Arkham Asylum Research Articles

CARNIVALESQUE, CREATIVITY, AND THE BECOMINGS: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE IN BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM

There is a growing academic interest in respect for critical game studies from the domains such as cultural studies, literature, ludology, and gender studies. However, the research done on videogames from the perspective of the political discourse is not broad enough. Rocksteady Studios’ Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009, director Sefton Hill) is a franchise that has redefined the superhero videogame genre. Although previous Batman transmedia adaptations would usually portray Gotham City as the prime location to narrate the story from the perspective of Batman, the videogame utilizes the carceral setting of Batman to subvert the traditional narratives and makes it completely a Joker’s (character) game. Therefore, this version of storytelling carries a character with a more nuanced demeanor and a setting with socio-political influence. The current paper examines the underlying structural inequality present in Batman using Giorgio Agamben’s bare life theory and the subsequent discourse of resistance using the theoretical framework of Mikhail Bakhtin. The analysis reveals the various carnivalesque elements present in the game and illustrates how the game takes advantage of them to mount an attack against the bare life status of the antagonists that are usually seen in Batman transmedia universe. Furthermore, the paper elaborates on the posthuman traits of Joker’s becoming through a Gilles Deleuze-inspired perspective.

Talking Comics with Ulli Lust, Noah Van Sciver, John Arne Sæterøy, Ivan Brunetti, and Grant Morrison

ABSTRACT This article presents conversation(s) about comics in relation to craft and process, inspiration and influences, status and prestige, publishers, literature, culture, life and creativity with Ulli Lust (Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life, Voices in the Dark, How I Tried To Be A Good Person), Noah Van Sciver (Fante Bukowski, Grateful Dead: Origins, Disquiet, Please Don’t Step On My JNCO Jeans, One Dirty Tree, Blammo, Saint Cole, More Mundane, Constant Companion, 1999, The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln), John Arne Sæterøy (who publishes under the pen name Jason) (What I Did, Almost Silent, Why Are You Doing This?, I Killed Adolph Hitler, Lost Cat, If You Steal, On the Camino, O Josephine!), Ivan Brunetti (Schizo, Misery Loves Comedy, Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice), and Grant Morrison (Zenith, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, The Invisibles, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, Flex Mentallo, The Filth, Seaguy, Kill Your Boyfriend, We3, New X-Men, Vimanarama, JLA, Batman, Seven Soldiers, All-Star Superman, Nameless, The Multiversity, Annihilator, Klaus, The Green Lantern, Wonder Woman: Earth One).

Batman and the Joker analyzed following Derrida and Bajtín

The author applies Derrida’s textual approach to the comic gender in connectionto film language. To do the analysis are taken into account the comicsThe Killing Joke (Allan Moore, 1988), and Arkham Asylum: A serious houseon a serious Earth (Grant Morrison, 1989), as well as the movie The DarkKnight (Christopher Nolan, 2009). A complementary reading from the visionof Bajtín (2003) lets extrapolate the notion of Joker as heir of the Rabelesquetradition, developed by François Rabelais in his classic stories Gargantua(1534) and Pantagruel (1532).

The Neurotic Knight. Reminiscing on Grant Morrison and Dave McKean "Arkham Asylum"

The author of the article "The Neurotic Knight. Reminiscing on Grant Morrison's and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum" wishes to present modern reflections on the genesis of one of the most popular comic books about Batman. To this end, he recalls the diegesis of the cultural work, which takes into account the originality of the story, the perception of the graphic novel, as well as directly references the thoughts of the authors, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean. Particular focus is put on the therapeutic function of the comic, a theme which was discussed in the scholarship of i.a. Janina Scarlet. The character of Batman and his antagonists were portrayed in Arkham Asylum in a groundbreaking, very symbolic way, which at the same time imbued the reader with a sense of dread. Thirty years after the publication, the author of the article reminisces on Morrison's and McKean's work, drawing upon modern research methods and pop- cultural references alike.

Empathizing With the Criminally Insane

Arkham Asylum is home to some of popular culture's most notorious super villains. The neglect and inadequate care these villains receive mirrors a real-world context where mental illness is surrounded by stigma, misunderstanding, and poor rehabilitation rates. This study explores the less glossy niches between the action-packed button-mashing on the surface of a popular Batman video game Batman: Arkham Asylum. By pulling back the curtain over the routine treatment of Arkham Asylum's patients (also known as inmates), it presents a set of good practices for improving their care through more effective communication. Recorded audio interviews from the video game constitutes the foundation for this set of good practices tailored to the needs of the fictional facility. Narrative inquiry is used to pull these recommendations from the data. Based on narrative elements found in the data, this study recommends an empathy-driven and preventative approach to treating Gotham's criminally insane population.

