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Arkham Asylum: Living Hell

Creative Team: Dan Slott, Ryan Sook

Reviewed by Rob Manuel

It’s difficult for most people to imagine the magnitude of a scandal like Enron. Dirty deals and insider trading don’t seem to hold the same weight as a robbery. Take a closer look.  While a petty thief may steal a few hundred dollars from a couple of individuals, a CEO with a greedy hand can swipe thousands of dollars from hundreds of people in a single day.  Jobs are lost. Lives are destroyed. Such acts are limited to madmen, those who cannot see beyond their own blinding greed. For one greedy CEO, however, he’ll find that even the mad have standards at Arkham Asylum.

Warren White is one such CEO with a pocket lined with embezzled money and a plan: to plead insanity. His plan works only too well as Warren is taken away to Arkham. If he had paid attention to the news more than the books, he wouldn’t be playing second-fiddle to Two-Face or taking a shower with the Joker.  Now that’s one guy you never want to drop the soap around. For fans of the Batman series, a slew of other notorious villains make cameo appearances throughout the stories, but this isn’t their story. 

The main players in this little tale are much lesser-known villains. Doodle Bug believes in his art above all  else. When his tastes turn from watercolors to blood, he’s quickly sent to Arkham. Jane Doe is a woman without a personality, so she just takes what she needs.  Jane has the habit of taking over the lives of her victims until she grows tired of their lives and looks for a replacement. Humpty Dumpty is an egg-shaped man with a knack for taking things apart and then putting them back together. Clocks, phones, shreds of paper… nimble thick fingers delicately put together the smallest pieces.  Unfortunately, putting people back together is rather cumbersome once you take them apart.  Warren will find that he’s just a little fish in a sick and twisted pond.

Arkham Asylum has always held a special place in the hearts of Batman fans. The grey stone turn-of-the-century building possesses a magical quality, being able to keep in the most evil of villains. Slott keeps this "fish out of  water" story moving with plenty of twists and interesting characters. The cameos  by the various villains flowed smoothly in and out of the story. For the most  part, the more well-known villains remain in the background to allow for  Slott’s other Arkham inmates to really shine.

Other versions of Arkham have taken a much darker route than Living Hell. Sook’s artwork reflects this "real" quality about Arkham. Nothing is over the top. Arkham seems like a regular grey building, except that it houses the most ruthless  and insane criminals in Gotham. The building isn’t important. To Slott, it’s the stories inside the building which really make Arkham Asylum a living hell.

Rating: (3 out of 4 stars)