Batman: Arkham Asylum - Living Hell #1

[cyberghostface]

 

"OZ in the DC universe, by the way of Arkham Asylum." -- Dan Slott




The judge calls his bluff and has him committed to Arkham Asylum.







She agrees to help him get him transferred to a minimum security prison in exchange for some of his money and he readily agrees. That's when Batman arrives. Anne Carver isn't who she appears.

Comments

[alicemacher]

Haha, I was just thinking about this mini earlier today, specifically the courtroom scene and the encounter between White and the Joker. This is why it's unwise to plead insanity in real life, folks!

I liked that the judge had a very personal reason for sentencing White specifically to Arkham: His Honour's retirement fund was among the casualties of White's scheme.

Also, although this is, atypically, a Batman-mythos story with very little of the Batman himself, when Slott does bring him on-panel, boy does he make it count. Nowhere is this clearer than the scene in which Bats uses his greatest weapon -- his reason -- to talk a severely disturbed person out of killing him.

[crinos]

Not just the judge, as we'll find out later on...

But yeah White is fascinating, especially what eventually becomes of him.

Jane Doe is also an interesting character, although I think they ruined her in later appearances by making her a skinless mutation in her default form. The entire point of her character is that in her default form she's boring and uninteresting, and so she craves the more interesting lives of others to replace them.

Living Hell actually introduces a bunch of neat ideas for bat villains, but most of them end up dying before the end of it.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah making her skinless was a bad decision imo. Having her look normal but blank was creepier.

[kamino_neko]

Living Hell actually introduces a bunch of neat ideas for bat villains, but most of them end up dying before the end of it.

Don't really agree...the only really interesting potential ongoing villains introduced in Living Hell, IMO, were Jane, Doodlebug, and ultimately White, and only one of them died in the story.

Humpty Dumpty and Junkyard Dog were interesting, but not in a 'recurring villain' way.

[icon_uk]

Doesn't Humpty Dumpty come back several times, with his creepy idea of "putting broken things together again"?

With IIRC, what he did to a group of runaway kids he'd "rescued" not being seen directly, but being enough to make stone-cold-trained-assassin-since-birth Damian be violently sick.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

In his defense, Humpty wasn't the one who killed the kids

[crinos]

Yeah I read that issue, but Humpty was innocent since he only found the bodies.

Honestly I kind of prefer the version of Humpty from Beware the Batman (Which I didn't really watch, but I've seen clips of and its on HBO Max now) who drops the putting things back together and makes him an embittered mob accountant whose mad at both his former employer (Tobias Whale) and the police for getting him caught up in their war, and he has a toy/puzzle gimmick (Which granted, is kind of a dime a dozen in Gotham, but still).

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I dunno, if Batman is gonna keep using mentally ill villains they oughta have one or two who are actually sympathetic.

[crinos]

Bruce has plenty of sympathetic villains: The Ventriloquist, Poison Ivy, Two Face sometimes, Harley Quinn, Amygdala if you really want to dig deep.

I think the BTAS episode lockup does a good job of showing off some of the more sympathetic members of Batman's rogues gallery lodging complaints against Bolton's mistreatment of him (In fact they even make you feel bad for the Scarecrow, a guy whose entire MO is that he's a bully who loves inflicting fear on people. Actually BTAS gives Scarecrow a lot of humanizing moments, like in Harley's Holiday, and in the tie in comic where there's a story where he escapes Arkham, goes legit and becomes a college professor again, and then one of his students comes to him because she was raped by her boyfriend, prompting Crane to go after him).

[crinos]

I think he also shows up in some group shots of villains in the Villains United miniseries, fighting the Secret Six.

[mazway_75]

It's the little smirk of the judge at his idiocy that this supposed smart bookie didn't bother doing the tiniest bit of research into why Gotham would be the only city where no one uses an insanity defense....

And when White's lawyer (who I think was under the impression this wouldn't work) is going "I'll get you out" and White goes "what's an Arkham," you can see this is going to be nasty.

[crinos]

The best part is that on the bus ride to arkham he is sitting there shit talking the Riddler and bragging about how he's gonna buy the place and convert it into a theme restaurant.....


....Right up until they put him in with Death Rattle there, who is basically a cross between Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and The Undertaker. And that's when he begins to realize he's good and proper fucked.

Then he runs into the Joker in the bathroom and it pretty much confirms it.

[beoweasel]

I liked that the judge had a very personal reason for sentencing White specifically to Arkham: His Honour's retirement fund was among the casualties of White's scheme.

HOW in the Nine Hells did White's Defense Attorneys completely miss THAT? Shit, why didn't the Judge immediately recuse himself, because of his connection to the defendant? That's a huge breach of judicial conduct and something that White's attorneys could and -should- take advantage of.

Unless, of course, that's part of the plot?

[cyberghostface]

Actually it’s not the judge it’s the head of Arkham who got screwed over. That’s why he refuses to help Warren get transferred.

[shadur]

It's never implied that the judge is one of the people whose pension fund evaporated due to White's "sudden bout of madness", although given the implied scale of the fraud it might actually be hard to find someone who wasn't directly or indirectly affected.

[lonewolf23k]

Wouldn't the Judge having a personal reason like losing his retirement fund to White's crimes be a case of conflict of interest? He should've recused himself.

But then, I guess it wouldn't be Gotham if the legal system wasn't corrupt.

[armycat23]

The joker's unibrow....

[lucean]

On a positive side, Batman's confrontation with Doe was really good.

On a negative side, I always hated that discussion between Joker and White. It just feels too cutesy and doesn't really come across as something Joker would truly care about.

[crinos]

No he wouldn't care about it, but he does care about messing with people.

Joker see's White coming in and he's like "Okay, how can I fuck with this guy."

[icon_uk]

Yup, it's a variation on Morrison's repsonse to whether the Joker is gay or not: "The Joker's sexuality is whatever will most disturb the person he's talking to."

Or Dini's description of the Joker as someone who walks into a room, knowing all eyes will be on him, listening to the whispers that start and automatically checking everyone out, until he see's the person who is most scared of him, and that's who he gravitates towards for his performance.

[mazway_75]

That's how I saw it, just the Joker figuring have fun with some new meat. Remember, he's openly said "I can get out of here anytime I want. I just stay as long as it's funny." Ten to one, he was planning a breakout, saw White and realized he had a new game seeing how long it took to break the guy.

[tripodeca113]

This is the comic where Aaron Cash debuted. He did okay for himself getting into the Arkham games. You know based on those games I thought he was a more prominent character.

[dcbanacek]

So its an updated version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with an extremely unpleasant character.

Maybe he should have paid attention about what happened to Jack in that one.

[cyberghostface]

It doesn’t have anything in common besides a sane guy in an asylum.

[jetblack927]

"OZ in the DC universe, by the way of Arkham Asylum."

...That's a really, really, good sales pitch.