Arkham Asylum Bdc

[Custodio Groves]

TheElizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane[1] (/ˈɑːrkəm/), commonly referred to as Arkham Asylum, is a fictional forensic psychiatric hospital appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly in stories featuring the superhero Batman. It first appeared in Batman #258 (October 1974), written by Dennis O'Neil with art by Irv Novick. Located in Gotham City, the asylum houses patients who are criminally insane, as well as select prisoners with unusual medical requirements that are beyond a conventional prison's ability to accommodate. Its high-profile patients are often members of Batman's rogues gallery.

Located in Gotham City, Arkham Asylum is where Batman's foes who are considered to be mentally ill are brought as patients (other foes are incarcerated at Blackgate Penitentiary). Although it has had numerous administrators, some comic books have featured Jeremiah Arkham. Inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and in particular his fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts,[2][3] the asylum was introduced by Dennis O'Neil and Irv Novick and first appeared in Batman #258 (October 1974); much of its back-story was created by Len Wein during the 1980s.

In addition, prisoners with unusual medical conditions that prevent them from staying in a regular prison are housed in Arkham. For example, Mr. Freeze is not always depicted as mentally ill, but he requires a strongly refrigerated environment to stay alive; Arkham, with special conditions required for certain patients or inmates being a regularity rather than an exception, is seen by authorities to be an ideal location under certain circumstances.

Gotham criminals deemed "criminally insane" or "mentally unfit" by the court of law generally are treated at Williams Medical Center before being deemed dangerous enough to be sent to Arkham Asylum.[4]

Serving as a Gotham City psychiatric hospital, Arkham Asylum has a long and brutal history, beginning when its own architect became mentally unwell and hacked his workers to death with an axe. He was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the same asylum he had been building.[4] The one-shot graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth establishes that the asylum was named after Elizabeth Arkham, the mother of founder Amadeus Arkham. The original name of the asylum was "Arkham Hospital". Its dark history began in the early 1900s when Arkham's mother, having suffered from mental illness most of her life, committed suicide. However, it was later revealed that her son had actually euthanized her and repressed the memory. Amadeus then decided, as the sole heir to the Arkham estate, to remodel his family home in order to properly treat the mentally ill, so others might not suffer the same fate as his mother.

Prior to the period of the hospital's remodeling, Amadeus Arkham treated patients at the State Psychiatric Hospital in Metropolis, where he, his wife Constance and his daughter Harriet had been living for quite some time. Upon his telling his family of his plans, they moved back to his family home to oversee the remodeling. While there, Amadeus Arkham received a call from the police notifying him that Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins, a serial killer, referred to Amadeus Arkham by Metropolis Penitentiary while at State Psychiatric Hospital, had escaped from prison and sought his considered opinion on the murderer's state of mind. Shortly afterward, Amadeus Arkham returned to his home to find his front door wide open. Inside, he discovered the raped and mutilated corpses of his wife and daughter in an upstairs room, with Mad Dog's alias carved on Harriet's body. Despite this family tragedy, the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane officially opened that November.

With his sanity in tatters, Dr. Arkham designed a floor plan that evoked occult runes, believing that the pattern would drive away the mysterious bat that haunted his dreams.[5] One of its first patients was Mad Dog, whom Amadeus Arkham insisted on treating personally. After treating Mad Dog for six months, Amadeus Arkham strapped him to an electroshock couch, then deliberately and purposefully electrocuted him. The staff treated the death as an accident, but it contributed to Amadeus Arkham's gradual descent into mental illness, which he began to believe was his birthright. Eventually, Amadeus Arkham was a patient in his own asylum after he tried to kill his stockbroker in 1929, where he died scratching the words of a binding spell into the walls and floor of his cell with his fingernails and belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner" in a loud voice.[1]

Arkham Asylum first appeared in October 1974 in Batman #258, written by Dennis O'Neil and drawn by Irv Novick.[citation needed] In this story, it is named as "Arkham Hospital", although it is not clear what kind of hospital it is. "Arkham Asylum" first appeared in another O'Neil story the following year, but it was not until 1979 that "Arkham Asylum" completely replaced "Arkham Hospital", and the occasional "Arkham Sanitarium", as the institution's name. Also in 1979, the move to have the asylum closer to Gotham had begun; that was completed in 1980, when Batman #326 by Len Wein described the asylum's location "deep in the suburbs of Gotham City". It is perhaps for this reason that Batman #326 is listed in some histories as the first appearance of Arkham Asylum. It was also Wein who, in 1985's Who's Who: The Definitive Dictionary of the DC Universe #1, created its current backstory.

