Grant Morrison’s and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum (1989) is a graphic novel centred on DC’s Batman character. Batman has always been the darkest of DC’s characters, although there have been periods where this has been downplayed. This is not the case with Arkham Asylum which carries the subtitle A Serious House on a Serious Earth. In 1989 DC had not yet created their Vertigo imprint which carries more adult titles, or the Elseworlds series which offer variations of known heroes and so the subtitle was necessary in order to signify that this comic was not a typical Batman comic, and did not fit into the official time-line of the character (one of the obsessions of comic book readers).

Due to the differences in this graphic novel, an outline of its unusual nature seems in place as the form of the text plays into the larger themes. An unusual feature at the time, though not so much anymore, is the fact that the entire text was published at one time, in this format of graphic novel. It is typical, especially for the two big mainstream companies of DC and Marvel to publish ‘standard’-size comics and then collect them in a graphic novel format. Not being the case here, the creators are free from having to insert narrative peaks at every 22nd page, and even the typical exciting last-panel per page is far lessened here, although not completely gone.

The major effect of this format is the way that the narrative can flow differently from what would otherwise be demanded and expected of a superhero comic (or even most comics). Because of this change, the text feels more unified and does not have the ellipses which are often used to skip to the action-filled or exciting parts. It allows the pace to flow more according to the intent of the creators rather than the conventions of the comic book format. This means that the story can dwell on particular aspects and that the possibility for moment-to-moment or non-sequitur transitions are more viable options and they are also used more than is typically the case, but I shall return to that. Pace is kept quite slow and except for the conclusion, the text does not follow the typical action-oriented story expected of superhero comics.

Visually, the comic is fully painted, although there are drawings and photo-inserts. This is in itself a very unusual style, as it is more expensive and takes longer for the artist. This unusual visual style is continued in having all the pages ‘bleed’, that is leaving no white border around the art and quite often having no ‘gutters’ to separate the panels. There are even several examples of pages either with one large panel where the other, smaller, panels are inserted into that larger panel, quite often as a form of framing. At other times, there is a painted background onto which the panels are placed. This background is not always part of the story as such, but often serves more as an indicator of a specific mood or tone. These backgrounds disrupt the typical two-dimensional use of the picture plane in comics, where the inside of panels are clearly represented in three dimensions, if not three-dimensionally, but in Arkham Asylum we find a peculiar ‘depth’ to the page itself. Foreground and background begin to matter.

Dave McKean’s art is in this text very far removed from the more realistic styles used in superhero comics. Much of his art moves towards the picture plane rather than reality or meaning (McCloud 1993: 52-53), often having a slightly surreal feel to it in the way background and foreground blend and symbols are placed around or in the narrative panels, commenting on them in peculiar ways. The style is a bricolage of paintings, drawings and photographic manipulations and the unusual layout of the art creates a peculiar abstract impression, especially regarding the transitions between panels. Although the transitions are still dominated by the typical action-to-action, subject-to-subject and scene-to-scene, we encounter an inordinate amount of aspect-to-aspect- and non-sequitur transitions and even a few moment-to-moment transitions. Unusual for any type of comic, it is especially so for superhero comics where the emphasis has conventionally been on action-to-action and subject-to-subject in order to create fast-paced and thrilling action.

What is particular about this style is the fact that it quite often obscures what happens and where specific images and panels belong. Consider for instance page 4 with a moment-to-moment transition of Amadeus’ face becoming more smudged for every panel. However, the final panel remains complicated in the fact that we cannot tell if it is Amadeus’ mother or Amadeus himself at a later date. Unclear transitions such as this complicates the straight-forward reading which is expected of most comics, especially superhero comics.

All these clues may seem to point to the fact that this text, although using characters from a superhero comic is in fact not a superhero comic itself, but instead belongs to a different genre. However, I feel that this is not the case and will argue that this text rather follows the mid-to-late eighties trend in deconstructing the superhero genre by turning a number of its conventions upside down. Comics such as Sandman and Watchmen are earlier precursors to this, as are several others. The visual style, as we have already seen, certainly adds to this but the main theme comes from the narrative and the characters.

