Batman: Arkham Asylum
Written by: Grant Morrison
Art by: Dave McKean
Publisher: DC Comics (US), Titan Books (UK)
First published: 1989
Story:
Art:
Overall:
Batman was the focus of a lot of high calibre attention in the late 1980s. Frank Miller was looking at Batman’s past and future in Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, while Alan Moore and Brian Boland were realising Batman’s arch enemy, The Joker, as a truly nasty piece of work in The Killing Joke. The Joker also crops up in Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum, often considered the other great Batman graphic novel of the time.
The art is magnificent, showcasing McKean’s talent for mixed media and painting. The length of time it takes to create work like this must be phenomenal, which we would presume goes toward explaining why the majority of McKean’s comic work is restricted to covers.
It’s Morrison’s story that doesn’t stand up to his rivals’. Mixing the history of the asylum - famous dumping ground for Batman’s psychotic foes - with a typical Batman adventure is interesting enough, but Morrison throws too much at the hero in too small a space. This makes Batman’s journey through Arkham’s finest nutters appear too easy - more of a stroll through a fairground haunted house with a few old chums than a serious battle for his life. Coupled with an anti-climatic ending, there’s little feeling of impending disaster - the chronicled event should probably appear in Batman’s casebook of over-hyped walkovers.
Morrison delves a little deeper into Batman’s messed up psyche than most, but this leads to a story that has more ponderous psychology than action and, as a result, not enough room to fit any decent action in. Although bringing adult themes like insanity into superhero comics is admirable, it shouldn’t be to the detriment of a high-octane plot and, in this case, it gets right in the way.
Read more Batman reviews:
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore
- Countdown to Infinite Crisis: The OMAC Project
- Gotham Central 4: The Quick and the Dead
- Batman: Year One
- Batman: Year 100
- Superman/Batman 1: Public Enemies
- Superman/Batman 2: Supergirl
- Superman/Batman 3: Absolute Power
- Batman: Gothic
- Batman: The Killing Joke
- Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore
- All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder
Tags: Rating/Story/1 stars • First published/1989 • Rating/Overall/2 stars • Rating/Art/5 stars • Series/Batman • Publisher/DC Comics • Artist/McKean, Dave • Writer/Morrison, Grant • Review • Genre/Superhero • Publisher/Titan Books
[...] We’re not being fair to all concerned here: the art is of a high standard throughout and the dream-team of names Morrison has brought to the party do their best to lift the story beyond its means. But as we’ve seen with Morrison in the past, great art can’t always disguise an average stor…. [...]
[...] style of Joker comes from - straight from Dave McKean’s interpretation of the character in Arkham Asylum, all bug-eyed and manic-looking. In contrast to McKean’s vision, however, his Batman’s [...]
[...] Morrison’s work on Batman in the 1980s and 90s was varied. He’s most famous for Arkham Asylum, which we actually only rate for Dave McKean’s painted artwork. Gothic, originally published [...]
[...] Dark Knight. Can you say MOTHERFRAKKING AWESOME??? Heath Ledger was just AMAZING. He was the Arkham Asylum Joker, the agent of Chaos, no moral compass or sympathetic back story to explain his actions. As he [...]