Arkham Manor: Endgame #1 - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR: ENDGAME No. 1, June 2015

Despite being a Bat-title and forming part of the multi-issue “Endgame” story-arc which highlighted the return of the Dark Knight’s most memorable nemesis The Joker, this one-shot does not actually even contain a mention of the Caped Crusader, let along actually feature the character. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Frank Tieri’s storyline is a bad one. It isn’t. However his rather bizarre twenty-page ‘prison break’ plot is not a terribly good tale either.

Purportedly the ‘grand finale’ to the short-lived six-issue run of “Arkham Manor”, this comic has been officially described as answering the question “what do Batman’s villains do on the craziest night in Gotham City?” Disappointingly they apparently all simply ‘club together’ and follow an ex-con hospital guard in a somewhat surreal attempt to escape their incarceration within Bruce Wayne’s former home… and “make it to the stairs.”

Admittedly there may well be some semblance of logic to such a narrative. The former writer of “Grifter” manages to cram the vast majority of Batman’s Rogues Gallery into his yarn. With the likes of such notable villains as The Joker, Victor Zsasz, Bane, Mister Freeze, Clayface, Clownface, Poison Ivy and the Mad Hatter all potentially being ‘big draws’ for comic book fans. But in order to incorporate so many ‘familiar faces’ the American author has had to use them sparingly and certainly can’t afford for them to utilise their super-powers; otherwise Clayface would have simply smashed a route to freedom through the nearest brick wall.

Instead Tieri has to limit their roles to that of inconsequential ‘sidekicks’ and give the lion’s share of the story to former Blackgate inmate turned security officer Stone. Such an anaemic use of such recognisable classic criminals is rather disappointing and leads to some truly irksome scenes, such as where Bane, a man powerful enough to have actually ‘broken the Bat’, inauspiciously asks his gaoler to “get us out of here.”

Perhaps the biggest anti-climax however has to be this magazine’s final reveal that the white-faced green-haired lunatic responsible for shutting down the prison’s electrical power and releasing ‘Joker gas’ throughout the facility is not actually the Clown Prince of Crime but a mentally deranged Jeremiah Arkham. Whilst a somewhat interesting conclusion, the sudden spiral into insanity for the institution’s warden would perhaps have been something more worthy of a multi-issue story-arc than a humble one-shot.

Putting aside the inadequacies of this comic's writing, especially as the escapees headlong dash through Wayne Manor is actually quite entertaining at times, this periodical ultimately disappoints because it features the artwork of no less than four different illustrators. Just why Flexi Ruiz fails to illustrate the comic’s middle five pages is something of a mystery. But no more so than Editor Mark Doyle’s decision to utilise the drawing skills of Roberto Viacava and Walden Wong for just two of the missing sheets, and then Christian Duce for another three. To be brutally honest none of the artists are likely to ‘set the comic book world on fire’, but Duce’s manically smiling Joker and heavily lined faces do stand out as the better panels from the bunch; especially when they’re printed directly alongside the rather wanting pencils of Ruiz. In addition Nick Filardi’s consistent work as colorist also goes a long way to ensure that each transition is essentially unnoticeable.

Writer: Frank Tieri, and Artists: Felix Ruiz, Roberto Viacava with Walden Wong, and Christian Duce

Arkham Manor #6 [The New 52] - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR No. 6, May 2015

It is hard to imagine a more dramatic decline in the quality of a comic’s content and sales figures than “Arkham Manor” by “DC Comics”. The ongoing Bat-family title debuted to great critical response and seemed to have a respectable steady circulation figure of approximately 28,000 copies per month. But in December 2014, just as its third instalment hit the shelves and despite the book’s dark tone obtaining rave reviews, its publisher surprisingly announced that the title was soon going to be cancelled.

Whether the series was so abruptly terminated because writer Gerry Duggan suddenly signed an exclusive contract with arch-rivals “Marvel Worldwide”, or that the magazine was always likely to just ‘enjoy’ a short run due to its plot tightly tying into the current “Batman Eternal” storyline, is a moot argument. For sadly within the space of three issues the periodical was selling ten thousand less magazines per month, and the claustrophobic edgy adventure concerning a deeply undercover Dark Knight stalking the corridors of his former home had been replaced with an increasingly uninspiring tale of Bruce Wayne once again donning the Mantle of the Bat and simply fighting homicidal villains in exactly the same manner as the superhero does in all of his other comic books.