The text explicitly deals with madness, in two separate times. One is the origin of the Arkham Asylum as constructed by Amadeus Arkham, the other is one April 1st when Batman has to enter Arkham Asylum in order to face a number of his old enemies, most prominently The Joker. Through the juxtaposition of these two times the text creates a number of parallels between the events of Amadeus and those of Batman. The two narratives intertwine with no clear distinction and few narrative or visual cues. Both narratives deal with the madness of the two protagonists, Amadeus and Batman, particularly as it originates in their childhood traumas, both which create the foundation of their identity. It must be noted here that I am interested in madness as metaphor, rather than a specific psychological reading of the text.

Since Batman is the main protagonist here the focus is placed in him. Batman’s trauma is well-known but is still revisited here, showing the night when the young Bruce Wayne loses his parents in the alley after being at the movies. However, rather than the typical idyllic night out which is the usual way of presenting Batman’s origin story, in this version the father is harsh, being cross at Bruce for being frightened at the movies, threatening to leave Bruce behind if he does not stop crying. Childhood fears take the place of beloved memories, and Bruce is traumatised before his parents’ death. Bruce’s choice to become Batman is no longer simply to fight crime, but also a way of not being Bruce, to take on an identity which is not afraid.
Batman’s identity then becomes a key issue for the text and access to that identity clearly becomes pivotal in relating to Batman as character. As Scott McCloud points out, in comics this is strongly dependent upon reader participation because most of the narrative is never shown or even told. Instead, it takes place ‘between’ the panels (McCloud 1993:66) in the gutters. The idea is the same as Iser’s gestalt theory, except that it is even more profound in comics, due to its dependence on different transitions. One could argue that a comic could be narrated entirely through moment-to-moment transitions and so approach animation, but so far this has not taken place and is not likely to.

Because of this, we as readers require a reasonable access to the protagonist, either visually, textually or both. Since American superhero comics rarely uses masking (the notion of a less detailed face for the protagonist in order to enhance reader identification with the protagonist), one would expect a number of revelatory close-ups for us to gauge the emotional state of the character, in addition to a broad access to thoughts and feelings. This is parallel to what happens in film, and so I will draw on Murray Smith’s work in Engaging Characters (1995) to describe the process of reader identification.

There are plenty of close-ups of faces in the text; Gordon, Two-face, Amadeus etc all portrayed in what is close to the realistic approach of illustrating in American mainstream comics. These panels provide us with clear information and a large degree of access to the character’s emotional state and identity. There are only two characters which readily diverge from this, Batman and the Joker; I will focus on Batman first. Throughout the entire text, Batman remains a mysterious figure always dark and constantly in the shadows. Despite several close-ups we never see his eyes or even any particular detail of the features of his face. Rather than creating a masking effect, I believe that we are distanced from Batman, due to his appearance as almost only a silhouette.
As readers, we are generally denied access to what Batman truly feels, except the one flashback where we see the night his parents was killed. This flashback can only be Batman’s though it is not particularly marked as such, hardly even separate from the main narrative, except through knowledge of the Batman mythology. By remaining as such a mysterious, shadowy figure, the process of identification with the protagonist is disrupted as we have a very limited access to Batman’s emotions and practically none of his thoughts. Batman is even further from his typical self in his actions, showing weakness when confronted with word-association where his childhood trauma is clearly displayed and by the fact that he kills rather than imprisons his enemies. This clear breach of genre conventions forces the reader to find identification elsewhere. Since we cannot ‘become’ Batman, we must become someone else.

