Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

Originally released in 1989

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Dave McKean

I should probably take a break from reading Batman comics (most of the DC comics that I've read for this blog have involved Batman in some form), but this is a story that I've heard a lot about, and it wasn't accessible for me until I got the higher subscription level for DC's app.  All I really know about it going into it is that it was a large source of inspiration for the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, with the original cover (Joker's face imposed over the building, with the entrance door being in his mouth) being a key visual that develops over the course of that game.

At 115 pages, without the bonus features, this is a long one. (the bonus features in the 25th anniversary edition bump it up to 220)  The book starts in a surreal way, focusing on Amadeus Arkham, the founder of the asylum; madness seems to run in his family, as he walks in on his bedridden mother eating beetles.  Cutting to the present day, the inmates of Arkham Asylum have taken over, with all of their demands being met but one: they want Batman brought to Arkham.

The artwork in this book is immediately striking and haunting, with the Amadeus Arkham segments feeling like a grotesque painting.  It's interesting to see Arkham starting off as optimistic in spite of everything, feeling that people with mental illnesses shouldn't be confined to the penal system and wanting to convert his home into a place where such cases can be treated properly.

The story alternates between the founding of Arkham Asylum and Batman's trek through its bowels.  The second part serves as an opportunity to showcase Batman's rogues gallery; I'm not sure how many of these portrayals were the norm at the time, or how many of them were reinventions to make them more serious like what happened with Calendar Man during The Long Halloween where he went from a joke villain to being almost like Hannibal Lecter, though my immediate impression is that the Joker's eyes are painful to look at, like he hasn't slept or even blinked in years.

A few staff members choose to remain in Arkham following the takeover, though their methods of "curing" the patients are questionable.  The psychotherapist, Ruth Adams, attempted to cure Two-Face of his obsession with duality by getting him to use a dice to make decisions, and later tarot cards; as a result, he can't even determine if he can go to the bathroom.  Doctor Cavendish, the administrator, is more open with his cruelty towards the patients, preferring electric shocks.

After some word association, the inmates task Batman with escaping from them until midnight.  The inmate is packed full of Batman's enemies, though some of them are in better conditions than others. Clayface is wandering around naked and looking more like he's diseased, while Doctor Destiny (a Justice League villain) is skeletal, wheelchair-bound, and defeated by a push.

The life of Amadeus Arkham goes downhill, as a madman whose time in prison inspired Arkham to provide better treatment escaped, murdering Arkham's wife and daughter. Once Arkham Asylum is built, Amadeus Arkham treats the madman for six months, with the murderer telling Arkham about every little detail about how he killed Arkham's wife and daughter.  Arkham is praised for being courageous and compassionate by others during this time, before their sessions are cut short by an electroshock therapy "accident" that results in the murderer being fatally electrocuted.

Speaking of electrocution, Maxie Zeus is one of the inmates that Batman encounters next.  Believing himself to literally be Zeus, he is portrayed much more seriously here than I'm used to, as I'm used to him being something of a buffoon. (Though Batman completely ignores his ranting)

Throughout this, Batman is concerned that he might be as mad as the criminals he brings to justice. It's an interpretation that comes up from time to time, though I'm not sure if this was the first time that it was brought up in the comics or if it was something that Bruce had considered before.  The location definitely isn't helping, as there seems to be something about Arkham Asylum that makes its inhabitants worse. This applies to both the patients and the staff, as one of the staff members went a little mad after reading Amadeus Arkham's journal.

Amadeus Arkham was always teetering on the edge of madness, but it seems as though the Great Depression was enough to push him off the cliff and resulted in him being committed to his own asylum.  Convinced that a bat spirit haunted his mother in her final days, and that this bat spirit brought madness to the house so his house could feed on that madness, he spent his own final days carving a protective ward into his cell with his own fingernails.

Giving Two Face his coin back, Batman lets Harvey (or rather, the coin) determine his fate.  The art can be a little hard to follow in some parts of this book thanks to the heavy use of shadows, but the page showing the coin flip is beautiful. Lacking the historical context, I'm not familiar with what this story might have added to the Batman mythos or what changes it made, but it was a dark, gruesome, but ultimately hopeful story, or at least that's what I took from it.