Unfortunately “The Sacrifice” is the most disappointing instalment of the series and dishearteningly brings the curtain down upon a title which frankly appears a pale shadow of its former self. Indeed it would be interesting to discover whether Duggan and artist Shawn Crystal produced this issue already knowing the book’s fate. As very little happens within its twenty pages except a seemingly endless series of poorly written demoralisingly drawn superfluous scenes depicting the mental hospital’s inmates declaring their loathing for Batman.

The billionaire doesn’t even attempt to win his house back, despite his butler Alfred making it clear to him that he has uncovered the grounds for a legal challenge concerning its seizure by Gotham City’s mayor. Instead readers are treated to watching Mister Freeze merrily enjoying a barbeque on the frozen front lawn of Wayne Manor, Pennyworth munching upon a plate of chocolate chip cookies and Jeremiah Arkham hosting another therapy session with the likes of the Scarecrow’s alter-ego Doctor Crane.

Such a sedentary script doesn’t really give Crystal much opportunity to flourish with his quirky style of pencilling. But from the issue’s somewhat ‘wanting’ cover illustration, through to the comic’s final page of a heavily shadowed Batman conducting surveillance from within the blackness of the Batcave, there is little to no dynamism on show within the artwork and a good deal of the pages genuinely suggest that the Atlantan artist was disappointingly simply going through the motions with his drawings.

Writer: Gerry Duggan, Artist: Shawn Crystal, and Colors: Dave McCaig

Arkham Manor #5 [The New 52] - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR No. 5, April 2015

Having previously brought his furtive scouring of Arkham Manor’s claustrophobic cavity wall corridors to an end, Batman is just all battling brawn in this penultimate instalment of Gerry Duggan’s sinister storyline. But whilst duking it out with the mysterious Spider, the Dark Knight demonstrates a vicious physically punishing side to his nature which is rarely seen. For having peppered his silent opponent with bat-a-rangs, stabbed him with a bat-blade and even burned him facially upon one of the old house’s radiators, the Caped Crusader still strikes his now defeated opponent hard enough to knock him through an upper storey exterior wall.

Admittedly the cowled vigilante is angry, and towards the end of the eleven-page sequence starts to purposely pull his punches so his adversary will “eat solids again… someday.” But Bruce Wayne is also out “to make an example” of this murderer for desecrating his house and chillingly does just that.

Unfortunately such a pulse-pounding pacy series of panels inevitably runs out of steam once the contest concludes, and Batman spends the rest of the book simply swapping dialogue with Jeremiah Arkham whilst the homicidal day labourer is officially incarcerated and confined within a cell. Especially disappointing however is the writer’s absurd inclusion of a smiling child-like Mister Freeze, who gleefully starts throwing snowballs at the Batmobile for fun. Hardly the behaviour of a villainous cryogenic expert who is both haunted and tormented by the fate of his terminally-sick wife.

Equally as disheartening is the artwork of Shawn Crystal, who depressingly fails to live up to Duggan’s praise of “really turning in the finest work of his career.” The Dark Knight’s clash with the bloodthirsty builder is extremely well drawn, with the sinewy hero really ‘socking it’ to the claw hammer-wielding psychopath. But as soon as the action comes to end with an awkward-looking double-splash of Batman gliding to the ground from atop Wayne Manor, the American penciller’s illustrations seems to lose any semblance of dynamism or energy and rather uninspiringly simply ‘do a job’.

Indeed it isn’t until the hero once again finds himself surrounded by sinister shadows and becomes cloaked in the darkness of Seth Wickham’s home, that the artist once again ‘picks up his game’ and delivers a wonderful page-sized cliff-hanger depicting the detective entering a potential murder scene.

Writer: Gerry Duggan, Artist: Shawn Crystal, and Colors: Dave McCaig

Arkham Manor #4 [The New 52] - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR No. 4, March 2015

There are times when the Dark Knight must remove his signature cape and cowl, and adopt the guise of the World’s Greatest Detective, using all of his vast analytical skills in order to discover, determine and decipher clues. Gerry Duggan’s storyline for the previous issues in this series have shown just such a need as a heavily disguised Batman, arguably at his methodical best, has stealthily secreted himself away within the shadows of Wayne Manor in order to identify a murderous serial killer.

