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A review by krystlocity
Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison
3.0
Grant Morrison's art is really intriguing, but in the line of comic books, it's also confusing. Where your story is supposed to rely heavily on the pictures to tell the narrative, his are a little too vague for my tastes. Like, I LOVE Francis Bacon paintings, but that doesn't mean I think he'd make a good comic book artist. So I very much enjoyed these images, and I understand how their eerie quality fits with the storyline--Arkham is a madhouse, where all the focus lies in uncertainties. But there was so much meat to this story, I would've enjoyed having a better understanding of it.
Which readers do get, if they happen to get the edition of this comic that I have-which includes the script in it's entirety. I've never actually read one of these before, because usually it just tells you what happens frame by frame and the text, which, if the team has done their job convincingly, renders the shell of just the writing unnecessary. This was different, though. It was NOT written panel by panel, I couldn't even tell where pages were supposed to begin and end. It's more like a movie play by play, and it's PACKED with extras on symbolism and inspirations and sometimes, pure bizarre. Grant Morrison might be a type of genius in his own right, but gosh, he's also a strange one. Which is part of what makes this such an interesting read, though. It was fascinating, if still a tiny bit hard to grasp everything, it was much, much, much easier to get at what was really happening in the written version. I feel more like the way this was done would make sense to be a heavily illustrated novella, instead of a comic. It WOULD work like a comic, but the art needs to be a little bit more clear for everything to make as much sense as it does reading the text. I find myself wishing it might be remade with more traditional drawings or a cartoon.
Which readers do get, if they happen to get the edition of this comic that I have-which includes the script in it's entirety. I've never actually read one of these before, because usually it just tells you what happens frame by frame and the text, which, if the team has done their job convincingly, renders the shell of just the writing unnecessary. This was different, though. It was NOT written panel by panel, I couldn't even tell where pages were supposed to begin and end. It's more like a movie play by play, and it's PACKED with extras on symbolism and inspirations and sometimes, pure bizarre. Grant Morrison might be a type of genius in his own right, but gosh, he's also a strange one. Which is part of what makes this such an interesting read, though. It was fascinating, if still a tiny bit hard to grasp everything, it was much, much, much easier to get at what was really happening in the written version. I feel more like the way this was done would make sense to be a heavily illustrated novella, instead of a comic. It WOULD work like a comic, but the art needs to be a little bit more clear for everything to make as much sense as it does reading the text. I find myself wishing it might be remade with more traditional drawings or a cartoon.