1989 saw the release of Batman titles like Legends of the Dark Knight, a comic book adaptation of Tim Burton’s film, and a very pretty Elseworlds one-shot, Gotham by Gaslight. It also saw the publication of the graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, a story that takes the regular comic book format and the hard-boiled detective image of Batman, and throws them both out the window. For its 25th anniversary, DC has released a deluxe version of the title, complete with Grant Morrison’s original full script and storyboards.
The story: Joker and many of Batman’s greatest enemies are on a rampage, and Batman has been called in to rescue hostages and save the day. The kicker is that the riot is inside Arkham Asylum, and it’s the inmates themselves who have invited Batman to come home where he belongs. Grant Morrison’s first Batman title, the complicated story illustrated by Dave McKean’s fever-dream artwork has been called “groundbreaking” and “daring” by some fans, “overrated” and “a mess” by others. The comic operates on many levels and, like it or hate it, the results are pretty disturbing.
I’ll start with the artwork, since that’s the part the jumps out at you the moment you open the book. I practically grew up with Dave McKean’s abstract and symbol-filled covers for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic books. The work he does as an illustrator is like that, times a thousand. McKean mixes collages with character drawings that are done in an almost photo-realistic style, except when they morph and stretch as the character pictured laughs insanely, or screams. Batman often appears as a splash of black ink with the trademark cowl, while the Joker is right out of a nightmare, glaring lidless eyes (almost as if he’s sliced the lids away with a razor), sharp teeth, and a face that looks like it’s about two feet long, and always smiling.
McKean’s artwork isn’t for everyone, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing a better job conveying the atmosphere in Arkham, where the inmates are now literally in charge. Quite a few of Batman’s enemies make an appearance, and their various psychoses twist around each character, their word bubbles dripping down the page or dissolving. It’s breathtakingly ugly in places, and if I have one big complaint it’s that the Joker’s lines are always in red, with no word bubbles, so it’s hard to pick out his dialog from the chaos of the art that goes on around it; I found myself having to backtrack to find things I’d missed. But that could be on purpose, since the artwork and story is really something that needs to be lingered over.
Grant Morrison’s story twists around as much as the art, jumping between Batman’s attempts to escape, and the journal entries of the asylum’s creator, Amadeus Arkham. Amadeus’s story was the part I found the most interesting; the well-meaning doctor has to deal with a family connection to the insane along with a tragedy caused by the person who inspired him to create the asylum in the first place. It’s left open whether Arkham inherited his mental condition or was driven there, and by the end of the book the story wraps around to the beginning and reaches a point where there wasn’t any other way for this to end other than with Batman locked in the asylum facing all the people he put there.
As off-putting as McKean’s artwork can be, I think it’s Morrison’s story, and specifically his treatment of Batman, that a lot of people find infuriating.This is a Batman that’s impatient, annoyed, or just plain ticked off. He’s all about stopping the bad guys and being stronger than the madmen in the asylum, but he doesn’t come across as actually caring about the people caught in the crossfire. It even gets to the point of Batman knocking down the doors and letting everyone out to prove a point (have to wonder what Commissioner Gordon thought of that particular stunt). In his own way, Morrison’s Batman is as insane as the criminals he’s brought to Arkham.
And I think that’s really Morrison’s point here; Batman is more than just a do-gooder, he’s damaged. His insanity is his way of keeping the voices in his head quiet. So many of the characters in Arkham Asylum – patients or doctors – have developed some kind of mental crutch that lets them function, and whether they’re inside or out of Arkham depends on whether their brand of insanity actually works, or at least is something the rest of the world can live with. You see at least one case in Arkham of an inmate who becomes even more insane when his particular psychosis is taken away in order to “cure” him, and you have to wonder if Bruce Wayne would be in the exact same position if he wasn’t able to be Batman. In Morrison’s very bleak view of the world, the divide isn’t between the sane and insane, it’s between the insane and those who’s insanity has stopped working.