“Out Of The Cold” however clearly portrays a time for the clandestine Caped Crusader to forgo any semblance of furtiveness as he must openly combat the threat of Clownface before the malleable menace murders both the staff and its fellow “Arkham Manor” inmates. Fortunately ‘Jack Straw’ is not alone in recognizing the “Clayface fragment” as a terrifying threat, and is joined in his endeavors to incarcerate the monster by the frosty internee Doctor Victor Fries. What follows is a reasonably straightforward team-up between the billionaire’s undercover alter-ego and Mister Freeze, but one in which for a change, the American author has the Bat playing the role of a lure and the molecular biologist as ‘the brains’.

Interestingly, this semi-mad dash through his ancestral home, also see the Dark Knight permitting some of the less dangerous Arkham inmates, such as Sybil Silverlock, to escape the prison rather than distract him from his more immediate task of stopping the potentially ‘Jokerized’ shape-shifter. This logical rationalisation and rather cold calculatingly prioritisation of threats even extends later to Fries himself, as rather than ‘burn’ “the Jack Shaw mask” Bruce allows the supervillain to depart Arkham with a ‘friendly’ “Nice working with you." This “lesser of two evils” also allows Bob Kane and Bill Fingers’ co-creation to return to the Batcave and once again don the ‘Mantle of the Bat’ just in time for one final confrontation with the homicidal “spider inside the Manor.”

The majority of this fast-paced action-orientated issue is drawn by Shawn Crystal with his usual competent, though kookily awkward-looking pencils. In fact the Atlanta artist’s odd and angular illustrations really convey a sense of the dramatic to the proceedings, especially when depicting Jack Straw racing through the corridors and rooms of the reformatory. Only occasionally does his work appear misshapen enough to jar with the sensibilities, such as when a female prisoner is being squashed to death by Clownface at the book’s beginning or Freeze’s robot is wantonly destroyed.

Writers: Gerry Duggan, Artist: Shawn Crystal, and Colors: Dave McCaig

Arkham Manor #3 [The New 52] - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR No. 3, February 2015

Rarely has the atmosphere been quite so claustrophobic or the Dark Knight himself been ‘darker’ than in “Cold Comfort”, as a heavily disguised Bruce Wayne crawls through the ‘bones of his house’ looking for the lair of a homicidal maniac.

Los Angeles-based writer Gerry Duggan and artist Shawn Crystal have really produced the goods with this issue to the point where it is hard for the hairs upon the back of your neck not to raise up as you slowly follow an unarmed and undercover Batman edging his way between the room walls of Wayne Manor panel by gripping panel. Indeed there seems to be a perfect synergy between all of the creative team behind this comic book, starting with the disconcertingly quirky, but very well-drawn, Crystal and Dave McCaig cover illustration of the Caped Crusader chalking dead men on one of his home’s walls.

Perhaps the best element to this particular edition however has to be that Duggan throws more than a few surprises into the mix as the story progresses. So whilst many writers would just settle for scripting a tense nervy journey through the bowels of a psychiatric hospital with plenty of ‘jump scares’ just around the next panel, he constantly has the reader even more on edge as revelation after revelation is intermittently feed into the action. Perhaps such writing is only possible once a title has had a few issues published, and the characters been blessed with a fair bit of pre-build as a result but the fates of Zsasz, Seth Wickham, Eric Border and ‘the nameless man in the wheelchair’ are, in the main, serious ‘didn’t see that coming’ moments.

Shawn Crystal is equally on top of his game with his ‘unique’ somewhat awkward-looking style of pencilling clearly at its best when it’s used to depict dark, unsettling moments of mild horror. Or possibly the artist has finally settled into a drawing rhythm for this title? Whatever the reason, the composition of his pages are also first-rate, whether it be single-panel layouts depicting Bruce Wayne’s search for a bloodied axe using the clues at hand or a series of thin vertical panels emphasising the confined fist-fight between ‘Jack Shaw’ and the mysterious serial-killer.

