Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth: Difference between revisions

[[File:arkham_asylum_1.jpg|frame|[[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here|The most serious house on the most serious street in America, where nothing remotely silly will ever happen.]]]]

 

{{quote|''Sometimes... sometimes I think the Asylum is a head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps it's '''your''' head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass... and '''we''' are '''you'''.''|'''The Mad Hatter'''}}

 

A 1989 [[Batman]] graphic novel written by [[Grant Morrison]] [[Mushroom Samba|at his crackiest]] and beautifully (yet creepily) illustrated by [[Dave McKean]].

 

 

More recent editions come with a full script, which is a ''huge'' help in understanding what the hell is going on.

 

 

The title is taken from [[Philip Larkin]]'s poem "Church Going".

* [[Abusive Parents]]: It is hinted that Amadeus Arkham's parents sexually abused him, specifically in the "Tunnel of Love" imagery from his childhood dreams, and the way his face is situated in said image.

** Not only Amadeus's parents, it's implied Amadeus Arkham and his wife sexually abused their daughter, Harriet. This is backed up by the drawing she did of her parents, which if you look closely also appears to be external female genitalia.

** Like, frinstance, one little inscription that's scratched into the doorway of Maxie Zeus' electroshock chamber ''[[Its All Greek to Me|in Greek]]'', which is significant to the scene, and it translates to "Discover thyself." Again, the artwork is very loosely defined (and in some cases [[What Could Have Been|bypasses the original script)]].

* [[Bedlam House]]: Arkham at its finest, folks. And by finest, we mean "most pants-crappingly scary".

* [[Beetle Maniac]]: Amadeus Arkham inherited his obsession with beetles from his mother, who ate them because of their mythological significance as a symbol of rebirth.

** Then again, the cover above is that of the 15th anniversary [[Updated Rerelease]]. The original 1989 cover instead has a ''very'' detailed drawing of a bat flying by Arkham Asylum.

** And the Joker is the [[True Final Boss]] after the [[Big Bad]] is gone.

** The bearded, white-clad, beatific-expression-wearing Amadeus Arkham's last words following his years-long effort to scratch a binding spell into his cell with his fingernails: "Finished. [[Jesus|It's finished]]."

** In the part where Amadeus Arkham describes his carnival nightmares, the "Tunnel of Love" is meant to remind you of a woman's genitals.

* [[Freud Was Right]]: If you read Grant's notes, you'll find that a LOT of the scenes in this story have to do with [[Chaste Hero|Batman's screwed up sexuality]].

* [[A God Am I]]: Maxie Zeus, full stop, to rather disturbing effect.

* [[Hollywood Psychology]]: The brilliant idea that [[The Joker]] reinvents himself every day because he finds reality so overwhelming, so that he might be a harmless prankster one moment and a homicidal maniac the next, which amongst other things reconciles the wildly different versions of the character that have appeared since the 40's; the problem is the doctors call this "Super Sanity" and imply that perhaps he is perfectly sensible to live this way, maybe more so than the rest, and that this "Super Sanity" is unprecedented. Apart from not knowing what sanity means, the doctors are actually describing a very much precedented condition, namely dissociation or a psychotic break from reality, albeit an extreme case. Maybe [[Justified Trope|Justified/]] [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] since the doctors are obviously quacks, but the term has become popular in the Jokers fandom.

** It's twenty years later, but in his ''[[Grant Morrisons Batman|Batman and Robin]]'' series Morrison has Joker admit to the new Robin, Damian Wayne, that he isn't really crazy ("just different sane") and affirms Damian's accusations that he really isn't as crazy as he lets everyone think he is, basically confirming that these doctors are not meant to be taken seriously and [[The Joker]] is supposed to be nothing more than a sophisticated [[Manipulative Bastard]] and an [[Complete Monster|evil, murdering psychopath.]] Of course, again, this is ''twenty years later'', so its not exactly the best authority on the subject, even if it is the same author.

** Morrison stated in the highly explanatory fully annotated script in the 15th Anniversary Edition that this is still slightly implied as is, and meant to be.

*** If you look carefully in the scenes directly after {{spoiler|Arkham discovers his dead family}}, you can see he has some {{spoiler|blood around his mouth and beard}}.

* [[Insult Backfire]]:

'''Joker''': Flattery will get you nowhere. }}

* [[It Got Worse]]: For Two-Face, in-story. The doctors took away his coin and replaced it first with a die and later with a deck of tarot cards with the intention of giving him the ability to move beyond absolute choices, but instead it left him unable to make the most basic of decisions... [[Potty Failure|like realizing that he needs to use the bathroom]].

* [[Mind Screw]]

* [[Only Sane Man]]: Professor Milo, literally. Prior to the story, he'd been incarcerated in Arkham after accidentally being exposed to his insanity gas, but by the time of the novel it's worn off. This is generally played for [[Gallows Humor|(grim)]] laughs.

* [[Painting the Medium]]: Every character gets a different style of speech bubble. For example, Batman's is black with white lettering; Maxie gets blue ... Joker's lines didn't ''have'' speech bubbles containing them (but did have a deranged red color) and Clayface's were ... just plain weird.

*** This can lead to difficulty in reading some dialogue, especially with the Joker's jagged-red font.

* [[Reality Warper]]: Doctor Destiny gets portrayed this way here. Despite this, he's actually ''less'' scary than in ''[[The Sandman]]''. He's also implied to need eye contact for this to work.

* [[Sanity Has Advantages]]: But not as many as you'd hope.

* [[Slap Yourself Awake]]: Batman stabs his palm with a shard of glass to wake himself up from the disturbing experience of being psychoanalyzed by The Joker.

* [[Take That]]: In the 15th Anniversary edition, in the beginning of the script, Morrison writes that the script was passed around to many others before the project was completed, and that they all laughed at his attempts to integrate serious psychological symbols into a comic. Look at him now, "@$$holes!".

* [[Tarot Motifs]]: Several, The Tower and The Moon in particular.

** It also has the problem that while the art is wonderful it often does a poor job of actually portraying the scene and at many points has omitted important symbolic details. Reading the script, even without annotations, reveals a lot.

* [[Weird Moon]]: Two-Face has decided it's a coin.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Better Than It Sounds/Comic Books]]

[[Category:The Eighties]]

[[Category:DC Comics Series]]