An Analysis of the Polish Translation of Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

An Analysis of the Polish Translation of Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

Carceral violence at the intersection of madness and crime inBatman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City

The action-adventure video games Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Batman: Arkham City (2011) draw on familiar comic book narratives, themes and characters to situate players in a world of participatory violence, crime and madness. In the first game, the player-as-Batman is situated in Arkham Asylum, a high-security facility for the criminally insane and supervillains that also temporarily houses a general population of prisoners from Blackgate Penitentiary. The elision of criminality and mental illness becomes amplified in the second game with the establishment of Arkham City, a combined facility that conflates asylum and prison, completely dissolving any distinction between crime and madness. We draw on Rafter’s conceptual framework of popular criminology to seriously interrogate the representation of violence, crime and madness in these games. More than simply texts offering popular explanations for crime, the games directly implicate the player in violence enacted upon the bodies of criminals and patients alike. Violence is necessary to move the action of the game forward and evokes a range of emotional responses from players who draw from personal experience and other cultural and media representations as they navigate the game. We argue that while the game celebrates violence and the brutal conditions of incarceration, it also offers possibilities for subversive and critical readings. While working to affirm assumptions about crime and mental illness, the game also provides a visceral and visual critique of excessive punishment by the state as a source of injustice for those deemed mad or bad.

Moments of intermediality: The use of television in joker narratives

This article uses the concept of intermediality to explore four different adaptations, across three different media, of the infamous supervillain the Joker. Independent of the medium representing him, a recurring practice is to have the Joker engage with media technologies. Television, in particular, is often used, as in the cases discussed here: Tim Burton’s film Batman (1989) and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), the comic book Batman: Death of the Family (2014), and the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009). Understood as media combination, intermedial referencing (Rajewsky (2005) Intermediality, intertextuality, and remediation: A literary perspective on intermediality. Intermédialités 6: 43–64), and through concepts such as contingency and liveness (Doane (2002) The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press), these intermedial moments, by way of emphasizing the materiality and temporality of media, are found to promote immersion while simultaneously causing tension by destabilizing the act of viewing.

The House of Usher Never Fell: Impossible Escapes and the Dark (K)night of the Soul

Among the abundance of possible readings of Poe’s short story, one of the most intriguing is its treatment as an escape fantasy - the image of the unnamed narrator delirious, flight from the collapsing structure at his back seems almost too fortuitous, and invites questions as to the sole survivor’s relation to “the house of Usher”. As the structure’s suspected sentience could be seen to relegate its occupants to the position of psychological forces and manifest thought-content, the house is transformed into a combination of physical and mental spaces, akin to the twin “prisons” of body and mind which the narrator fantasizes about being freed from. The article examines the (im)possibility of Poe’s narrator’s escape, using Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth as a companion text. Read alongside each other, the two narratives “construct” their “houses” by a superimposition of their characters’ mental landscapes onto the skeleton of physical (textual) space, in order to perform the fantasy of escape from psychological conflict, whether by tearing down the house as in Poe’s tale, or by restoring the externalized order as in the Batman novel.

Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu

Reviewed by: Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu Kate Quealy-Gainer Lu, Marie Batman: Nightwalker. Random House, 2018 [272p] (DC Icons) Library ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54977-9 $21.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54978-6 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54979-3 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 6-9 Even his massive wealth can't protect eighteen-year-old Bruce Wayne from the law after he ignores police orders and purposely slams his car into a criminal's getaway vehicle. He's sentenced to community service at Gotham City's infamous Arkham Asylum, a prison reserved for the worst bad guys. There he meets inmate Madeleine, said to be part of the Nightwalkers, a group targeting Gotham City's wealthiest elites by emptying their bank accounts and brutally murdering them one at a time. Despite this, Bruce finds himself drawn to Madeleine's enigmatic nature, and the two teens form a tentative relationship as he finds more reasons to visit her cell. When she escapes just as the Nightwalkers attack the city's biggest gala, Bruce knows she is part of the plan but he's certain he can stop her. Bruce leans a little too heavily on the woe-is-me card as a rich kid whose status brings false friends, and his navel-gazing slows the pace, but his grief over his parents' murders years ago is genuine, as is his resulting desire to bring justice to a city teeming with criminals. Madeleine is smart, devious, and seductive, and Bruce's interactions with her carry the large part of the beginning of the novel. When the action finally hits, though, it hits hard, and Bruce and some of his new tech gear face off against a surprising villain in a spectacular fashion. Readers of the comic books or movie fans might find the pace disappointing, but solid character development certainly sets the stage for the future of Gotham's hero. KQG Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go DigitalJames N.Gilmore and MatthiasStork, Editors. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Superhero Synergies: Comic Characters Go Digital James N. Gilmore and Matthias Stork, Editors. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.What once seemed a potential fad-the film-shows no signs of dwindling, with its presence growing even on smaller screens. Scholars in recent years have devoted increasing attention to this popular genre, but Superhero Synergies: Comic Characters Go Digital, edited by James N. Gilmore and Matthias Stork, aims to look at the synergistic digital convergence among these films, comic books, video games, and even theatrical events. One form of this synergistic digital convergence is the postcredit tags in Marvel's films, so popular that many theatergoers stay until the end of the credits, expecting a teaser about an upcoming film.The book opens with two chapters on Ang Lee's Hulk (2003), a film that seems to have fared better with scholars than it did with fanboys. The first of these, by Gilmore, analyzes DVD paratexts and online criticism of the film, especially compared to its reboot, The Incredible Hulk (2008). A treatise on Disney's superhero ization of John Carter (2012) may seem like an offbeat selection for this collection, considering its literary origins as a serialized scientific romance and its lack of tropes, but Andrew James Myers looks at the changes in the story and marketing in From Scientific Romance to Disney Superhero. Myers examines how previous incarnations (the original 1912 serialized novel, the 1977 Marvel comic John Carter, Warlord of Mars) shaped the material to meet audience expectations and how Disney marketed the film as a film more than the sci-fi film it actually was.Video games also figure prominently in these thirteen chapters, including two alone on Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009), which is appropriate considering that it has been called by some the best ludic adaptation. The authors examine how the game fits into the Batman me ta-franchise, showing video game synergy and intermediality. Justin Mack's chapter offers a textual analysis of Arkham Asylum, arguing that its unique gameplay makes it more than a licensed product engineered to create more revenue but an intertextual narrative that works with the films and comics.Besides the chapters on the film texts and video games, there are, appropriately, a handful of essays on the progenitor of this entire phenomenon, the comics themselves. As his title suggests, M. J. Clarke's From Motion Line to Motion Blur: The Integration of Digital Coloring in the Superhero Comic Book focuses on changing comic book aesthetics in the digital era. Clarke brings a rigorous approach to comic book aesthetics that has sorely been lacking in much of comics scholarship. …

Navigating the looking glass: severing the lawyer's head in Arkham Asylum

Reading Arkham Asylum jurisprudentially, we encounter a story of the meeting of reason and unreason in the context of justice – of conscious law and its unconscious threat. Batman's exploration of the Asylum is symbolic of the legal unconscious, and reflects the processes of repression that can be seen in dominant legal knowledge. A threat to this dominant knowledge can be seen in Two-Face's reliance on his coin to ‘judge’ his victims. Moreover, Arkham Asylum configures the threat of law's unconscious as the lawyer's severed head inside the house of law. Ultimately, Batman's journey through Arkham Asylum reminds law of the aesthetic and irrational contexts that it strives to deny and from which it seeks to defend itself – and that cultural legal studies explores. It recalls the unreason outside law's logic, the chaos outside its order, the madness outside its sanity. The lesson of Batman's encounters in the Asylum is that we should remember the ‘madness’ outside the legal order, and thus recognise that law is always already more than its conscious ‘sanity’ can contain.

Comics unmasked: art and anarchy in the UK

It may come as a surprise that comics offer much more than meets the eye. Of course we all have happy memories of favourite childhood reading (Beano, Dandy, Eagle, Mad, Viz - the list is endless). But how aware are we that there is something inherently anarchic about comics? A huge variety have been produced over the centuries by British creators. It is a strong tradition that continues today. Some of the biggest names in comics - Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Mark Millar (Kick-Ass) and Grant Morrison (Batman: Arkham Asylum) - are featured in this visually stimulating book (which accompanies a major exhibition at the British Library). But there are many, many more. And it is the diversity of content and form, as well as comics' ongoing relevance, which is a main focus. The seditious aspects of the comics tradition - adult, underground and 'alternative' material - is highlighted, alongside the superheroes who still dominate the scene. There is anarchy everywhere that you look!