The two more obvious choices are Doctor Cavendish and Ruth Adams, both employed at the asylum. We can identify with them through several clear images of them, access to their motives for staying in the asylum, which is the self-sacrificial ideal of helping the inmates. As such, we are quickly aligned with them as potential heroes, trusting them as a safe passage into the text. However, it turns out that both of these characters are problematic in terms of what they offer as identificatory characters. Doctor Cavendish turns out to be a madman bent on destroying Batman, seeing him as the evil ghost of the asylum and in a strange way as the reason Amadeus went mad. Ruth Adams remains a good character until she kills Doctor Cavendish in order to save Batman. Though this heroic action might mark her even further for the reader character, she suffers a traumatic breakdown from killing her colleague. This breakdown forces the reader to consider the moral dilemma of killing a person in order to save a life.

While we as readers clearly root for Batman to win, we are still faced with this problem, which is emphasised when Batman kills several of the inmates in order to show that he is the strongest. In the end, we might actually wish not to identify with Batman, portrayed as weak, insecure, violent and self-centred. However, whether we identify with Batman or not, it is clear that the text deals specifically with Batman’s identity and how that is connected to his childhood trauma. What is so particular about the text is the way it chooses to portray Batman’s identity as one of schizophrenia, making the split between Bruce Wayne and Batman more than a convenient secret identity and instead portraying Batman as Bruce Wayne’s escape from his own identity.

This escape from his own identity is revealed to be a form of madness when he encounters the Mad Hatter who insists that the Asylum is a head, a head which dreams all the people inside it. The Hatter suggests: “Perhaps its your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass. And we are you.” Here Arkham becomes a symbol of Batman’s mind, not in the literal sense, but rather the metaphoric suggestion that the criminals who Batman places in Arkham are actually reflections of his own trauma. A trauma which has created what is normally seen as a superhero, a person fighting for the good, but here that process is questioned. The criminals whom Batman fights can in this way be seen as the traumatic experiences which haunt him, which is also why he has to show them that he is stronger than them. That the bat as a symbol of this has completely overshadowed his mind can be seen when Ruth Adams shows Batman a Rorschach-card, where he sees a bat, though denies it. The Joker tries to provoke him by taunting him with the oft-cited homosexual relationship between Batman and Robin with his comment “Not even a cute little long-legged boy in swimming trunks?” (p. 30), but here there is only the bat, nothing else.

Batman becomes a one-dimensional character, portrayed as having been consumed by the bat till there is nothing else left in him. The bat represents the dark side of Bruce Wayne but also as the protector from the old scars. The bat, however, is not portrayed as a guardian angel or saviour but rather something evil which fights evil. This is a connection which is enhanced by Amadeus’ belief that a bat haunted the asylum and that this bat was the cause of his mother’s madness and death. This raises the interesting issue of Amadeus and his story and its connection to Batman.
Amadeus Arkham was the one who built the asylum, though at first it was simply his home. Amadeus’ trauma comes from caring for his unstable mother after the death of his father. While caring for her, he realises that her madness is simply a form of individual world in which signs and symbols have special meaning for her, and that she is not really mad but lives according to other standards. Amadeus becomes interested in the meaning of symbols and the text invokes a number of symbols throughout the narrative, inserted visually, but Amadeus also encounters two important icons of symbolism: C.G. Jung and Alastair Crowley. Here psychology and the occult are fused together as relevant. Occult of course means hidden, and it is more the hidden meanings of symbols which are relevant here, rather than the supernatural connotations.

We follow Amadeus’ descent into madness, where he kills the criminal who has killed his family and tapes over the mirrors because they make him hear voices, to the culmination when he discovers what it is that has made his mother mad; a giant bat which continually haunts her. He kills her to set her free and dedicates his life to contain the bat within the asylum. This is done through the inscription of arcane symbols all over the walls, in the belief that these symbols will stop the bat. The plot of Doctor Cavendish is, as we have seen, to get Batman back into the asylum because then he will not be able to escape and thereby Dr. Cavendish can contain and kill the bat.
The guiding symbol, then, for both narratives is the bat. The bat becomes an overpowering symbol of madness, of the retreat away from a trauma and the projection of said trauma onto something else. Amadeus kills his mother to free her from the bat, which is an attempt to cure her madness through violence. Bruce Wayne believes that he can escape and heal his trauma by becoming the bat, by never being afraid and by punishing the criminals who hurt people like he was hurt himself. This, for him, seems to be the only way to repair the loss he suffered and save others from the same.

