Batman Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth
Overview: Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth is a hard hitting psychological horror story featuring Batman and virtually all the inmates of Arkham Asylum, the house for the criminally insane. Led by the Joker, the inmates – Two Face, The Mad Hatter, Killer Croc, Clayface, Scarecrow, and more – take over the asylum and seize control of the staff. They’re willing to release the hostages, but only if their one demand is met: Batman must be turned over to them, and become one of their own.
Pages: 122 Pages
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Dave McKean
Letterer: Gasper Saladino
If you read the back of the book or the overview listed above, you are expecting a lot of villains from the Batman universe to be in this book. To be honest, they have a very small part in this book. Actually, Batman himself has a small part in this book. The book is more about how Arkham became Arkham and the spirits that haunt the place. How it came to be the place it became, and how it has had a troubled past before inmates were being treated. Batman and the villains do weave in and out of the story, but really seem to be there more to justify Batman being in the title instead of them being the main story. The artwork is also very different from what I am used to. Almost all of them were dark, blurry, and muddled. This is not something I enjoy in comics, as the reason I read comics is to see a picture of what is going on. This is more like watching TV with a poor picture where you only get glimpses of what is going on. It might add a little to the story as Batman does question his own sanity while in there with the criminally insane, but nonetheless left me feeling a little cheated. I also want to mention that half of the book 15th anniversary edition is taken up by the original script for the book. If that interests you to read the comic then read the original script then you will be happy to have it. I didn’t enjoy the story enough to want to then turn around and read the script.
Overall, I was not all that entertained be the story and the blurry dark art that went with it did not help me with enjoying the book. It does start off with a lot of potential but never reaches them.