Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth (1989)
Grant Morrison and Dave McKean team up to deliver a Batman story that isn't quite a Batman story, mainly because Morrison is more concerned with the origin story of the asylum itself, and its founder Amadeus Arkham's descent into madness and eventual hospitalisation there. In essence, the story takes the Arkham namesake back to its source, and adds a Lovecraftian (read: purple prose out the ass) take on the Batman character and his major villains. Morrison draws considerable inspiration not just from the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft's own life, but also from tarot, astrology, the works of Lewis Carroll, and even Wagner's late masterwork
Parsifal. Meanwhile, Dave McKean's fantastically cold, dark, and industrial artwork, which is for me the real star of the show, paints the asylum in expressionist shadows, cold blues, and violent reds, framed in collages of rust and grime, bent nails, and old surgical tools. It has a very tactile quality because of its layeredness of materials, and the pencilled portions of the art avoid committing to solid lines, furthering the sensation of madness in the air, making pervasive its thoroughly Lovecraftian sensibilities.
Batman is, as you may have guessed, not the main character. Well, he
is, but he shares top billing with Amadeus Arkham, through whose journal we learn of the founding of Arkham Asylum (which itself is arguably a main character) and the madness that consumed him the longer he stayed there. Their characters and arcs are also given a hint of the parallel, and while I will avoid spoilers it should be noted that the take Morrison offers on the psychology of Batman is much darker than in typical treatments. From page one, the question of his sanity lingers in the air, and only grows more urgent as he deals with the constant harassment of such villains as the Joker, Two-Face, Killer Croc, Scarecrow, and Mad Hatter, all very much
reimagined in design while maintaining their essential qualities. It's in the lettering also that these characters really come to life, Gaspar Saladino uses distinctive lettering for each speaking character, from Batman's inverted black-on-white speech bubbles, to Joker's red free-form scrawl.
While Morrison's text can come across ham-fisted (and it should be made clear that this could either be knowing homage to Lovecraft or simply his own shortcomings — based on previous experiences of his work I'm going to say it's a little bit of both) it is brimming with fascinating ideas and revolves around a dense network of symbols and references, bringing the world and myth of Arkham to an elevated level of vividness, and is also great simply to look at thanks to Saladino's fantastic lettering. As I said before, McKean's artwork is the main draw, every panel so full of character as to make all one-hundred pages work simply as a visual feast, and not just the panels but the great composition of each page, which is always strikingly detailed.
So, I really like it. I'm a big fan of Batman, particularly more psychological takes on the character like
The Killing Joke, which also gives a great take on the Joker, and this one is kind of in the same vein, taken to what may be extremes for some people. If it sounds like something you'd enjoy, definitely check it out, but if you're looking for the typical “Batman is a badass genius who kicks everyone's ass because Batman” kind of story, you'll probably want to give this one a miss.