That childhood fear of parents run parallel to the criminals is seen in the repeated panels on page 1 and 41, where a threatening figure stares at a child. In the first panel, it is Amadeus as a child, confronting what he believes is the evil of the house, something he has projected due to his mother’s madness. In the end it is this evil which becomes the bat for Amadeus, and what he attempts to contain within the house. In the second panel, it is Bruce’s father who is scolding Bruce for being upset about Bambi.

The red glare of the eyes in both cases makes the person seem ominous and threatening. When the robber comes and kills Bruce’s parents, we never see anything more than a gun. No face or body, only the gun as a threatening, violent object. It seems fair to say that it is the red-eyed figure which makes the children obsessed with the bat, here it is as much the father who turns Bruce into Batman, just as it is the mother who turns Amadeus into a lunatic. There is another parallel between the two characters. A murderer called Mad Dog Hawkins kills Amadeus’ family, after having been in Amadeus’ care. He cuts himself with razors just to feel something. When Batman is overpowered by the thoughts of his parents’ death, he stabs himself with a piece of glass in order to forget it. In this inversion, Batman cuts himself in order not to feel, to substitute physical pain for mental pain. Mad Dog Hawkins and Batman are also similar in doing what they do because voices tell them to. Mad Dog hear the Virgin Mary and Batman hears the bat. Additionally, they are both named after animals. This form of parallelism increases the unsettling status which Batman has in this text, making his status as hero unstable.

The only way of coming to terms with this is by fully becoming Batman, accepting that there is no longer a distance between Batman and Bruce, that he must embrace his own madness in order to survive. As such, Bruce Wayne chooses a form of voluntary schizophrenia to defend against the loss of his parents’ death. Because this loss is essentially guilt-less, with no specific person to blame except the criminal, Batman can be seen as trying to fill the void by punishing criminals and living as the bat. The text exposes the madness which is inherent in this choice, but uncomfortably does not resolve it in any positive way.

Wayne has no choice but to become the bat in order to live with his loss. That he belongs as much in Arkham as the criminals he has placed there is realised by himself and the Joker. Batman’s escape into madness had already been asserted by The Joker, who denies the other inmates’ wish to remove Batman’s mask in order to see his real face. As The Joker rightly argues, “That [the mask] is his real face.” It is only by becoming his own symbol that Batman can remove his fear, for it is only Bruce who is afraid. When Batman comes into existence, Bruce disappears, which is also noted in the character portfolios at the end of the novel: “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. I must be a creature. I must be a creature of the night. Mummy’s dead. Daddy’s dead. Brucie’s dead. I shall become a bat.” Furthermore, this portfolio is made of cut-outs of a newspaper or similar, indicating the composite nature of Batman. The style of these portfolios all function as indexical signs of the mental state of the character, both visually and textually. It is this basic schism which The Joker refers to when he says that Batman belongs in Arkham as well.

