Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

[Rikdad]

It was a long time since I'd given AA a serious look. Although it's Grant Morrison's first major Batman work, it didn't seem to fit with his much-later run on the character. Given more scrutiny, however, it does relate to Morrison's later work, including his Batman run, in interesting ways, even though it's certainly not part of the same plan. Perhaps more interesting is how it fit in with other works of its time. AA was definitely a ground-breaking work, worth another look if you haven't read it recently.

My thoughts, in much more depth, here:

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2016/01/r...m-serious.html

[JBatmanFan05]

Excerpt:Early on, Batman says, "I'm afraid that the Joker may be right about me [that Batman belongs in the madhouse]. Sometimes I… question the rationality of my actions. And 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." The notion that Batman is damaged psychologically is reinforced throughout the story, perhaps most emphatically in the closing psychological sketch of Batman, a one-page internal monologue which is placed in the middle of those for Arkham's inmates, and whose final words read, "Mommy's dead. Daddy's dead. Brucie's dead. I shall become a bat."

This vision of Batman as a fundamentally wounded figure is very different from the Batman that Morrison wrote two decades later, a man who is relentlessly strong in body and mind even in response to physical and psychological attack while in captivity. In 2006-2010, Morrison portrayed a Batman who could eventually escape from any trap, and could endlessly summon greater and greater resources in response to absolutely any crisis. In 1989, Morrison showed us a Batman who was, at least in principle, fragile, and who not only could be broken, but was willing to tell Jim Gordon that he feared that. And the horrible murder and abuse afflicting families in the story included the Waynes. "Brucie's dead" is a line that could only come from Bruce/Batman himself, and the use of a diminutive to describe himself is just as jarring as the thesis that Bruce Wayne died in spirit on the night that his parents died physically, but he was still, for a time, childlike enough to call himself "Brucie" as he reflected upon his trauma.

I disagree with this part some. AA Batman is just as "relentlessly strong in body and mind even in response to physical and psychological attack" like his decades later vision....because that's the whole point of AA. As I said in Batman Inc sucks thread, "Arkham Asylum is actually all about Batman finding his way out of his tortured Miller craziness back to sanity." It's all just really dark scenery to tell a really positive story about Batman finding his way back to sanity with a little psychological help from spending some time with his various enemies.

In AA, in 52, and in Morrison's long Batman titles run, we constantly see Batman starting off from a point of brokenness and overcoming that to holistic enlightenment. In AA, we don't really know exactly why Batman is so broken (Robin's death? just general accumulated weariness? both?), but I think no explanation was really needed as we were seeing a darker more tortured Batman in all Batman comics at the time (and addressing that meta development in Batman's publication history was the point of AA as, from the beginning, Morrison wasn't liking where Moore and Miller were leading comics). In 52, Bruce starts from his brokenness of his early 2000s paranoid Batjerkness and has his demons cut out to, I guess, bring at least his Batman persona back to normalcy. And Morrison's long run starts with Batman finding out that though Batman may now be fixed and reset a bit, "Bruce Wayne" (both the public & private one) is broken and he realizes he's too much Batman 24/7, he's unbalanced as Bruce and Batman.

So I see a lot of sameness and repeating in Morrison's decades-apart stories/visions, repeating the chorus of a broken Bruce/Batman finding his way out of the effects of the Post-Crisis on him of making him a tortured self-flagellating character and finding his way back to the lighter enlightened sane one he was in the Silver & Bronze Age. (Inc's ending is a novel twist in Grant's vision of Batman...concluding that, try as he (Grant) might, Batman can't quite fully get out of his bleak status quo because we as readers won't give up using him to confront our existential fears, leaving Batman as this Christlike sacrificial lamb character forever sentenced to shouldering our existential crosses when he'd rather be that fun zen hairy chested love god)

[Rikdad]

Very good points, as always, JB. Certainly, the story reaches a couple of points where Batman's response to the scenario becomes less passive and more active. At the beginning, he lacks control, but he walks out as a free man with the inmates behind him: That's a victory, and an assertion of his strength. But, he requires Dr. Adams to save him from the physical threat of Dr. Cavendish – whereas in many characterizations of Batman, he could deal with an unarmed civilian like swatting a fly – and he seemingly depends on luck to get the inmates to release him. (Arguably, he is certain that Harvey Dent will decide to free him, but I'm not sure I see evidence of that.)

I'm not sure if AA was ever meant to be in continuity. I suppose that it was, but the use of the graphic novel medium allows the possibility that it was a separate continuity, just like the movies are. Maybe that's not an important point: The work was clearly intended to adjust the overall spirit of Batman, and that can be done out of continuity, as DKR certainly proved.

So, the intent, I agree, is much the same as in the 2006-2010 run. One might say that AA is more parallel to the two issues of 52 with Batman, which show a broken Bruce Wayne putting himself back together with two rituals/experiences – the demon-cutting experience in the desert and Thogul. The Bruce Wayne who begins those experiences might be more like the AA Batman than the Bruce Wayne who leaves those two experiences.

[JBatmanFan05]

I'm not sure if AA was ever meant to be in continuity.

At one point at least, it was not intended to be continuity (by Grant at least, but you have to consider DC's intent too). Grant in some interview said he wanted a scene in there at the end when Bruce wakes up after the dream (that was the main story). I can't find the interview anymore, I think I might have it somewhere though, printed up. But obviously that scene didn't make it into the final version or Grant's script to McKean it seems.

But whether or not is not that important, as you said, as you can affect the tone and spirit of Batman comics from outside continuity like DKR and 60s show and movies and games.
Just a FYI on that point.

So, the intent, I agree, is much the same as in the 2006-2010 run. One might say that AA is more parallel to the two issues of 52 with Batman, which show a broken Bruce Wayne putting himself back together with two rituals/experiences – the demon-cutting experience in the desert and Thogul. The Bruce Wayne who begins those experiences might be more like the AA Batman than the Bruce Wayne who leaves those two experiences.

I think we have to view from the meta perspective to see why Grant keeps repeating this broken-to-fixed chorus. Enough interviews and his stories suggest that he loves the main idea that Batman is a man who takes his tragedies (parents' deaths, his own times of brokenness) and turns them into this positive heroic Myth. And Grant sees a parallel between the in-story transformation of orphaned boy to costumed avenger to the historical (hope for) transformation from Post-Miller post-Crisis tortured insanity to light enlightened sane Silver & Bronze Age spirit hero.

And Inc ends with Grant realizing his hope can't fully come to fruition, because Batman is apparently more than a positive inspirational heroic Myth, he's also kinda sadly a matryr condemned to burden our immature psychological problems on comic pages...burdened to fight our existential fears because we can't fight them enough ourselves.

Annihilator is all about what Grant likes about Batman. Annihilator is about how we're all subject to the harsh but impersonal universe (like black holes), but we make meaning of our technically meaningless lives, the light and beauty of living, we make for ourselves life worth living. Batman took his black hole (the hole in things), his parents' death, and made the wonderfully positive meaning out of it (Batman & his crusade) for himself and for the world.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/08/...p-annihilator/