Grant Morrison: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

Finally I get an opportunity to revisit something by Grant Morrison, in an early blog I recommended a Horror book by him called Nameless.  I was going to look at All Star Superman but after listening to Tony Esmond chatting with Helena Edwardson on his, Never Iron Anything podcast, about Arkham Asylum I just had to read it.  Helena explained that she wasn't a massive comic book fan but the art in this book really spoke to her. 

A bit of History first, the actual title of the book is Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth with the subtitle being taken from a poem called Church Going by Phillip Larkin. Written in 1989 this was Morrisons first time writing for The Batman and what a debut.  It's now considered by many to be Grant Morrisons finest work and one of the best ever Batman stories.  

The story begins by giving a background as to how Arkham Asylum came into existence and it's creator Amadeus Arkham.  Of course we know that Arkham goes on to be the venue of choice for the incarceration of so many of Batmans arch enemies  such as Killer Croc, Scarecrow, Harvey Two Face and the daddy of them all Joker.  It's those inmates that have rioted, taken over the Asylum and called upon Batman to join them in Arkham before they release hostages.

Joker wants Batman to suffer and undergo analysis, to plumb the depths of his dark psyche, as he puts it "I want him to know what it's like to have sticky fingers pick through the dirty corners of his mind". Batman does indeed suffer along the way, both mentally as he faces his own demons and darkest truths and physically as he fights some of the inmates he put into Arkham. Most notably a battle with an incredible looking Killer Croc.

Much like Frank Millers Hard Boiled, that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, the story as good as it is, plays second fiddle to the amazing artwork from Dave Mckean.   Interestingly, Morrison said that his first choice for the art duties was Brian Bolland, following his success rendering Alan Moores Killing Joke.  Following Arkham Asylums publication Morrison stated that he felt the art distracted from his story.  

In my very humble opinion I believe that Dave Mckeans art is the thing that makes Arkham Asylum so special.  I think that Bollands clean sharp images would have been too perfect for this story.  The sometimes scratchy artwork combined with painted images and his use of mixed media gives the whole book a very surreal and nightmarish feel throughout. I particularly enjoyed his images of Batman and Gordon using (I'm guessing) pencil to give a smokey ghostly image.  His Joker is one of nightmares, with his crazed bulging eyes that seem to have no eyelids.  Amid all this one of my favourite images comes from Batmans meeting with Killer Croc where we see the reflected image of Batman that grows with each of three frames. 

But amid all this story full of symbolism and incredible artwork we cannot forget the work of the letterer Gaspar Saldino.  Saldino earns his money by giving each character their own lettering and speech bubble style.  The lettering is also one of the things I enjoy less about this story, in particular that of Joker. His speech is done without speech bubbles in a red scrawling font, I found this really difficult to read and at one point even resorted to using my phone camera to look at and enlarge the font.   But that is a minor quibble and perhaps is more of a reflection of my now poor eyesight.

I will definitely revisit the book again soon, there is so much going on, in art and story, it demands multiple readings.  If you've not had the chance to read Arkham Asylum before I'd definitely recommend it to you. 

Hard Boiled by Frank Millar and Geof Darrow

Hard Boiled by Frank Millar and Geoff Darrow

Do you have any films that you saw once and you were so blown away that you had to go back and see it again and again, just to take everything in?  For me it was Terminator 2, The Matrix and Inception. I actually saw T2 ten times at the cinema alone, needless to say I later went on to marry the girlfriend who came with me to each showing too.  You might be thinking, this is meant to be a comics blog not movie chat. You'd be right, but recently I had the same sort of glorious experience with a comic and that was Frank Miller and Geof Darrows, Hard Boiled.

As ever this was a title I missed the first time around as it was during my wilderness years from comics.  It was listening to the lads on The Awesome Comics Podcast that put me on to this one. Tony in particular raved about it so, as ever, I duly added it to my Comixology wish list.  A couple of weeks later I noticed that there was a cracking Dark Horse Comixology sale, they were virtually giving it away. It came down to that, or buying Smash, the Special from Rebellion bringing some characters of yesteryear back to life.  Hard Boiled won my internal argument, and I'm really glad it did.