Batman’s schizophrenic nature is foregrounded here, revealing that there is no real difference between him and the criminals. Both he and Amadeus kills the criminals which murdered their family. Amadeus did it literally, but Batman does it symbolically by trying to stop all criminals and in this text, unlike most Batman comics, he specifically kills them rather than handing them over to justice. Cavendish, the leader of the asylum in the Batman time-line, goes mad when confronted with Amadeus’ old journals, symbolically turning into Amadeus, but when Batman says to Cavendish that he is sick, he merely replies: “I’m sick? Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Mirrors have special significance, as during Batman’s climactic battle with Croc, the symbolic dragon he has to slay in order to emerge victorious, we hear Batman: “Desperately, I peel the tape from the mirror, breaking my fingernails, strip by strip. Until I stand revealed in the glass.” This comment refers to Amadeus who taped over the mirrors, but is used here to signify that Batman has to face his madness, to realise, as he later says: “Sometimes it’s only madness that makes us what we are.” By accepting his madness, Batman can become the bat fully, and so defeat his enemies. Batman’s schizophrenia becomes the schizophrenia of the textual form itself. While we do not solely follow Batman’s point of view, he remains the central character even assuming lines potentially coming from Amadeus, emphasizing the schizophrenic nature of Batman, while also tying their madness together. This juxtaposition of Batman’s and Amadeus’ identities are visually represented in the comic by simply using alternating pages which moves with no specific cues between the two stories.

The style of the text is one of bricolage which disrupts the typical comic book representational codes by shifting between a variety of styles such as drawing, paintings, digitally manipulated photos and so on. This disruption is carried further through the use of a collage-like effect of placing symbols in front or behind the panels, so that there are no borders. These borders are usually the way comics narrate their stories, by using a complex code of reader-activation, making the reader fill in the events between panels in a typical analeptic way.

Here, however, this codified reading process is disrupted because it becomes difficult to find a flow within the panels that are present, simply because there is something in front or in the back. This forces the reader out of the standard, linear reading of the comic book into a consideration of the medium itself, in a typical metafictional process. Through the use of collage and its related effect of contiguity, the reader must make an active choice of whether to read the panel first, or the background.

While the narrative continually questions the use of symbolism, the visual style is heavily filled with symbolism, using peculiar inserts, “close-ups” and so forth. Tarot cards play a specific part in the story, but also flows into the visual presentation, making even the visual codes unstable and suspect. The more or less figurative style present in most comics is taken over here by symbols, such as a panel of Two-face’s face which is half his own and half the symbols of Tarot cards.
Many of the inserted visual pieces are often non-diegetic, clearly not belonging to the level of the narrative. The only way of integrating these inserts is to consider them as symbols, as somehow commenting on the text, either directly or indirectly. However, most of these inserts are often objects, such as wheels or clocks, or occult symbols from Tarot cards or other places. The clearest example of this is probably the “Feast of Fools”-page (pp 21-22), where The Joker introduces the place to Batman.

We have two panels of the Joker, one a close-up from the front and the second a medium from the back where we look down over the asylum and several of the inmates. This indicates an aspect-to-aspect transition where time is not moving, which is enforced by the Joker’s line “Let the Feast of Fools begin!” flowing across both panels. It is difficult to determine the place of the images on the right within the diegesis. They may represent panels in a non-sequitur transition, in which case they have little to do with the narrative. McCloud even argues that this is the function of such transitions, to have no specific narrative purpose (McCloud 1993:77). In my view this sounds a little too radical, and he also argues that there may very well still be an effect since it is probably impossible not to form of relationship between these panels.

If comics are dependent upon the reader’s participation in relating the panels in sequences, then these panels must make sense, but will potentially create very different interpretations. In this case, and I believe in all cases, pictures do not tell stories but the readers/viewers might well do so, which is of course McCloud’s basic premise for understanding comics. The problem with these panels is the fact that words flow across them which seem to cohere with the other words spoken by the inmates in the primary panel. They are graphically similar although not being contained in speech balloons to ‘contain’ them and are white. As such, they are separate from the Joker’s red words, Batman’s black speech balloons with white words and the standard white balloons with black words. The sense of the words as sentences are also similar to the other sentences, in that they make little logical sense. However, the problem occurs when we realise that the panels or inserts are either not part of the story or that they are somehow within the diegesis because the words of the inmates flow across them.

