Arkam

This week I finished Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I have to say it is one of the best and coolest graphic novels I have ever read. The story is complex, deep and has some kind of psychiatric feel to it, which is perfect for the story. The art style is amazing, and every single frame can be a masterpiece of artwork. The collage style make the whole story feel like a puzzle of the mind, and as reader we too need to challenge ourselves in order to understand. Arkham Asylum is dark, bloody, sad and crazy. It’s really interesting to see the different between when Batman first came out, and how it has progress and change through time. It is not a super hero comic anymore, and surely is not for ten years old kid. It is a almost realistic and close look of human’s inner darkness, and even for an adult you will still need to go back to things to pick up little messages that the artist carefully left for the reader.

I had the copy of Arkham Asylum for a while but never had the chance to open it, so this reading is a perfect opportunity for me to finish something I was looking forward for a while. I have always been a batman fan because he doesn’t have any super power, and I can relate to him much more than any other DC heroes. Arkham by itself is an interesting enough place to build the story, not to say when you put in all the old faces like the Joker and Two-Face. Batman in a way is not too normal himself compare to Joker, and in the Asylum is a perfect place for him to face his own darkness.

Arkham isn’t like any Batman I had read before, and it is a unique and interesting take on the graphic novel. The story is complex enough to make me wonder and think about it for a while. Sometime I will need to start from the beginning in order to fill in the questions, and answers to those questions were always hidden in little places. Arkam is a great example of how great and beautifully done a graphic novel can be, and hopefully more and more comic will direct its style toward it.