Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition) | Grant Morrison

Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition) | Grant Morrison | Welcome To Arkham! Leave Your Sanity At The Door!

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Batman: Arkham Asy...

	Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition) Grant Morrison DC Comics, 2005 - 216 pages average customer review:based on 67 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

blew me away

great story. SICK and awsome drawings. nice and voilent...... just like i like it

Welcome To Arkham! Leave Your Sanity At The Door!

The thing with Arkham Asylum is that back in 1989, author Grant Morrison and artist Dave McKean got together and turned the world of Batman upside down and inside out. My first glimpse of Arkham Asylum all those years ago was shocking. This was Batman? No way! The Joker isn't that kind of pychotic! Is he? Yeah, he is. The darknes that is Arkham Asylum takes the whole Bathman mythos to a new arena of madness and debauchery. A little hard to follow in places because McKean's style is so flamboyant and disturbing, Arkham weaves two storylines together. The First and foremost is that all the criminals inside the Arkham Asylum have escaped and are holding hostages until Batman is made available to them. Chief lunatic in charge: The Joker. The second storyline follows long back in the 1920s when Amadeus Arkham opens his ancestral home to the luntatics of the world for treatment. This stuff is very, very, very dark. If you have a preconceived notion as to where this will lead, you're probably wrong. The kewel thing is this, however, in the 15th Anniersary edition they put the entire screenplay after the comic and that helps out alot. When you get a little confused, you can check the notes for reference. This is 1989's addition to the growing darkness that would infiltrate the comic world for years to come. After this, the 90s would reveal The Sandman with Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean and the darkness would remain. Good stuff.

Dig it!!!

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Insane artwork.

Interesting story. But this is not a common artwork, it's a little abstract. You may be sure you'll experience a true madness.

not bad, but not great

this was only the second graphic novel i've ever read ('identity crisis' being the first). there were a lot of things i really liked, some things i didn't care for at all.

'arkham asylum' is a highly conceptual piece of work, both in story and in art. the story, in theory, is very interesting. who wouldn't want to read a story about batman forced into an asylum taken over by his fiercest enemies and have to deal with his own pyschological well-being? sounds like a really good idea, but it's an idea that, for me, was never fully realized. i admire morrison's courage in writing this story. it must have been a terribly difficult story to write. like i said, i like it in theory, but the execution could've been improved. for example, i never really understood what psychological journey batman went on, and i never felt that his own sanity was ever in jeopardy. it could be, of course, that i missed something. and as the previous reviewer mentioned, the symbolism is pretty heavy handed.

i was expecting a LOT more from batman. all we really got was the occassional two or three word sentence. that's it. if this was supposed to be batman's journey into the far reaches of psyche, batman's a pretty shall dude. visually, batman was almost non-existant. most of what we is limited to shadows and outlines. i get why mckean painted him as he did: it's higly symbolic. batman is a enigmatic figure to begin with and what better why to heighten that tension than to blur batman into the background? on a literary level i can appreciate that. on a visual level, it's not the best idea to obscure your central character (of course, this is just my opinion). overall, though, i thought mckean's art served its purpose and fit the book tonally: it's dark, muted, disturbing, and equally compelling. some of the panels are simply gorgeous is their hideousness.

there IS, however, a lot admire. first, morrison's portrayal of joker was exactly what i thought it should be. the joker, in my limited experience, usually comes off pretty cartoonish. in arkham joker is the homicidal lunatic, a man so emotionally disturbed taht he should be locked up in a dungeon and chained to the wall. he's prone to senseless violence, boughts of MPD, incoherent thought, and complete irrationality. that's the essence of the joker, and i liked him in sick kind of way because he was by far the most fully realized and developed character in the book. i think you could make the argument it's a graphic novel about the joker more than it is about batman. it was also interesting to see how arkham came into being. like most houses of horror, arkham itself was born out of immense tragedy.

'arkham asylum' certainly has its highs and lows. it's the kind of book that's going to appeal to a lot of readers because it IS unique. mckean's art, while polarizing, certainly is a breed unto its own. i admire that. morrison's story is interesting, for sure. it could've used a bit more polish. can i recommend this book to *everyone*? no. but that's not to say you shouldn't pick it up. it DOES have its merits and it WILL appeal to a lot of people. it's just one of those books you have to read for yourself and decide what it means to you.

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