Batman: Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth

AUTHOR: Morrison, Grant

ARTIST: Dave McKean (illustrator); Gaspar Saladino (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1989

Publication History

Arkham Asylum was originally published as a single volume in 1989 by DC Comics. In 2004, a fifteenth anniversary edition was released containing the original script for the graphic novel with comments from Grant Morrison. These comments explain that the initial concept for the book came from a brief description of Arkham Asylum in a “Who’s Who” publication by DC Comics in 1985. One of the few entries describing a setting rather than a character, the entry for Arkham Asylum described how the founder’s wife and daughter had been murdered by Martin “Mad Dog” Hawkins. This inspired Morrison to create the story that would later become Arkham Asylum. Morrison pitched the idea to DC as a 48-page book, and it was accepted. The book was later increased to 64 pages, and Dave McKean was selected to do the artwork, which eventually resulted in the book expanding to the final 120-page version.

Plot

The story begins with a quote from Lewis Carroll and passages from Amadeus Arkham’s journal, in which he describes his aging mother’s mental breakdown. The next pages alternate between the present, in which Batman approaches Arkham Asylum, and the recent past, in which Commissioner Gordon receives a call from the asylum. The inmates, led by the Joker, have taken over. The commissioner calls Batman, whose presence is requested by the Joker. Batman agrees to enter the asylum, telling Gordon that this is something he must do.

Arkham’s journal next describes his return to his family home, which he later converted into the asylum. Batman arrives as the narrative returns to the present. He is greeted by the Joker, who lets the hostages go and welcomes Batman to “the real world.” Batman engages in conversation with a psychiatrist and Dr. Cavendish, the administrators of Arkham who have remained behind, and with various inmates before the Joker issues an ultimatum: Batman must play a game of hide-and-seek or the Joker will shoot one of the remaining psychiatrists. In one hour, the inmates will come looking for Batman, the person responsible for sending them to Arkham in the first place.

As Batman moves through the asylum, flashbacks of his parents’ murder and of Arkham’s wife and daughter being killed punctuate his declining mental state. Batman encounters his foes Clayface, Dr. Destiny, Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter, Maxie Zeus, and, finally, Killer Croc. The ensuing fight between Batman and Killer Croc is narrated by Arkham’s journal, which reflects Batman’s own implied thoughts and feelings at the time. Batman defeats Croc and immediately encounters Dr. Cavendish, who threatens to kill one of the psychiatrists.

It is revealed that Cavendish is responsible for the inmates escaping, allowing them to do so in an attempt to lure Batman to the asylum in order to fulfill a prophecy in Arkham’s journal. The “bat,” who is responsible for “feeding” the asylum, must be trapped and killed. As Cavendish attempts to choke Batman, he is killed by the psychiatrist he had held hostage. Batman gives Two-Face back his coin, which had been confiscated. Two-Face decides that if the unmarked face comes up, Batman goes free, but if the scarred face comes up, he dies. The Joker agrees to the terms, and based on the result of the coin toss, Two-Face lets Batman go. As Batman leaves the asylum, the Joker reminds him that he will always be welcome at Arkham. Just before the story ends, Two-Face looks down at his hand, revealing that the coin actually landed with the scarred side up. He then knocks over his tower of tarot cards as he quotes Carroll: “Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards.”

Characters

•Batman, a.k.a. Bruce Wayne, undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis during the course of the novel, emerging stronger and more mentally sound than before and prepared to face whatever challenges lie ahead. As in many Batman stories, Batman’s origin is central to the plot. The death of Bruce Wayne’s parents parallels Arkham’s loss of his wife and daughter, creating a connection between them and between Batman and the asylum. Coming to terms with this loss is part of Batman’s transformation.

•The Joker is the main antagonist of the graphic novel, serving as both the villain and a sort of guide or therapist figure. The usual dichotomy between Batman and the Joker—sanity and insanity—is reversed in Arkham Asylum. Early in the story, one of the psychiatrists remarks, “We’re not even sure if [the Joker] can be properly defined as insane.” Later, it is posited that the Joker’s supposed insanity is in fact “a brilliant new modification of human perception.” This reversal casts the Joker as sane and Batman as a madman who must be “cured” by the asylum and the Joker.

•Two-Face, a.k.a. Harvey Dent, a recurring character in the Batman series, has become a patient at Arkham Asylum, where he has been “weaned” off of his characteristic coin that he uses to make decisions. The psychiatrists at Arkham replaced the coin with a die, giving Two-Face six choices instead of two. They then replaced the die with tarot cards, increasing his choices to seventy-eight. This resulted in Two-Face’s consciousness becoming fractured—Batman notes that Dent cannot make even simple decisions without consulting his tarot cards.

