gallery takes over the Asylum and have one simple demand; Batman must spend the night in the asylum with them. Has potential, doesn’t it? You can see where the discussions about insanity and the subconscious would come into play…but it’s all kind of simplified. All they make Batman do is a Rorschach test and play a game of hide and seek, and whilst Grant might say in the script (more on that in a bit) that Batman goes through a drastic rebuilding, I don’t really believe he does. Because Grant explicitly states that Batman fears he is insane already in the beginning, so Batman doesn’t really have any development, it is just people telling him things he has already thought about, so that kind of diminishes the impact of it. Of course, you can say something about how he is just a guy in a costume, of course he is going to be afraid, but isn’t it a part of his character that Batman honestly believes himself to be above the criminals he beats to a pulp, so it seems to go against the character to do this from the get go. Why not just make him as arrogant and all powerful as he believes himself to be and then steadily break him down? You have an overly sexual Joker at play here, use that (is this where Jared Leto got his inspiration for his 15 minutes of fame in Suicide Squad?). So, there is no real breaking of the character, and thus no rebuilding. As much as Grant likes a rebirth symbol (when I get to the script I’ll explain this a bit more), it doesn’t seem to mean anything.
Also, I hate to say it, as I really like his stuff, but this isn’t Dave McKean at his finest. In fact, it seems like he had a much different idea of what was happening to Grant, so the story kind of doesn’t jell with the images you see. I’ll give you an example; Batman in one bit starts freaking out and pricks himself with a bit of glass to wake himself up (get it, dream metaphors). Now you’d expect this to be a little scratch, something realistic, but Dave makes him destroy his hand, like Jesus being nailed to the cross bad, and yet it clearly wasn’t in the script, because it is literally never mentioned again. I’m sure if you look close enough at his hands you won’t even see a blood stain. It’s a moment that could have worked if done a lot more simply, yet it’s overdrawn to hell and thus loses all impact. Joker could be horrifying here but he’s so overdone that it seems we are supposed to find him scary because he wants to fuck batman, and doesn’t actually do anything himself. For the comic that famously attempted to give an actual diagnosis of the Joker, there isn’t that much to him here, he’s just a loud guy with really green hair that might like stabbing people. Cross-dressing does seem to be a sign of insanity throughout this too, so that really doesn’t age that well (at least Psycho associated it to a different personality, a guy is evil here because he has a knife and a dress).
And this isn’t even considering the other story being told. Grant also tells the tragic tale of Amadeus Arkham, the asylum’s creator, back in the 1900s. Ignoring a few famous inclusions (of course Grant makes him meet Allister Crowley) it is mostly a private tale, and has some nice moments, mostly with the criminal Mad Dog. But it’s all weirdly convoluted, and it seems weird to show Batman meeting one of his foes and seemingly barely able to escape and then immediately follow it up with a page or two about a guy eating mushrooms and looking at fish. Even though it does link back to the story and does have an overall point, Amadeus just isn’t anywhere near as compelling as Grant seems to believe he is, so we get a lot more of him then is really needed.
But, before I get to the script itself (my real problem with the comic, and I’m covering it last because wasn’t available when the comic was first released), lets discuss its treatment of psychosis and the Batman characters…needless to say, some are good, some not so much. The Joker’s one is quite interesting, it essentially declares that he rebuilds himself anew every day to cope with the world, although I think there is a subtler name then “super-sanity”, but the theory makes sense. Two-Face as we all know suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, but this comic does go onto detailing his obsession with his coin making his decisions for him, and how moving him onto something with more choices, like a deck of cards, can’t help, he really does use it to make every decision, so it does have its downsides. Two-face’s analysis is ultimately my favourite, but that might be because his disorder has already been defined and he is usually depicted as not just being pure evil, so Grant had less he had to explain. However, beyond those two it gets a bit odd. Mad Hatter is clearly just a drug addicted paedophile, but don’t ask me why they are still letting him smoke. Clayface and Killer Croc are just people with skin disorders, and while this is somewhat described in some other comics, I find it hard to believe that a skin disease would turn you into an actual crocodile. Grant seems to genuinely care about giving these characters some form of proper diagnosis, but it doesn’t really work all that much (in his defence, very few of these characters seem realistic), and it sometimes just comes across as muddled. Whilst a somewhat serious idea is being discussed, it’s a bit all over the place in effectiveness.
