Arkham Asylum

Rating:
Summary: If you like to break tradition....
Review: ...traditional comic readers either love or hate "Arkham Asylum." While the book uses Batman and his traditional Rogues Gallery, the portrayal of the characters is uniquely dark, Freudian, and twisted. This time the battleground of Batman and his villains is the mind.

Grant Morrison's moody script is deceptively complex, and heavily laden with references to psychology, myth, religion, and "Alice in Wonderland." Set almost entirely within Arkham Asylum, the prison for the criminally insane in the Batman universe, the story is of Batman's self-questioning and doubt: is he no better, no more sane, than the asylum inhabitants? A secondary story chronicles the founding of Arkham, and the descent into madness of the brilliant man who created the asylum.

Dave McKean's artwork at the time was unique in comics, consisting of a combination of painting, construction, and photography that made every page feel like a 2-D representation of a 3-D work. With one or two exceptions, little is made of the background scenery, because the real setting of this story is the mind. The characters are portrayed as extreme, iconic versions of their normal selves. Background imagery is used to enhance the metaphors drawn in the story. One double-page spread shows a room filled with the mad; the left side of the page is a more-or-less literal representation of the room, while the right side of the painting dissolves into tarot imagery.

Very few writers and artists have attempted to realistically portray the insanity of a man who would put on a cape and cowl and fight criminals to avenge parents long dead. Even fewer have attempted to tie the Batman tales into long traditions of myth and storytelling. McKean and Morrison did both within a single, thin graphic novel. Literate readers and those who appreciate dark, beautiful artwork will love this book.

Rating:
Summary: "We're all mad here!" Said the cat!
Review: Batman enters the hell that is Arkam Asylum after it is taken over by the imates. He enters with The Joker, whose become the one "sane" person in all this! He, compared to others at Arkam, is at least able to speak in coherent sentences. Harvey/Two Face has been warped by the doctors in a way that you will have to read! Batman is then sent through the asylum encountering everyone from Killer Croc, who stabs him and throws him out the window; and Ivy.

There is also some disturbing information about the founding of Arkham from the journals of Jerimiah Arkam himself! My favorite part of this "graphic" novel is the Pysch elvaluations filled out by the inmates themselves, Harvey/Two Face is my favorite of those.

Disturbing art by Dave McKean, who illustrated covers for The Sandman series, illustrates the madness perfectly. Grant Morrisons words, echo them.

Brilliant work, just don't stay around that place for too long!

Rating:
Summary: Don't knock the art
Review: First let me say that the art is fantastic, don't listen to the huddling masses saying it's slop, Picasso had to deal with the same thing.
The story is phenomenally good, while on the whole quite disturbing, it does not use gore simply for it's own sake, as every character in the comic is amazingly disturbed. All the inhabitants of the asylum are incredibly dangerous, and if left to their own devices, would quite happily torture and maim all of us. Bad things happen to good people, which is what some people seem to have such a problem with, but a recurring theme of the book is how we deal with the bad things that happen.
Batman himself is rather insane when looked at straight on. Dressing as a bat to fight crime at night, schizophrenic tendencies regarding the "Batman" persona, etc. He says at the beginning that he doesn't want to go into the asylum because it might feel like "coming home."
It is very much for mature readers, but not just for the violence, it will twist your head and take you to uncomfortable places, so be ready. Even if you don't like Batman, try it out, it isn't really a superhero story.
So go get it. Get it now. Now!

Rating:
Summary: Could have been much better
Review: On paper, you'd think that Arkham Asylum had all the ingredients to be a brilliant read: a talented cast (writer par-excellence Morrison and the peerless and trailblazing Dave McKean) with a fascinating premise: what if Batman was assaulted by others'- and his own-insanity? Is Batman a mentally stable person to begin with; is his persona created and defined by his own inner psychological turmoil? While previous graphic novels have previously raised these questions when confronting the Batman mystique (the penultimate example being Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns), none ever placed them at the heart of the narrative.

I particularly enjoyed the first half of the book that traced the growth of both Amadeus Arkham and his Asylum. The latter seems to be the alter-ego of the former, the embodiment of his buried fears, much as Batman is the embodiment of Bruce Wayne's (and our?) innermost insecurities. Morrison is at his best here when he plays with the heavy symbolism of the themes involved; when he takes his time as a storyteller and enriches the world he's creating. It's only when things progress to the second half that he loses me. Without giving too much away, the narrative descends to a typical good guy vs. bad guy dualism where Batman has to battle the big, bad Joker. We're not provided any enlightening insights into any of the characters. The uninspiring resolution of this battle also ends rather awkwardly. By this point, I felt rather disappointed and empty.

It's all really quite a shame, too, because McKean seems at the top of his game. His visual renderings of Arkham Asylum and Joker are particularly noteworthy, brilliantly capturing the menace and pathos of both. Had it not been for his efforts, I would have liked the book even less than I actually did.

The fact that this is one of the most popular graphic novels ever created demonstrates that there are quite a few things that Arkham Asylum did right. For me, however, there are far too many things that went wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect art, Wonderful dialogue, Story could be better
Review: This bookis what we, those acolytes who are more fascinated with the villains of the Batman mythos rather than its titular character, have been waiting for. The "story" has the inmates of Arkham escaping their chains and seizing control of the madhouse that has contained them for so long. I placed the parentheses around story, for I consider it to simply be an excuse for us to wallow in the brilliant art of Dave Mckean and the fantastic writing of Grant Morrison. For the first time, the inmates of Arkham truly ARE insane, as oppossed to cackling stock villains. If you've never been afraid of the Joker (and I consider this tale to contain THE classic Joker portrayal, more so even then "The Killing Joke"), then you will be after seeing him here. Here, he IS madness. My one complaint: Batman's own character seemed a bit under-developed. For the most part, he acts as a device of introduction; through him we see the various inmates unmasked. Unfortunately, the story looses some of its cohesiveness when its main character is reduced to such a role. Still, it comes highly recomended.