The variant cover art of "ARKHAM MANOR" No. 3 by Nathan Fox

Arkham Manor #2 [The New 52] - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR No. 2, January 2015

There’s a seriously claustrophobic treat waiting in store for any reader who can somehow get past the appallingly bad Shawn Crystal cover to Issue 2 of “Arkham Manor” and actually take a ‘step inside’ the comic book. Even then writer Gerry Duggan’s tense and nervy thriller isn’t immediately obvious, as the first few pages of the plot primarily focus’ upon an inmate discussion group held by Doctor Arkham.

However once the banter-like dialogue between the mansion’s Administrator, the Scarecrow and Mister Freeze has come to an end, all attention turns to the machinations of the prisoner, Jack Straw… also known as The Batman. It is at this point that Duggan’s promise of depicting the Dark knight wearing an altogether different mask really starts to materialise and the speed of the plot to “A Home For The Criminally Insane” begins to move at an increasingly frantic pace.

There’s a killer lose amongst the killers, and a heavily disguised Bruce Wayne needs to move undetected between both his ‘fellow’ inmates and the security staff who now patrol his former home. Ever confident, Batman believes the murderer to be the missing serial-killer Zsasz. But all his well-laid plans for solving the deaths using stealth and subterfuge quickly unravel and have to be cast aside as ‘Jack Straw’ witnesses another attack and has to rush to the scene if he is to save the victim’s life. Thus follows a headlong dash through Wayne Manor’s corridors as the ‘apparent escapee’ battles both asylum guards as well as the shadowy mutilator himself.

Fortunately, having presumably shaken off their woes with their terrible sketchy cover illustration, Shawn Crystal and colorist Dave McCaig appear increasingly on form as the tension mounts. The former ‘exclusive’ “Marvel Comics” artist’s pencilling is still not the best there is, but the composition of his panels and the viewpoints of the action he provides the reader with, are simply second to none when it comes to creating a dark tense and atmospheric world full of sudden dangers and the promise of a truly horrible death. A hand-held power-drill boring into the forehead of a tightly bound prisoner being one such example.

The variant cover art of "ARKHAM MANOR" No. 2 by Chris Brunner & Rico Renzi

Arkham Manor #1 [The New 52] - DC Comics

ARKHAM MANOR No. 1, December 2014

As far as ideas for (yet) another “Batman” title goes, the decision by “DC Comics” to merge two of Gotham City’s most iconic landmark institutions together within a single comic book has got to be one of their most intriguing. Few who have encountered the exploits of the Dark Knight, irrespective of the medium with which they’ve followed him, will not have heard of the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane or the family home of the Caped Crusader himself, Wayne Manor. But the thought of Bruce Wayne’s mansion actually becoming the fictional psychiatric hospital and housing the super-hero’s Rogue Gallery is unthinkable...

Enter author Gerry Duggan, who with this startling first issue, not only portrays a Gotham City devoid of any Arkham Asylum, following the building’s total demise in the events of Issue Thirty of “Batman Eternal”, but consigns Wayne Manor to become its replacement with the stroke of Mayor Hady’s pen. What follows is an insightful look into Batman’s psyche and just how dear to his heart his parent’s home actually is to him. Throw in a couple of mysterious murders at the freshly opened ‘Arkham Manor’ and Bruce Wayne going deep undercover as an inmate himself, and this title has all the hallmarks of being a very gritty, deep dark look into what really makes The Batman tick.

Unfortunately the comic’s interior art has been drawn by Shawn Crystal, who despite producing a compelling piece for the main cover, fails to deliver the goods for the majority of the pages inside. The former “Marvel Comics” “Deadpool” inker and penciler certainly provides the book’s illustrations with a unique look, and one that is not dissimilar to the awkward-looking ‘trademark’ style of popular “The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen” artist Kevin O’Neill. But that simply makes it quite hard to differentiate between some of the main characters within the storyline, including Bruce Wayne.

Worse, the Americana rtist seems perfectly capable of drawing some very nice looking well-proportioned scenery around his figures, which makes his characters’ elongated limbs, square-looking edges and rectangular heads look all the more bizarre and amateurish. Although his depiction of a somewhat dishevelled Dark Knight is actually rather good and fits in well with the storyline's eerie atmosphere; even if the inconsistent grizzled look of Batman’s chin, one panel slightly whiskery and the next sporting a full beard, is somewhat disconcerting.

The variant cover art of "ARKHAM MANOR" No. 1 by Eric Canete