Welcome back to 2019's Month of Horror, and today we're looking at Batman's most dark and psychological story. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, by the masterful Grant Morrison and prestigious artist Dave McKean, sees Batman delving into Arkham Asylum where his Rouge's Gallery has taken over the institute. Inside, we see a story of madness, insanity, and questioning of who is really sane. I highly recommend reading it, so today I want to do a broad overview of the plot instead of an in depth look. Arkham Asylum is just dripping with symbolism and foreshadowing in each panel, and I do not want to spoil it too much for new readers.
What is Arkham Asylum?
Arkham Asylum first appeared in Batman #258 in 1974. The asylum was a place for Batman's mentally ill opponents like Scarecrow or the Joker; the sane villains went to Blackgate Prison. Due to unfortunate stereotypes and stigmatisation of the mentally ill in mainstream media, most of Batman's villains are schizophrenic or narcissistic leading them to be inmates of Arkham Asylum. Some inmates are not actually mentally ill; some who have certain special circumstances and cannot go to Blackgate go to Arkham. Mr. Freeze is not normally mentally ill, but because he has to live in freezing conditions he has to be confined in Arkham to accommodate him. Lovecraft fans will notice a reference here - the asylum is named after the Massachusetts town which appears in many of Lovecraft's stories, such as The Dunwich Horror. Like with Lovecraft's stories, it is strongly implied that the asylum itself sends people insane. Several members of staff have been driven insane - such as Scarecrow, Hugo Strange, and Harley Quinn - and even its founder went insane. This is the subplot to Arkham Asylum.
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth
'But I don't want to go among mad people', Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can't help that', said the Cat: 'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad.' 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'
April 1 Batman is summoned to the asylum by Commissioner Gordon who reveals that the inmates, led by the Joker, have taken over. On the radio Joker demands that Batman come in as he blinds a 19-year old woman who worked in the cafeteria to fund her art career. Batman quickly catches up to the Joker, where he finds out that the Clown pretended to blind the woman in an April Fools' Day prank. In an exchange all bar two of the hostages are released - the administrator Dr. Charles Cavendish and the leading psycho-therapist Dr. Ruth Adams. They wanted to stay to make sure that, in the words of Cavendish, 'I have a duty to the state. I will not leave this asylum in the hands of...madmen'. Batman is horrified to also see his old nemesis Two-Face who had just peed on the floor. He gets into an argument with Dr. Adams over his treatment - Adams sees her work as helping Harvey Dent, while Batman sees that she's broken him. In an attempt to make him become less dependent on his coin she gave him a six-sided dice to give him more choices, then a pack of tarot cards with the hopes that she can move him onto an I-ching. However, instead of decreasing his need to rely on luck he became increasingly reliant on these choices, so much so, that he cannot even decide to go to the toilet without a card. We also learn from Adams that the Joker is suffering from 'super-sanity'; one day he can be a psychopathic killer, another a mischievous clown as 'He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule, and the world as a theatre of the absurd'. The Joker also toys with Batman a bit - he gets Adams to perform a Rorschach test on him.
Throughout the narrative we see the journal of the founder of Arkham Asylum - Amadeus Arkham. He founded the asylum after seeing his mother throughout his childhood suffer from intense mental disorders. One night, as a child, he walked in the give her breakfast to see her eating beetles - later he found out that beetles were a symbol of rebirth and theorised it was his mother's attempt to escape from a spirit trying to possess her. This symbol was of a bat creature which drove her to suicide. Back in the present, the Joker gives an order to Batman - explore the asylum for an hour and he would then release his enemies on him, if he refused the remaining hostages will die. The rest of the story is dripping with Batman's own insecurity and the horrors of the asylum, and Batman's villains reimagined. Clayface is an emaciated figure in a stark parallel to media perceptions of AIDs, Mad Hatter is now a child molester obsessed with blond girls like Alice, the once strong Doctor Destiny is confined to a wheelchair, and Maxie Zeus (who believes he is Zeus reincarnated) is a coprophage addicted to electro-shock therapy. All through this Batman slowly loses his mind and we see Amadeus Arkham's descent into madness. The asylum's first patient was Martin 'Mad Dog' Hawkins, a famous serial murderer and rapist who is 'guided' by the Virgin Mary, who raped and murdered Arkham's family. Despite Hawkins taunting Arkham he appeared to be unfazed by a murderer gloating about murdering his family earning the respect of the other doctors. A year after Hawkins was committed Arkham announced he would use electro-shock therapy to cure Hawkins; in reality, he used it to electrocute Hawkins to death.
