Even if you think you've read some grim, horrific graphic novels, it's hard to brace for the strange, surreal nightmare that is Arkham Asylum, in which Batman enters into the infamous asylum and has to do battle with the darkest parts of his own psyche, both literally and metaphorically. It's not just the subject material, although that's not exactly light; author Grant Morrison does a magnificent job interweaving Batman's rogues gallery with his own traumas and hangups and investing every page with totemic significance. (The 15th anniversary of the book features the original script and annotations by Morrison, and it's incredibly helpful; it gives you phenomenal insight into some of the thought and research that went into the story and gives you a sense of the bigger picture that Morrison was trying to create through implications and allusions.) But the book doesn't work as well as it does without Dave McKean's frightening, surreal art, which eschews realism and normal comic book rules in favor of something much more fragmented and unsettling, and only adds to the unease and horror on display as a result. Arkham Asylum isn't an introductory graphic novel; the story is deceptively simple, and only unfolds as you begin to parse the art, the psychological concepts, and the deeper meanings of it all. Nor is it a great introduction to the world of Batman; this is versed in his lore to some degree, and not for someone who's only casually familiar with the man. But with those caveats, it's a remarkable book, one that truly fuses the visual and written aspects of graphic novels to create a rich, nuanced psychological portrayal that trades on classical myth to create something far more than the sum of its parts. It's undoubtedly bleak, and it may not paint the most optimistic portrait of the man, but for those who appreciate ambition and complexity in their graphic novels, you'll find it a masterpiece.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