•Amadeus Arkham, though not actually present during the main events of the novel, is Arkham Asylum’s founder. He appears through a series of flashbacks and journal entries interspersed throughout the narrative. These reveal a disturbing backstory that informs and mirrors the events of the main narrative. Arkham was driven to insanity, in part by the brutal murder of his wife and daughter. He later treated their killer in the asylum and killed him with an overdose of electroshock therapy made to look like an accident.

Artistic Style

McKean’s unique style lends a mysterious and often grim atmosphere to the characters and setting of Arkham Asylum. McKean combines photography with more traditional comic illustration to create an unusual blend of realism and abstraction. This results in a simultaneously lifelike and surreal depiction of the asylum, its inhabitants, and the events of the story. Batman’s transformation becomes a visceral experience for the reader.

McKean frequently incorporates objects into his illustrations. For example, several pages involving Arkham’s wife use lace texturing, and the pearl necklace worn by Batman’s mother is physically present on the pages showing his memories of her. This realism is contrasted with panel borders that often seem to unravel onto the page and arrangements of images that are more organic than the orderly sequence usually found in comics. The asylum is “an organism, hungry for madness,” and McKean’s artwork reflects the chaos associated with it.

The lettering in Arkham Asylum is also somewhat unusual. In addition to regular lettering for minor characters, most of the important characters have unique lettering and text balloons. Batman has white text in a black balloon, the Joker has scrawled red text in no balloon, Clayface has dripping yellow balloons, Maxie Zeus has electric-blue balloons, and Amadeus Arkham’s journal is lettered in handwriting on paperlike text boxes. These different text styles not only help to identify characters but also reinforce their existence as distinct individuals.

Themes

The plot of Arkham Asylum revolves around several symbols that are repeated throughout the narrative. Many of these symbols are represented as tarot cards, which are either used by the characters, usually Two-Face, or placed in the artwork. The first page, for example, shows the moon tarot card. The moon, representing trial and initiation, rebirth, and lunacy, is an important symbol in the novel. The symbol appears in many forms: as the moon itself, as two fish forming the symbol of Pisces (the astrological equivalent of the moon card), and as one of Two-Face’s tarot cards.

Another group of symbols is related to home and family. The asylum itself is frequently referred to as a house, and the symbol of a house or home is used to connect the asylum with Arkham’s and Batman’s backstories, each involving family and a sense of “home.” Batman’s backstory also involves his mother, another recurring symbol. At one point in the story, a clip of the film Psycho (1960) plays on a television, and the quote “a boy’s best friend is his mother” appears later. The connections to family and home are important in the novel. Two-Face’s house of cards, seen throughout the novel, is another sort of house that connects this symbol with the theme of tarot cards.

Vision is also frequently referenced in the novel. During the Joker’s call to Commissioner Gordon, he threatens to poke out the eyes of one of the hostages at the asylum. When Arkham discovers his murdered wife and daughter, he finds his daughter’s severed head inside a dollhouse. His journal reads, “And then I look at the doll’s house. And the doll’s house looks at me.” During a Rorschach ink-blot test, the Joker turns to Batman and asks, “What about you, Batman? What do you see?”

The most prevalent theme is madness, which permeates the entire novel, touching every character and location. The novel opens with a quote from Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865): “We’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad.” This is echoed by the Mad Hatter, who explains that the asylum, again referred to as a house, “does things to the mind.” The theme of madness connects many of the other themes in the novel, and the symbols are all interconnected, often through the use of tarot cards.

Impact

Arkham Asylum was published shortly after the release of Tim Burton’s film Batman (1989), and it benefited from the resulting rise in popularity of the franchise. It quickly became the best-selling original graphic novel ever, but it was often misunderstood. The unusual narrative structure and style of Arkham Asylum caused it to be dismissed as either pretentious or confusing, particularly by an audience expecting a more traditional Batman story. However, Arkham Asylum has remained one of the most highly regarded graphic novels and is frequently cited alongside other well-known comics, such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, as an influential and formative work.

Films

The Dark Knight. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros., 2008. The character of the Joker features prominently in this, the second of Nolan’s Batman films. Though there are no direct parallels between the events of the film and graphic novel, the mannerisms of the Joker (played by Heath Ledger) and some of his physical qualities cannot help but be influenced by Arkham Asylum. The actual location of Arkham Asylum appears in the earlier Batman Begins (2005) but bears little resemblance to the asylum depicted in the graphic novel.

Further Reading

Gaiman, Neil, and Dave McKean. Black Orchid (1991).

Moore, Alan, and Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke (1988).

Morrison, Grant, and Klaus Janson. Batman: Gothic (1990).

Bibliography

Callahan, Timothy. Grant Morrison: The Early Years. Edwardsville, Ill.: Sequart Research and Literary Organization, 2007.

Khouri, Andy. “Grant Morrison: The Early Years—Part II: Arkham Asylum.” Comic Book Resources, 2007. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=10710.

McKean, Dave. “Storytelling in the Gutter.” History of Photography 19 (1995): 293-297.