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| Saturday, March 3, 2007 11:53 PM |
| Even More Comic Books |
 by Fëanor |
Now I'm on to my old friend Batman, possibly my favorite "superhero" (I put that in scare quotes because as we all know, he has no superpowers). For my return to Gotham City, I began with a book from the late '90s written by Grant Morrison with art by Dave McKean (he of Sandman fame) called Batman: Arkham Asylum and then moved on to Batman Archives Volume One, which collects the first two year's worth of Batman stories from Detective Comics in chronological order. I am surprised to report that I enjoyed the latter quite a bit more than the former. But in this post, I'll focus on Arkham only.
First of all, the art in Arkham makes use of found objects and collage to create an incredibly unique and atmospheric comic experience. It's innovative, entrancing, beautiful, surreal, abstract, amazing - in other words, everything we've come to expect from Mr. McKean. The man is ridiculously good. No, the problem here is not with the art, but with Morrison's writing.
Don't get me wrong, Grant is good... to a point. For one thing, the art and the language together do a great job of getting across the sense of madness. When you look into this book, it's like your staring into the center of a madman's feverish mind. This is insanity, in comic book form. It's actually kind of scary.
The book uses the effective device of jumping back and forth between two stories, paralleling them and letting them build upon each other. The main story takes place in the present and is about the inmates of Arkham - all of Gotham's worst and most dangerous criminals - taking over the asylum, and then demanding that Batman come and join them inside, or they will kill the doctors and other patients that they have taken hostage. The other story takes place in the past and is the story of the asylum itself, as well as the harrowing story of its namesake, the man who founded the institution.
The story set in the past is particularly brutal, disturbing, and frightening and is very effective - describing as it does one man's tortured life, his attempts to help cure insanity, and the way all of this ultimately causes his own descent into madness. It's the story in the present that I feel is a bit flawed, mainly due to a tendency toward melodrama, and a wrong-headed characterization of Batman.
I'm willing to let Morrison go on the fact that he has Batman react callously to a killing - to the point of saying, "He got what he deserved." - because in the early comics, Batman was like that, so there's a precedent for it. Still, the contemporary Batman abhors killing for any reason, so it seemed kind of odd to me, especially since the killing in question was unnecessary (I mean, she could have just stabbed him, she didn't have to slit his throat).
But what really bugs me is the way Morrison has Batman freaking out almost immediately. Even in his happy-go-lucky, wise-cracking days Batman was never one to freak out so easily, or to share his personal feelings and fears with other people, even Commissioner Gordon (which he does here, with almost no provocation). Batman is cold as ice. Batman is a dark mysterious stranger who kicks your ass and then disappears back into the night. Batman is also a genius detective and is always one step ahead of you. But this Batman is easily tricked, frightened, and manipulated by the Joker, and starts going insane almost the moment he steps through the doors of Arkham. He also screams "No!" entirely too much. Critics of The Shining often claim that Jack Nicholson goes crazy too quickly and easily in the film; I'd say the same for Batman here.
Still, overall it is a pretty effective book, and visually it's quite stunning. I was also intrigued by Morrison's odd choices for which villains to include. Sure, he's got the familiar and obvious guys: the Joker, Two-Face, Mad Hatter, Clayface, Croc. But he's also got some guys here I'd never heard of and had to look up on Wikipedia, like Black Mask, Doctor Destiny (sounds like this guy might have cropped up in some Sandman stories, so maybe I have read about him before, but he didn't seem familiar), Maxie Zeus, and Professor Milo. Morrison must have dug back through the DC archives trying to find all of Batman's most insane enemies... |
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