This conflation of the diegetic world and symbolism is found further in the figures of the inmates who are clearly part of the diegesis. One is the Hanged Man from the Major Arcana of the Tarot, hanging upside down, while another appears to have wings, perhaps indicating a fallen angel. There is even what appears to be a man with the head of a bird, akin to an Egyptian god. Religion, divinity and the occult are clearly invoked as visual icons here, but certainly we are not meant to believe that angels, gods and cards are inmates of the asylum. Rather, this is meant to enforce the symbolism of the story. As Batman at a later point in the story refers to himself as “Attis in the pine, Christ on the cedar and Odin on the world-ash” (p 77), these symbolic characters may function as foreshadowing for what will later occur.

There seems to be no resolution the various diegetic levels here, as strange occult markings are also placed within the panel, yet having no specific function. There are so many examples of undesignated speech balloons, peculiar occult inserts, Tarot cards and more that the page itself becomes impossible to read realistically, as conforming to the comic book convention. Medium conventions are interesting in this spread as we expect certain rules to be followed and while a large number of them are broken, many of them are still followed, in order for the reader to be able to make sense of what is going on.

The words of the inmates are placed in speech balloons in the primary panel, yet are not designated to specific people, creating the visual parallel to people speaking over each other in a cacophony of voices. We will most likely read according to our habit, from left to right, top to bottom. However, the lower left corner might very well be meant to be read first, undermining the basic premise of reading direction. In the same way, the words in the right side panels are not designated by speech balloons, at times flowing along the lines of the art, and at other being placed together to form sentences. Since they are not placed in a speech balloon there is no particular reason to believe that they cohere, other than the principle of contiguity. Of course, they do belong together because when we read them in order they form meaningful sentences, yet there many examples in the spread where the typical reading direction is distorted or even impossible.
The magpie visual style is also echoed in the narrative through the use of intertextual references. These references become so forceful that they disrupt the unity of the text, and foregrounds the unstable nature of the narrative itself. This narrative flow is already difficult enough to follow with the intertwining narrative times of Amadeus and Batman.

The Joker is placed as the master villain of the story and he is also the one who has the most intertextual references, from Shakespeare (“Parting is such sweet sorrow” – Romeo and Juliet) to Monty Python (“What a senseless waste of human life” – Life of Brian). What is peculiar about this is that the doctors in the asylum actually describe The Joker as being super-sane, better equipped to deal with modern urban life, simply because he goes with the flow of information and has no inherent personality, instead choosing from moment to moment. It is evident that the Joker has a completely different view of madness, calling it divine in his portfolio. There is no real resolution to the Joker’s madness, whether it might be representative of a fear of a society turning identity into a matter of commodity and letting go of morals and ethics; or if it on the other hand is positive evolution into a hypertextual consciousness.

One way of supporting a particular close, is to cite this ability to deal with a number of different styles, grasping a wide variety of references and positions, yet not being trapped in either of them, as closely resembling that position which the reader is inscribed into, something one must be able to do in order to understand the novel. In this way, the text itself requires a schizophrenic reading which threatens to collapse. In the end, Batman and the reader is saved by Two-face, who breaks his normal disorder of compulsively following what his coin says, and instead chooses to let Batman go. The reader is also left, at the end of the text with The Joker’s words: “Enjoy yourself out there. In the asylum. Just don’t forget – if it ever gets too tough… there’s always a place for you here.”
Visually, the Joker is clearly established as having a fluid psychology, represented in the way that he never really resembles himself from one panel to the next, coupled with the lack of speech balloons to contain his words. The first visual impression we get of the Joker here, is on page 18 which is a frightening and unsettling face which is far removed from any of the far more realistically-portrayed characters. This can be contrasted to the next closeup (p. 19) where his face has far less detail and appears more smudged, or p 30 where a zoom in by action-to-action transition do not increase the graphic detail but instead allows the pencil lines and the medium itself to become clear, revealing the Joker as textual structure rather than attempting to create a realistic portrayal. The Joker is clearly not a realistic, diegetic character but one which crosses the boundaries of the medium and the different narrative levels, appearing also a playing card in Amadeus’ narrative (p 32).

