Customer Reviews

Arkham Asylum: Living Hell

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Arkham Asylum: Living Hell was something I picked up on impulse; I'd decided to buy Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, and thought that any trade paperback featuring Arkham Asylum would be an interesting read. After reading both, I've decided that I actually like Living Hell better.

When the finance world's "Great White Shark" Warren White pleads insanity to get out of an embezzlement charge, he finds himself in Arkham Asylum, living with dangerous psychos like the Joker, Two Face, Killer Croc, and a host of others. At the same time Warren is being attacked, chief of security Aaron Cash is dealing with the loss of a co-worker and his hand, torn off in a vicious attack.

Writer Dan Slott weaves between these two plot threads, as well as a third, with little effort. As Batman, Batgirl, and even the more notable villains only show up as cameos, Slott treats readers to the day to day life of Gotham's madhouse. Guards do prisoners favours, contraband is swapped, secret rendevous are formed, and all of it can only be dealt with with tranquilizers and "unscheduled nap times". Slott also manages to introduce a couple of new villains with worthy origin stories. Humpty Dumpty is a mild-mannered egg-shaped man who takes his obsession with fixing things a bit too far. Junkyard Dog sifts through garbage and finds value in discarded objects. Jane Doe assumes the personalities and lives of those she kills. And Doodlebug will kill for his art.

Speaking of art, it's all very well done. Maybe nothing eye-catching like Morrison's Arkham book, but it really fits the tone of the story. My only gripe with Living Hell is the last chapter, where things really take a bizzare twist. Without spoiling too much, it involves an appearance by Jason Blood (and the demon Etrigan) and ancient rituals involving the undead. This part of the story threw me off, and while I eventually understood it, it's not the direction I wouldve taken the book in.

Still, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is a great read. The focus is on Arkham, not a Batman story involving Arkham, and the result is something that adds depth to the Batman universe.

This book is good, creepy fun! Much like the old HBO show OZ, this is the story of all the inmates in a prison, but this time around it's the prison for all of Batman's villains. We follow an all new character, the Great White Shark (a white collar criminal), as he is thrown into the loony bin with the rest of Batman's bad guys. Will he make it out alive? How will this experience change him? Or is he possibly a new Bat-villian in the making? Those are the questions that keep you flipping page after page in this book.

The first half of the book is some of the best Batman/Gotham City stories I've read in a long time. What makes it even more impressive is that Batman is barely in it! And most of the characters (Humpty Dumpty, Death Rattle, Jane Doe, and Junkyard Dog) are new. But they FEEL like they've been Batman characters for YEARS. That's where this book really excels. I had to go online and make sure that there weren't Batman stories that I'd missed over the years. And that, right there, is something very special that the writer and artist pulled off effortlessly. I bought that these were longstanding Bat-villains. And they are SO good, that I hope future Batman writers incorporate them into future stories.

The second half of this book takes a drastic and sudden turn into, what I feel, is a wrong direction. The rug gets pulled out from under us and the prison drama we were reading suddenly turns into a horror film. It's the same drastic turn like the movie Dusk Till Dawn. And, in this case, it really doesn't work.

However, even in the later half of the book, there are STILL priceless Bat-villain moments-- like the Joker's escape, his subsequent palindrome crimes, and his eventual "run in" with Batman. With that in mind, I'd recommend buying this book. Because even though it takes a wrong turn and slightly stumbles, even then it's still better than most of the Batman books out there. And the first half of the book (especially the Humpty Dumpty issue) when everything's working, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is some of the best Batman work I've ever read!

It was because of the other graphic novel based in Arkham Asylum that I heard of this one. Sure enough, they are different. "Arkham Asylum: Living Hell" is definitely a most enjoyable book. The text is good, the drawing style is nice, and if you're Batman baddies, you'll find plenty.

You'll see very little of Batman in there. The story is entirely based in Arkham and focuses on a new inmate in there, and various subplots involving other inmates, the classical Batman villains.

I can't compare with other books based on Batman, because I only read one, but I sure can say this book is an enjoyable read.

This is how I've always wanted a Batman comic to be.
Morbid, horrific, twisted, humorous, and a lot fun to read.

So many of the Batman comics out there now are like bad Frank Miller impersonations. BATMAN IS A HARDASS! THINGS ARE DARK! GOTHIC! RAPE! TORTURE! DRUGS! POUNDING VILLAINS TO A BLOODY PULP! GRITTY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE! Its gotten to a point now where the books are no longer about entertainment, but about how DARK you can be.

This book is a refreshing change. For one, Batman is hardly in it. Dan Slott describes the plot, "Warren White is a corporate weasel who gets cast down into the pits of Arkham. There, he will suffer horribly at the hands of Batman's Rogues Gallery. It's the pure, guilty pleasure of schadenfreude."
The story follows White's story is the 'fish' amongst the terrifying and thoroughly insane regulars and the (suprisingly excellent) new creations in Arkham Asylum, and they all combine perfectly in a Prison-drama meets Supernatural-horror tale... Okay, it IS dark, and violent, but its also very entertaining.
Dan Slott's writing is fun, balancing the physically threatening (Croc, Joker, Two-face), and the apparantly harmless but extremely dangerous (Mad Hatter, Scarface, Humpty Dumpty, Scarecrow). His new villains so perfectly fit the Batman universe that it isn't apparant that they're new inventions at all. The dialogue is witty, consistently in-character, and the storytelling completely satisfying and not too heavy or 'clever'.

Ryan Sook's artwork is direct and concise, and his mastery of expression and caricature is a real boost to Slott's writing. Unlike so many other 'Arkham' stories which rely on over-the-top artistry to achieve a mood, Sook's clean lines and coloring really let the horror and absurdity of the story shine.