As Arkham's journal compares his work to that of the archangel Michael - the angel who toppled Satan, 'the Dragon', during the War in Heaven - Batman faces Killer Croc. He knocks Batman out of a window, but he grabs a spear which a statue of the angel is holding, and he uses it to get back inside impaling Croc. Batman finally reaches the asylum's tower where past and present come together. We find out that Arkham was in fact deeply traumatised by Hawkins murdering his family that was only revealed when he killed the murderer. He was adamant that the Bat was tormenting him just as it had tormented his mother, he had even murdered his mother and made it look like suicide to break the curse. He tried to use some form of sorcery to break the curse, and he was incarcerated in his own asylum where he tried to finish the seal to bind the Bat - using his own fingernails to carve it into the cell walls. Years later, Cavendish found Arkham's journals and started descending into madness. He became convinced that Batman was the 'Bat', and was increasing the insanity of the asylum by dropping off his enemies there. This is all revealed when we see Cavendish in Amadeus Arkham's mother's wedding dress with a knife to Adams's throat. He believed it was his destiny to continue Arkham's work so planned the night. On April Fools, the day Arkham's family was murdered, he released the inmates to attract the Bat, and he put on the dress as a way to bind the Bat to him in order to vanquish it. Batman, however, tries to help and reach the man, but as Cavendish goes to attack Batman Adams slices his throat.
An axe-wielding Batman hacks open the doors to the asylum declaring the inmates to be free. His enemies jeer for his death. The Joker states 'Have you come to claim your kingly robes? Or do you just want us to put you out of your misery, like the poor sick creature you are?' Batman says that he wants Two-Face to decide - if it lands on the normal side he goes free, the scarred side he will die. Harvey flips the coin and declares Batman to go free. As the inmates start to filter out the Joker gives one last remark to Batman: Enjoy yourself out there. In the Asylum. Just don't forget - if it ever gets too tough...There's always a place for you here. We pan to see Two-Face looking at his coin - it actually landed on the scarred side. He knocks over his tarot cards saying: Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards.
Some Thematic Analysis
I don't want to go into too much detail as the comic is best read with your own analysis. A major theme is, who actually are the insane ones? Despite clear evidence that figures like Two-Face, Clayface, and Doctor Destiny are suffering under the care of Adams and Cavendish, but they are oblivious insisting that they are helping them. Batman, who's tactic with his supervillain mentally ill opponents is to beat them bloody, is even horrified by what he sees. Although, it is clear that Batman himself knows that he too belongs in Arkham. At the start Batman says 'I'm afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates, when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me...It'll be just like coming home.' By the end, it is clear that Batman feels he is one with his enemies. Speech is interesting in this comic. Letterer Gaspar Saladino used various different fonts for different characters to emphasise different personalities - Batman has white text against a black speech bubble, Maxie Zeus has Greek font, Clayface's is a sickly green, and the Joker doesn't have a speech bubble - instead it's just erratic red letters changing size constantly. The Joker is interesting in this comic as well. Morrison wanted to explore the relationship between the Joker and Batman, and we have seen in other comics how much of a symbiotic relationship the two have. In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns the Joker remains in a depressed, silent state until he sees that Batman has returned. Throughout the comic we get hints that Joker is sexually interested in Batman - even slapping his butt in one panel. Morrison wanted to make this very overt in his original draft, having the Joker wear black lingerie in a parody of Madonna. However, DC vetoed this as they feared this would impact how people viewed Jack Nicholson in 1989's Batman. Reading the comic you also get a claustrophobic fear - panels drip into one another, many panels are tight, and especially with the Joker it is at times hard to read. The characters are drawn in a distorted way, only the clearly 'sane' characters are not distorted - by the end of the comic Batman goes from a solid figure to a large, shadow. It may not be scary, but Arkham Asylum gives you an unsettled feeling reading it.
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