Bergman vs. Batman. Chwyt technicznej deziluzji w grach wideo na tle praktyk literackich i filmoznawczych

Bergman vs. Batman. Technical Disillusion as an Artistic Device in Video Games in the Context of Literary and Film Techniques The aim of the article is to present the idea of technical disillusion as an artistic device used in particular videogames. This phenomenon is analyzed using the example of Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady; 2009). Because of the far-reaching analogies with techniques present in other artistic discourses, the device of technical disillusion is also examined in the context of literature and film – especially in regards to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. From this perspective, using technical disillusion as a device exposes its artistic potential and enables us to consider games as space for creative exploration.

Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture

Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture

Sculpture, Stasis, the Comics, and Hellboy

Previous articleNext article No AccessSculpture, Stasis, the Comics, and HellboyScott BukatmanScott Bukatman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 40, Number 3Spring 2014Comics & Media, edited by Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/677334 Views: 1253Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref © 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reservedPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Esther De Bruijn, Kelsey Hughes Millennial capitalism’s vampires: The South African graphic novel Rebirth, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 12, no.22 (Apr 2019): 75–96.https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2019.1598453Kathryn Manis Neoliberal Anxiety and the Post-Apocalypse in US Comic Books: An Analysis of Y the Last Man and The Private Eye, The Journal of Popular Culture 51, no.55 (Sep 2018): 1234–1255.https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12724Saige Walton Cruising the unknown: film as rhythm and embodied apprehension in L’Inconnu du lac/Stranger by the Lake (2013), New Review of Film and Television Studies 16, no.33 (Jun 2018): 238–263.https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2018.1479183Thomas Giddens Navigating the looking glass: severing the lawyer's head in Arkham Asylum, Griffith Law Review 24, no.33 (Dec 2015): 395–417.https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2015.1119777Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda Special Issue: Comics & Media, Critical Inquiry 40, no.33 (Jul 2015): 1–10.https://doi.org/10.1086/677316

A Language of Scratches and Stitches: The Graphic Novel between Hyperreading and Print

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Language of Scratches and Stitches: The Graphic Novel between Hyperreading and PrintKatalin OrbánKatalin Orbán Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 40, Number 3Spring 2014Comics & Media, edited by Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/677340 Views: 481Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref © 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reservedPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Andrew Gilbert, Larisa Kurtovic Labours of Representation: A Bosnian Workers’ Movement and the Possibilities of Collaborative Graphic Ethnography, Anthropologica 64, no.11 (May 2022).https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica6412022361Esther De Bruijn, Kelsey Hughes Millennial capitalism’s vampires: The South African graphic novel Rebirth, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 12, no.22 (Apr 2019): 75–96.https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2019.1598453We Jung Yi Redrawing the Division Lines?, positions: asia critique 28, no.44 (Nov 2020): 701–727.https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8606404Jen Aggleton Defining digital comics: a British Library perspective, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 10, no.44 (Jul 2018): 393–409.https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2018.1503189Jennifer M. Smith, Kathryn Pole What's Going On in a Graphic Novel?, The Reading Teacher 72, no.22 (Mar 2018): 169–177.https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1695Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Anu Mary Peter ‘I Want to Live, I Want to Draw’: The Poetics of Drawing and Graphic Medicine, Journal of Creative Communications 13, no.22 (Mar 2018): 104–116.https://doi.org/10.1177/0973258618761406Esther de Bruijn Sensationally Reading Ghana’s Joy-Ride Magazine, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 4, no.11 (Jan 2017): 27–48.https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2016.31Laura M. Jimenez, Carla K. Meyer First Impressions Matter, Journal of Literacy Research 48, no.44 (Nov 2016): 423–447.https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X16677955Christina Maria Koch “When you have no voice, you don’t exist”?: Envisioning Disability in David Small’s Stitches, (Jan 2016): 29–43.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137501110_3Thomas Giddens Navigating the looking glass: severing the lawyer's head in Arkham Asylum, Griffith Law Review 24, no.33 (Dec 2015): 395–417.https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2015.1119777Katalin Orbán Mediating distant violence: reports on non-photographic reporting in The Fixer and The Photographer, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 6, no.22 (Apr 2015): 122–137.https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2015.1027943Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda Special Issue: Comics & Media, Critical Inquiry 40, no.33 (Jul 2015): 1–10.https://doi.org/10.1086/677316