In a surprising change of pace, I've created a title BEFORE writing anything down here. I see it has failed to improve my titles. It's a quote from the movie Mystery Men, so maybe that's where I went wrong... well, I like that movie anyways.
Coming onto the end of another day off and only now at 11 am I jumping on to write something. Better late than never, and the fact is the hard part is getting started, then it all just comes.
So- Batman: Arkham Asylum- A Serious House On Serious Earth by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, lettered by Gaspar Saladino
It's one of those big name books that most real comic fans have read, so I had to get to it eventually- it makes the impertinent boast of being the best selling graphic novel of all time. I imagine that is only the case due to the technicality that Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns were originally released in single issue format. Regardless, lets say this is legitimately, plain and simple, the best selling book- I attribute this entirely to being released the same year as the 1989 Batman movie.
If I've absorbed my information correctly, Arkham Asylum was written in this impressionistic style in response to the gritty realism of Dark Knight Returns (heavy on the gritty here) and Watchmen (heavy on the realism here... though I seriously doubt pirate comics would take prevalence in a world with a real life Dr. Manhattan. Anyways.)which is pretty brilliant to me- to see these two works enter the comics landscape and think "now is the time to do the complete opposite thing here".
Dave McKean is the natural choice for an impressionist piece, everything is conveyed by mood and the surroundings- of course I greatly prefer having clearly drawn "actors" on the page, where I can make out faces and what they have to convey. I don't mind the crazy surroundings or the occasional grotesque, but I start to doubt your skills when the painted shadows are all I see.
I included the letterer in my little credits above, Gaspar Saladino, because unfortunately a letterer will fly under the radar when he does a good job, but when the reverse is true, well, blame where it's due. In fact, this is one of my main complaints of the book which I would have attributed to Dave McKean before I saw there was a separate letterer- I can't make out a bunch of stuff! Mostly it's the scratchy red of the Joker's dialogue, done to look like splatters of blood (let's be honest here, the guy wasn't trying to evoke splatters of paint) and I have to work way too hard to try and figure out what's being said- one of the key reasons I felt compelled to read the script Morrison wrote for the book included in this collection.
I understand differentiating the different word balloons for effect, and I imagine the reason the Joker lacks any balloon for his words is to represent his lack of restraint in any regard- so yes, you may have a good reason to do this, but still, you can't just throw the words on the page- work with the background! If it blends too much with the background and I can't read it... well, I personally think it's a mistake to make.
The most interesting thing was reading the script at the back, particularly as it's a Morrison script, because with him it was never going to be a simple "draw this- character says this- next page" a lot of things are explained in the script, and a lot of things aren't.
The specific example that comes to mind that goes weirdly unexplained is when Morrison writes in a random crazy guy (the story takes place in a mental institution after all) who he describes as representative of Dionysus/Bacchus (forget which one he said specifically) but without mentioning WHY such a reference was important. Excepting Maxie Zeus, the man who thinks he's Zeus (duh) who doesn't play any major role in the book (I suppose he's there to represent a growth beyond mythology, even as Batman is growing into his own myth? It's a four page sequence after all, I'd rather not take too long looking into it) there wasn't any other reference to greek mythology in the book... whereas the whole of the rest of the book is referencing Alice in Wonderland, jungian psychology and the images of the tarot again and again. I clearly need to learn more about jung and tarot stuff to appreciate the book, but still- why the offhand reference to the god of partying down?
There's also this bit concerning Dave McKean- in Morrison's words he was unwilling to add Robin to the story, was having a difficult enough time deigning to do a silly Batman comic. Now the way Morrison wrote it here sounds like he was laughing it off, but if this guy thinks he's too good to draw a Batman comic, or too good to draw something that was written for the book, then I'm immediately really annoyed with him. There are so many people that would do anything to get that kind of chance, and he seems to take it completely for granted.
Of course this is me getting worked up over a casting decision made over twenty years ago.
The Batman portrayed in Arkham Asylum is very aware that he's playing the role of a caped crusader, and betrays a lot of human fear that I wouldn't expect to see from Batman, but that's because I'm reading this from the perspective of a future that took the tough as nails Dark Knight Returns Batman and has run with it into an invincible mythological figure. That said, that doesn't make Arkham Asylum incompatible with regular Batman comics history, in fact it's almost essential to his characters evolution, it points out the moment when Batman grows beyond his fears into that invincible mythological figure- it's the bridge between the two versions of the character that we'd never really been given before.
However I don't think we can take the story as something that literally happens to ol' Batman (yes yes, in as much as anything happens to any of these characters- let me have my fun), Morrison himself points out a scene where Batman jabs through his hand with a piece of glass and how that would ruin his hand forever, but just went with it because it was cool. Or maybe because it didn't really happen, but was instead a dream. Considering the abstract nature of the art and story, I prefer to take the whole thing as an incredibly moving dream.
Why shouldn't a dream trigger such an important evolution for Batman? Dreams effect the real world all the time.
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