Hard Boiled was first published in 1990, two years into my absence from comics, and was published, by Dark Horse, originally in three volumes between 1990 and 1992.  Millar and Darrow both won Eisner awards as writer and artist for their work and you can see why.

To avoid spoilers, if you like me haven't read Hard Boiled before, I'm not going to go into too much detail about the story.  There are definite elements of Blade Runner here, a cyberpunk world full of madness and depravity. Frank Millers story, cannot be overlooked but, for me, it is definitely overshadowed by Darrows artwork.  In Hard Boiled he gives us Heironymus Bosch does sci-fi.

The story is set in a Los Angeles of a dystopian near-future which is pretty filthy and depraved.  The first time we see the hero, Nixon a tax collector, he is standing with his back to a graffiti covered wall, drenched in blood, covered in shards of glass, carrying a huge gun and calling out an unseen enemy to come and get some more.  Right away it's the detail in Darrows art that strikes you, the tiny shards of broken glass on the floor, the perfectly replicated beer bottle labels.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, every successive page has an image that you can pour over and revel in.

Buy this book, or grab it off the shelf and re read it, I promise that you wont be dissapointed!

Skreemer by Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon

Skreemer by Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon

Before I listened to Eamonn Clarke's Mega City Book Club episode on Skreemer, I have to admit I'd never even heard of it.  Skreemer was released in 1989, during my wilderness years from buying and reading comics.

But being a fan of 2000AD creatives Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon I was intrigued to read it for myself.  Sadly I couldn't get a hold of any copies, or a trade, but to the rescue came Eamonn who very kindly sent me his perfect 1989 copies to read.

So what is Skreemer all about?  Well here's a synopsis from the publishers DC: The dark and violent SKREEMER tells the post-apocalyptic tale of a young boy's ascension from brutal assassin to the most powerful gangster in the world. 

That is a very simple description of the story, I'll be perfectly honest and say that when I first started reading I didn't have a clue what was going on.  I'd been thrown into this new world, in the middle of the action, with a narrator telling me what was going on but none of it made sense.  At first I thought it was just my sleep deprived brain (we have a newborn) and I'd picked up issue 3 by mistake.  But I think that is the plan with this series, you gain just a little more enlightenment as you read each issue. 

Interestingly one of the characters sings a song from the book Finnegans Wake which, as Wikipedia tells us, is "one of the most difficult works in the Western canon.  Blending standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words to unique effect." I guess Milligan could have been writing his own Finnegans Wake here.

Much of the story is told in flashback, America has been decimated by a plague (topical) and gang bosses, known as Presidents rule the land due to their control of a serum for the plague.  Our anti hero, Veto Skreemer, has a vicious streak from a young age and is recruited as a hit man for one of the gang bosses.  From there he goes on a bloody rise to become the most powerful mob President. Of course, as history so often tells us, every empire that rises must one day fall.  Or does it?

As you might guess the art by both Ewins and Dillon is brilliant throughout.  2000AD fans will no doubt see elements of Ewins creation Kano, from Bad Company, in Veto Skreemer.  All in all a great dark tale of friendship, family, mobsters, violence and retribution. Some very clever writing by Milligan certainly allows for reading multiple times to open every layer of the story.

Again thank you to Eamonn of the Mega City Book Club for sending me his copies of Skreemer.  They are the original 1989 copies in perfect condition, bagged and boarded (photos above).  I'd like to pay Eamonns kindness forwards and send these to another comics fan to enjoy.  So, if you'd like to be in with a chance of winning these books answer one question: What 2000AD writer wrote the graphic novel that inspired the film A History of Violence? Clue: the answer is in a previous blog.  Post the answer in my blog post on the 1977-2000AD Facebook page and I'll draw a winner in a weeks time.