A review by neilrcoulter
Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Dave McKean, Grant Morrison

3.0

Not knowing much about Batman comics generally, I hadn't heard of Arkham Asylum before. When I saw it on the shelf in the library, its look intrigued me, so I grabbed it and checked it out. Having spent some time with it now, I hesitate--as I think anyone should--to say something like "I loved Arkham Asylum!" To love this book would almost be like admitting lunacy or depravity, because it's a nightmarish story that I find easy to admire, but hard to "like."

Most of the time when I read a 1980s/1990s graphic novel that is acclaimed and revered, I am disappointed (yes, I'm including Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman). It usually seems that the writer is striving for more depth and substance than he is capable of, or trying to show off some amount of literariness that annoys rather than impresses me. And the art that goes with these stories rarely interests me. With Arkham Asylum, however, I felt that Grant Morrison got a little closer to realizing what's possible in the graphic novel. His ideas and imagery sometimes veer into the "please, could this be any more heavy-handed" territory--but he also keeps a lot of big ideas and themes afloat through the story. Somehow, even with the occasional pretentiousness, he manages to be more compelling than Miller, Moore, or Gaiman. I appreciated the general tone and direction of his story.

There were problems, of course. In particular, I felt that the story would have been more compelling had any of the characters been closer to my reality. For example, Arkham's descent into madness is kept at a great distance from my own questions and fears about slipping into madness. Instead of drawing out my fears, Morrison makes Arkham into a caricature of "insane doctor," with a trajectory that doesn't match anything in my real experience. Batman is a cold, distant figure as well, which doesn't help bring me into his story. I think Arkham Asylum would have been more powerful if it had presented some kind of mirror of the reader's reality.

I rarely find graphic novel artwork that I love, but Dave McKean's work on Arkham Asylum is some of the most interesting I've ever seen. It reminds me of another favorite of mine, Bill Sienkiewicz. The colors, the very abstract imagery, the interesting layout of panels . . . it's all perfect for this story, and I want to see more of this art style. It was interesting to read the script in the back of this volume and see all the ways that McKean brought out the bleakness of the story. There are a number of points where Morrison envisioned more detail that would have made the story slightly more conventional, but McKean repeatedly made it as opaque and abstract and dark as he could.

The redemptive ending, after all the darkness, was a beautiful surprise. Without that, I wouldn't be able to admire the book nearly so much.

As I said, it's not a book I could say I love, but it's a graphic novel that I admire in many ways. I'd like to find more graphic novels that are as satisfyingly complex and intriguing, visually and story-wise.