An Absurd House on Absurd Earth
Why Arkham Asylum should be stricken from the Bat-pantheon
by Marc N. Kleinhenz
Like literature - or nearly any other subject or art form, for that matter - Batman has a pantheon, a collection of seminal stories that define his character and mythology. Given Bats's 72-year history, it's a long and storied list, as you can well imagine, but the core of it revolves around a quartet of comics published within a four-year timetable: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Year One ('87), The Killing Joke ('88), and Arkham Asylum: A Serious Place on Serious Earth ('89).
Frank Miller's two miniseries - the inventive TDKR and the quintessential Year One - are, of course, nothing short of genius and deserving of every accolade bestowed on them in the past 25 years. And while Killing Joke ultimately can't compare to Alan Moore's other, contemporaneous work, such as V for Vendetta or, most especially, the incomparable Watchmen, it's a solid, memorable, even haunting tale that has more than earned its place next to Miller's gold Bat-standard.
This just leaves Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum.
With the inmates of Arkham taking control of the institution and demanding Batman's presence there with them, it's a strong, even intriguing premise. And Morrison's stated goal of leaning more towards dark atmospherics as opposed to a standard plot - resulting in a haunted, dream-like journey through the Dark Knight's subconscious as opposed to traditional action-adventure romps - adds to the potentiality of the graphic novel.
The only problem with this conceptual framework is, well, it doesn't work, at least not when translated onto the page. The characters, most especially Bats himself, are off in a way that is inexplicable, even for a glorified dream sequence; Batman allows himself to be sexually groped by the Joker (I don't care how symbolic a gesture it is supposed to be, meant to reveal hidden layers of repression within Bruce Wayne's psychology - Batman would have broken anyone's hand on pure reflex alone) and willingly participates in a word association game, opening up his feelings about his parents in front of nearly the entirety of his rogues' gallery. The story ends with him essentially freeing the inmates once-and-for-all and undoes whatever progress Harvey Dent has tentatively made in moving away from his Two-Face persona, all in the name of liberating the subconscious.
Then there's the dialogue, which, in Morrison's hands, comes out as stilted and awkward. In the opening scene, the Dark Knight answers a phone call from his arch-nemesis with a prolix, Adam West-worthy "Joker! Are you there? What do you want?" (or is that more William Shatner?), then bellowsout a "nooooooooo!" that comically presages Hayden Christensen's Darth Vader when he believes Joker has maimed one of the asylum hostages. It's hard to envision, say, Michael Keaton or even Christian Bale with that ridiculous voice delivering such lines onscreen, much less Miller writing them in a script.
Arkham Asylum's overall narrative structure is more successful than its characterization, but only tenuously so. It plays more like a dark ride attraction at a theme park than a story proper, with Batman moving from one set-piece - anchored by a supervillian who gets to wax quasi-philosophical in monologue after monologue - to the next, sequentially but not linearly, as he wanders aimlessly through the madhouse. (Oh, and along the way, he sustains an insane amount of injuries that even Morrison was forced to admit would probably result in permanent, debilitating handicaps. But since this is all a "dream," the reader is not expected to notice.)
The book's ultimate confrontation serves as the icing on the Bat-cake. The Caped Crusader is assaulted by a rail-thin doctor (who - surprise! - is really the villain who set the inmates loose in the first place) who manages to not only get the drop on him, but who also is literally inches away from slitting his throat open. Bats only survives the encounter because he is saved at the last minute by another one of the Arkham doctors, a questionable turn of events which Morrison explains by saying:
Batman, at his most ineffectual, is here wrestling the very embodied heart of his own insanity. Under normal circumstances, of course, a superb martial arts master such as Batman would have no trouble defending himself against a skinny, lunatic doctor, but here we are watching the very essence of Batman crumble in the fact of its own potential abnormality. In this sense, he is fighting himself while calling on another aspect of himself for help in the struggle.
In reality, this has less to do with being mystical and more to do with bad - or overwrought or, even, turgid - writing. Subtext is subtext for a reason; it is structurally incapable of being anything other than a buttress. It is like moving the basement of a house up to the first floor, giving the dwelling no choice but to cave into the void that was its foundation. (For an absolutely superb example of how to really intertwine theme, image, symbolism, and, yes, character and narrative threads into one seamless whole, on the other hand, see the aforementioned Watchmen.) That, actually, is an appropriate image, given Two-Face's patiently constructed house of cards that gets smashed at the very end of the story.
There, Mr. Morrison. Your metaphor has, indeed, become fully realized and (self) embodied.
Marc N. Kleinhenz is a freelance writer who has covered the gaming industry for a dozen different sites, including Gamasutra and TotalPlayStation, where he was features editor. He co-hosts the Airship Travelogues podcast for Nintendojo and has had his creative writing published through Alterna Comics and Asylum Ink and Smashed Cat magazines, among others.
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