The most immediate comparison that most people make with this story is Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's 'Arkham Asylum'. Morrison's book is intellectual masturbation disguised as high-art with no story to speak of... Batman wanders around and has a few conversations and some confusing fights. Slott's book on the other hand is a black comedy about a self-made 'shark' rendered utterly helpless through his own machinations, as well as a carefully balanced series of characters interacting with dangerous, violent, morbid, cruel, humorous, and downright entertaining circumstances. No comparison.

There are so many very entertaining mini-stories in this book that alone make it worth its (suprisingly low) cover-price, but if you're after a Batman villain story which isn't afraid to be morbid AND funny, I'd thoroughly recommend this book.

Arkham Asylum is the psychiatric hospital of Batman's Gotham City, and this is a story about what being involved with it and living inside it entails to the doctors, to the orderlies, to the madmen, to Dr. Jeremiah Arkham, and even to Batman himself. The story is told mostly through the eyes of a sleazy lawyer, Warren White a.k.a. "The Great White Shark," who pleads insanity on charges of fraud to avoid going to prison, and thus gets sent to the asylum for a period of observation, being unlucky enough to arrive just before the inmates take over and the unavoidable chaos ensues.
But the interesting premise of this story soon dwindles into a disjointed parade of characters whose fleeting appearances amount to nothing more than a twisted, violent, incoherent and very disappointing tale that only allows glimpses of what could have been a wonderful collage of fascinating and correlated stories.
The best ideas, introduced right at the beginning of the book, are entirely underplayed: the development of some newly created characters and the provocative re-envisioning of some old ones, the exploration of the villains' psychoses and motivations, and White's perceptions of Batman's most dangerous enemies from the point of view of someone unfamiliar to their level of insanity. Instead, the story dawdles on scrutinizing what it takes to survive at Arkham as a patient, and on some other equally uninteresting subjects that add nothing to the story and are mostly left inconclusive by the end of the book: the schemes and intrigues of the inmates, the alliances between cellmates, the trade of smuggled goods, the privileges granted to some patients by the guards. Sadly, it also substitutes good storytelling with vast quantities of violence, bloodshed and gore as a way to grip the reader's attention.
But, without a doubt, this tale's weakest point is its conclusion. Not only it bewilderingly and repeatedly shifts focus without the slightest hint of a smooth transition, it also incorporates a supernatural element involving exorcisms, the undead, and even Jason Blood a.k.a. the demon Etrigan, which is so off-the-wall it seems to belong to an entirely different story altogether.
On the other hand, the artwork on this volume is so amazing; it deserves a 5-star rating on its own. With a masterful use of color schemes and rich, detailed compositions it perfectly conveys the mood of the ambiance and the attitude of each character even where the writing fails.
Still, this is a story that never develops to its full potential, and that is difficult to enjoy even for a die-hard Batman fan like myself. If you are interested in taking a look inside the world of Arkham Asylum, I recommend you read instead the far superior "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth" by Grant Morrison.
--Reviewed by M. E. Volmar

From the start I was enthralled. The art, the story, the atmosphere all had me captivated. I really enjoyed the drama tone Living Hell had. It didn't start out with a sense of action/adventure but more of a serious prison drama. It definitely had action especially towards the end but for the most part it was a drama about one guy who got stuck in Arkham Asylum.

Other reviewers were also disappointed with the way the book turned out in the last chapter and I have to agree with them. It wasn't what I was expecting and all the while I was reading it I was kind of discouraged. But once I got to the last few pages I was like, "This totally rocks!". In my opinion it made up for all the "weirdness" that was in the last chapter.

Overall It wasn't as psychological as Arkham Asylum: Serious House on Serious Earth but it gave a good feel for what life is like at Arkham Asylum.

I'm new to the batman genre and the character's backgrounds and story lines, outside the fast read of their biographies in Arkham Asylum the video game. So this was fresh and new to me, and I derived great enjoyment out of it, and especially the irony scattered throughout the story. I enjoyed the character's depth and their unexpected acts, and to me, nothing was predictable. It was amazing, right up to the end. Fantastic irony too. They did a great job on this, and the art work at the end of the book was very good to view.

While technically a Batman story, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell focuses on villains, introducing several new ones in the process. The main character is Warren White, a white collar criminal that thinks he's gotten lucky when he is deemed insane rather than guilty of his crimes. That is until he gets sent to Arkham. By the end of the book his plea of insanity has become self fulfilling, as he is transformed into The Great White Shark.

While Warren White's tale is well told and entertaining, the strength of Living Hell is the other villains he deals with throughout. Yes, old favorites like Joker, Two-Face, and Killer Croc make appearances. However, new characters play the larger roles as Humpty Dumpty, Doodlebug, Jane Doe, and Junkyard Dog are all introduced in this book. Humpty Dumpty is sort of loveable, in his own Lenny from Mice and Men sort of way. He means well, but that usually doesn't produce the best results. Jane Doe is especially terrifying, as a serial killer who wears people's skin and assumes their lives. I've always liked versions of Gotham were criminals are actually deranged and violent and not just cartoony, and this is a great representation of that.

This is also a great book to read if you liked the Arkham Asylum video game. Aaron Cash plays a major role and we learn how he lost his hand.

There are so many reasons to read this that I can't even list them all here. It's simply a great story and should be read by any Batman fan.

An amazing Batman graphic novel, which interestingly enough makes sparing but effective use of the Caped Crusader. A great read, lots of fun. Worth having!

I never realized that Dan Slott had written a Batman book before but after reading this he needs to again. Although Batman only appears in a handful of panels, Slott deftly handles Batman's villains and even creates new ones that are equal parts creepy and cool. Ryan Sook's art portrayed the craziness perfectly and the book would have been totally different with a different artist. The ending of this got a little wonky but overall the book was fun to read.