Now, the worse bit is the writing and Grant’s script at the end. The script is overloaded with Grant discussing various dream symbols and explanations of everything, yet the result is a bit of a confusing mess. Ok sure, I’ll accept the salt around the asylum being there to keep the demons out/in, but do we really need to have roughly two pages of Batman looking just at the salt? Is all the tarot card stuff really necessary? Why does Joker have to look like Madonna? Grant seemed to believe that having Joker physically grab Batman’s ass was too subtle an image for the reader, and he really does like explaining every symbol…EVERY SINGLE ONE. I’m all for meaningful symbolism, but it seems like Grant thought about it all being a dream and just went completely overboard with this idea.
So, in the end, this comic does have some good sections and does carry a consistent atmosphere of dream and fear, but this is overloaded with unsubtle writing and drawings, a seemingly lack of proper communication between the writer and the artist, and an anti-climactic story that doesn’t really go anywhere. So, I can say read it for the ideas and for an understanding of an important part of Batman’s chronology, all the things expressed in this are handled a bit better in other places. I’m not sure where the idea came from but someone once suggested that all of Batman’s enemies are just versions of himself, and it’s a common belief that they exist only because he does, so everything is really his fault. If you want to discuss the underlining imagery and story between Batman’s battle against his enemies and himself, there are much better ways to do it then by constantly describing bats and fish. Even the Arkham Asylum game handled it much better, and that wasn’t even the point of the game (Joker is a lot more compelling in that as well). So, Grant, in the end, I say to you…your comic is meh.
Well…not as well as you’d hope.
Ok, so the plot is simple but effective. Batman’s rogue gallery takes over the Asylum and have one simple demand; Batman must spend the night in the asylum with them. Has potential, doesn’t it? You can see where the discussions about insanity and the subconscious would come into play…but it’s all kind of simplified. All they make Batman do is a Rorschach test and play a game of hide and seek, and whilst Grant might say in the script (more on that in a bit) that Batman goes through a drastic rebuilding, I don’t really believe he does. Because Grant explicitly states that Batman fears he is insane already in the beginning, so Batman doesn’t really have any development, it is just people telling him things he has already thought about, so that kind of diminishes the impact of it. Of course, you can say something about how he is just a guy in a costume, of course he is going to be afraid, but isn’t it a part of his character that Batman honestly believes himself to be above the criminals he beats to a pulp, so it seems to go against the character to do this from the get go. Why not just make him as arrogant and all powerful as he believes himself to be and then steadily break him down? You have an overly sexual Joker at play here, use that (is this where Jared Leto got his inspiration for his 15 minutes of fame in Suicide Squad?). So, there is no real breaking of the character, and thus no rebuilding. As much as Grant likes a rebirth symbol (when I get to the script I’ll explain this a bit more), it doesn’t seem to mean anything.
Also, I hate to say it, as I really like his stuff, but this isn’t Dave McKean at his finest. In fact, it seems like he had a much different idea of what was happening to Grant, so the story kind of doesn’t jell with the images you see. I’ll give you an example; Batman in one bit starts freaking out and pricks himself with a bit of glass to wake himself up (get it, dream metaphors). Now you’d expect this to be a little scratch, something realistic, but Dave makes him destroy his hand, like Jesus being nailed to the cross bad, and yet it clearly wasn’t in the script, because it is literally never mentioned again. I’m sure if you look close enough at his hands you won’t even see a blood stain. It’s a moment that could have worked if done a lot more simply, yet it’s overdrawn to hell and thus loses all impact. Joker could be horrifying here but he’s so overdone that it seems we are supposed to find him scary because he wants to fuck batman, and doesn’t actually do anything himself. For the comic that famously attempted to give an actual diagnosis of the Joker, there isn’t that much to him here, he’s just a loud guy with really green hair that might like stabbing people. Cross-dressing does seem to be a sign of insanity throughout this too, so that really doesn’t age that well (at least Psycho associated it to a different personality, a guy is evil here because he has a knife and a dress).