Through the use of schizophrenia both as a character trait and as a textual/visual feature, the text deconstructs the typical comic book convention of the hero defeating the criminal through the use of his/her super-powers. Indeed, most of the conventions regarding comic books are broken through a variety of schizophrenic tactics, whether it is linear narrative, textual unity, or the visual style. Madness and schizophrenia become ways of questioning these conventions, of posing questions about the superhero genre and the medium of comic books.

The fact that the story takes place on April 1st might indicate that everything should be regarded as one big joke, but this does not ring true to the tone of the novel which has very little that is funny in it. The joke might instead be seen to be at the expense of the reader and the expectations of what a Batman story is. If the guiding concern of superhero comics is power (McCloud 200:114) this text reverses the proposition that with great power comes great responsibility. Rather than portraying the hero as an idealised form of the reader, Arkham Asylum undermines Batman’s path to power. Instead of being a well-trained, disciplined hero who fights to help the innocent, here Batman is shown to get his powers through madness rather than idealism. In addition to this, the power which Batman asserts over the criminals is seen as far closer to bullying than any form of just punishment.

In fact, most of the criminals Batman encounters in the asylum seem rather helpless and in need of cure, not in need of punishment. Certainly, Arkham Asylum is not the place to get that but nor is the solution to kill the criminals. Croc is even killed in a style which resembles that of St. George and the Dragon but it is a mocking portrayal, disturbing as opposed to the glorified defeat one might expect. What is so unsettling about the text is that it offers no hope or resolution. The height of hope comes from Two-face’s decision to not kill Batman although the coin-toss shows otherwise. This decision is an abandoning of his own madness, but this choice is all the hope we get for any form of cure at all. Certainly Batman has not been cured, but rather forced to reinforce his own madness in order to survive. If madness is what makes us what we are, that is surely not a hopeful ending, particularly because Two-face rejects the Tarot cards as an option, thereby presumably returning to his two-sided world of the coin. We may hope that things are different, but there are no indications of it.

The ending itself is also unusual since Batman does not truly triumph. Rather than besting all the criminals, he is forced to gamble his own life. This is done by returning the coin to Two-face, in effect enforcing Two-face’s madness instead of trying to cure him. Batman does not win but is instead saved by one of the criminals. The Joker accepts the result, allowing Batman to leave but we as readers practically see Batman defeated, not just because he must be saved by Two-face, but because he rejects his ideals. Batman is usually portrayed as a man of principle and the right morals but here he first kills criminals in need and then reject that there is a cure for Two-face, something he asserted in the beginning. In the end, it seems that Batman needs the criminals, needs someone to punish for if he cannot be the bat he will have no defence against his own loss.
Batman’s very existence is thereby revealed as a twisted version of the hero he is supposed to be. Not the selfless hero who tries to help the weak and innocent, but instead a weak man who needs to punish those weaker than himself. The criminals must be punished in order for Bruce Wayne to have a refuge from his childhood trauma. In this way, the criminals are caught and punished as substitutes for what one criminal once did to Bruce Wayne, rather than from any lofty ideals. Bruce Wayne is trapped as Batman because he has not been able to reconcile himself with his loss, and that pain must be inflicted on others rather than himself.

The identification with Batman becomes a problem for the reader, as the book itself becomes like a mirror, reflecting the desires and expectations of the reader, questioning the notion of what role superheroes play in the reader’s universe. If the reader wishes an escapist fantasy, this text is certainly not it and indeed it undermines the unproblematic enjoyment of superhero comics. I will not argue that the text exposes the superhero genre as a fascist power fantasy, although this has been argued elsewhere, for I do not believe that this is the case.

