Most people know Batman: Arkham Asylum as a videogame, some people don't realise that it was a Graphic Novel first and also that the game is actually only very loosely based on the book.
Arkham Asylum is an odd book. The story goes that the inmates have broken out of the Asylum and Batman has to go in there and sort them out, and save some of the captive wardens! Meanwhile the book tells the story of the founder of Arkham Asylum and what happened to him.
This book calls itself a "hard-hitting psychological horror." But is it really? My answer has to be no. This book isn't scary - disturbing sometimes, yes - but not very scary. Adding to that it wasn't what I'd call hard-hitting either.
There are mature themes that shouldn't be taken lightly but at the same time I thought that the book was taking everything too seriously.
The art of the book is an interesting approach. It's pretty much the main reason I bought the book. It's obviously trying to add to the psychological horror element - but unfortunately, I don't think it succeeds. Some of it is just plain difficult to understand - meaning you have to read through it a quite a lot of times to try and understand it - and i would have been fine with that if i had enjoyed this book - but I didn't.
This book was boring. There's little to no action it tells a story that just failed to grab my attention. Thankfully there was a slightly interesting twist at the end but it just wasn't exciting enough to justify buying the book. The writing isn't exactly bad - but it doesn't save the book from mediocrity in my opinion.
This book was boring. There's little to no action it tells a story that just failed to grab my attention. Thankfully there was a slightly interesting twist at the end but it just wasn't exciting enough to justify buying the book. The writing isn't exactly bad - but it doesn't save the book from mediocrity in my opinion.
Overall, I think Arkham Asylum takes itself too seriously. It isn't very exciting - it isn't even that interesting. I'm sure that the art was made abstract for a reason, but this book gave me no motivation to figure that reason out. I was disappointed with this book. It has recieved positive reception over the years but frankly I have no idea why. How has this lasted 15 years?
I think to buy this book you have to be a hardcore Batman fan with bucketloads of perseverance.
3.7/10
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