And this isn’t even considering the other story being told. Grant also tells the tragic tale of Amadeus Arkham, the asylum’s creator, back in the 1900s. Ignoring a few famous inclusions (of course Grant makes him meet Allister Crowley) it is mostly a private tale, and has some nice moments, mostly with the criminal Mad Dog. But it’s all weirdly convoluted, and it seems weird to show Batman meeting one of his foes and seemingly barely able to escape and then immediately follow it up with a page or two about a guy eating mushrooms and looking at fish. Even though it does link back to the story and does have an overall point, Amadeus just isn’t anywhere near as compelling as Grant seems to believe he is, so we get a lot more of him then is really needed.
But, before I get to the script itself (my real problem with the comic, and I’m covering it last because wasn’t available when the comic was first released), lets discuss its treatment of psychosis and the Batman characters…needless to say, some are good, some not so much. The Joker’s one is quite interesting, it essentially declares that he rebuilds himself anew every day to cope with the world, although I think there is a subtler name then “super-sanity”, but the theory makes sense. Two-Face as we all know suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, but this comic does go onto detailing his obsession with his coin making his decisions for him, and how moving him onto something with more choices, like a deck of cards, can’t help, he really does use it to make every decision, so it does have its downsides. Two-face’s analysis is ultimately my favourite, but that might be because his disorder has already been defined and he is usually depicted as not just being pure evil, so Grant had less he had to explain. However, beyond those two it gets a bit odd. Mad Hatter is clearly just a drug addicted paedophile, but don’t ask me why they are still letting him smoke. Clayface and Killer Croc are just people with skin disorders, and while this is somewhat described in some other comics, I find it hard to believe that a skin disease would turn you into an actual crocodile. Grant seems to genuinely care about giving these characters some form of proper diagnosis, but it doesn’t really work all that much (in his defence, very few of these characters seem realistic), and it sometimes just comes across as muddled. Whilst a somewhat serious idea is being discussed, it’s a bit all over the place in effectiveness.
Now, the worse bit is the writing and Grant’s script at the end. The script is overloaded with Grant discussing various dream symbols and explanations of everything, yet the result is a bit of a confusing mess. Ok sure, I’ll accept the salt around the asylum being there to keep the demons out/in, but do we really need to have roughly two pages of Batman looking just at the salt? Is all the tarot card stuff really necessary? Why does Joker have to look like Madonna? Grant seemed to believe that having Joker physically grab Batman’s ass was too subtle an image for the reader, and he really does like explaining every symbol…EVERY SINGLE ONE. I’m all for meaningful symbolism, but it seems like Grant thought about it all being a dream and just went completely overboard with this idea.
So, in the end, this comic does have some good sections and does carry a consistent atmosphere of dream and fear, but this is overloaded with unsubtle writing and drawings, a seemingly lack of proper communication between the writer and the artist, and an anti-climactic story that doesn’t really go anywhere. So, I can say read it for the ideas and for an understanding of an important part of Batman’s chronology, all the things expressed in this are handled a bit better in other places. I’m not sure where the idea came from but someone once suggested that all of Batman’s enemies are just versions of himself, and it’s a common belief that they exist only because he does, so everything is really his fault. If you want to discuss the underlining imagery and story between Batman’s battle against his enemies and himself, there are much better ways to do it then by constantly describing bats and fish. Even the Arkham Asylum game handled it much better, and that wasn’t even the point of the game (Joker is a lot more compelling in that as well). So, Grant, in the end, I say to you…your comic is meh.