Arkham Asylum follows other comics such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a path which deconstructs the genre of superheroes and all of these texts use madness as the guiding principle to undermine the authority of said heroes. The basic theme of power in superhero comics turns into madness as power becomes an obsession and no longer treated as an escapist fantasy. By portraying Batman as obsessed with defeating the criminals, Arkham Asylum reveals the underlying thematic structure in all superhero comic books, that crime and problems are best handled by an increase in power. This may begin to explain why superhero comics is an American phenomenon almost exclusively made, though certainly not exclusively read, in the US.

To say that superhero comics are the equivalent of the Cold War arms race is clearly an exaggeration and a simplification, but not necessarily by much. This is not an attempt to reduce superhero comics, but more an attempt to understand their function. Power has always been the way superheroes have worked and they only triumph through their powers, rarely through cunning plans, diplomacy and so on. This increase in power and stakes has been taken to its logical conclusion, or so I believe, in Warren Ellis’ superhero-pastiche The Authority.

It is interesting to see the power turned to madness here, much in the way that Foucault argues that madness can function as a rejection of the paradigm of reason (Foucault 1961/2003). In comics, it is peculiar to see how this has been a double effect. First, as a move away from the genre conventions and the perceived limits of the medium in the US. This genre revision happened mostly at the hands of British writers who functioned in many ways like a Trojan horse, bringing a degree of European sensibility to the American genre of superheroes. Writers such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Gran Morrison told radically different stories within the apparent format of the superhero genre although most of their stories diverged heavily from the basic conventions.
Second, madness as metaphor also became a way of breaking the paradigm of power as solution.

Alan Moore’s Watchmen was a direct take on the Cold War and the arms race, in a superhero-environment. Morrison’s text is slightly later than Moore’s and the Cold War had changed, but one can still find the fears of what unlimited power can do and particularly what it will become in times of peace, when there are no more external enemies. Batman’s dilemma is that his identity is tied to the existence of criminals, and although he wants to defeat them this can only happen with his own destruction. The Joker is again the one who most clearly expresses this when he asks if Batman has come to claim his kingly robes (p. 99). Since this would make Batman the king of fools, there is a very ironic statement in this, but it is also a very pertinent and relevant question which is posed.

Batman’s role as the heroic, mythic saviour is revealed to be a belief in power as a liberating force and one which is clearly marked as dangerous. Batman’s entire presence throughout the text is dark, ominous and unsettling. Even when he sees himself as a Christ-like figure suffering for the innocent, this is revealed to be a compensatory fantasy for his own, personal loss. The text emphasises the problematic aspect of believing in power as freedom, because it lacks reconciliation. The end will never be a real victory but an empty one which requires the participation of the loser as accepting the loss due to the realisation that continued strife will solve nothing. This is what Two-face realises when he allows Batman to live.

The text does not reject heroes as much as it questions the reasonable in placing so much faith in a faceless protector and the reasonable in regarding power as unproblematically being the solution to people’s problems. Like the other deconstructive superhero comics, the nature of superheroes are questioned and found to be deeply problematical. There is a certain paranoid reaction to superheroes, a kind of who watches the watchers philosophy at work in these works. Can we truly trust Batman as a hero, and what will happen if there are suddenly no more criminals? How will Batman react then? While presenting no specific solutions, the text clearly indicates the double-edged sword of this trust in these icons. There is no denial of the good intentions of Batman, but there is the profound doubt that power solves anything in the long run. In this way, there is a desire for a revision, not just of the way superhero comics work, but also the way that Western culture places faith in power as a solution to all problems.

Bibliography

Foucault, Michel (1961). Madness and Civilisation, London & New York: Routledge, 2003.
McCloud, Scott (1993). Understanding Comics, New York: Kitchen Sink Press/Harper Perennial.
- (2000). Reinventing Comics, New York: Paradox Press/DC Comics.
Morrison, Grant & McKean, Dave (1989). Batman: Arkham Asylum, New York: DC Comics.