Arkham Asylum has been demolished or destroyed several times in its history, notably during the events of Batman: The Last Arkham (see below). It is also seriously damaged at the beginning of the Knightfall storyline, when Bane uses stolen munitions to blow up the facility and release all the patients. After these events, the asylum is relocated to a large mansion known as "Mercey Mansion". At the beginning of the No Man's Land storyline, the asylum is closed down and all its patients discharged. In this instance, a timer was used to open the doors two minutes before the city is sealed. This is orchestrated by the administrator himself, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham, the nephew of Amadeus Arkham, who had the choice of discharging the patients or watching them all starve or kill each other. In the middle of the story, it is revealed during the Prodigal storyline that Batman has established a hidden base within the sub-basement of the asylum known as the "Northwest Batcave"[6] but it was blown up by Black Mask during the Battle for the Cowl story arc.[7]

In the Battle for the Cowl one-shot, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham wanders among the remains of the asylum as he muses on his life. He reveals that he has discovered blueprints created by his uncle, Dr. Amadeus Arkham, for a new Arkham Asylum. He also contemplates the fates of his own nonviolent "special" patients: an artist with almost no facial features who must paint facial expressions onto his almost blank face to express himself; a man obsessed with his own reflection in a series of mirrors in his room; and a woman supposedly so ugly, one glance at her face would cause anyone to become mentally ill. Upon discovering his "special" patients (unharmed from the destruction thanks to their secluded cells), Arkham resolves to rebuild the facility according to his ancestor's vision, but to serve as a literal asylum for mentally ill patients in order to shelter them from the outside world. However, when told to be happy with the new development, the artist secretly paints his face white with a hideous grin, reminiscent of the Joker; it is implied that the "special" patients, as well as Arkham himself, have given in to mental illness.

In the Arkham Reborn miniseries, Arkham Asylum is rebuilt and financed by Dr. Arkham.[8] But in Batman #697, Dr. Arkham is revealed to be the new Black Mask and is a patient in his own asylum. It was also revealed during Arkham Reborn, that as both Dr. Arkham and Black Mask, he had begun to manipulate patients, a plotline that culminated in Detective Comics with Alyce Sinner becoming the new head of the facility, but secretly working with Arkham/Black Mask. It was also revealed that the "special" patients were figments of Arkham's imagination.

During Batman Eternal, Arkham Asylum is destroyed as part of the villains' assault on Batman, with Bruce Wayne also being declared bankrupt after Wayne Enterprises loses most of its assets following Hush detonating some of Batman's hidden weapons caches around the city. As a result, Wayne Manor is repossessed by the city and turned into the new Arkham Asylum,[9] but Bruce decides to accept the situation on the grounds that he can now keep a closer eye on his foes in the asylum due to his intimate knowledge of the manor's entrances and exits (after sealing off the entrance to the Batcave from the manor).[10]

Originally, Arkham Asylum was used only to house genuinely mentally ill patients having no connection to Batman, but over the course of the 1980s, a trend was established in having the majority of Batman's adversaries end up at Arkham.

Arkham Asylum is also featured in other DC Comics publications, apart from the Batman comic book titles. In Alan Moore's run in Swamp Thing the Floronic Man is detained there and in The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, Doctor Destiny escapes the asylum to wreak havoc on both the real and dream worlds. It has also been featured in varying capacities in a number of DC miniseries events, such as Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis, Day of Vengeance and Countdown to Final Crisis, among others.

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is a graphic novel written by Grant Morrison and painted by Dave McKean. It was published by DC in 1989. It made reference to the treatment of several of the patients, such as the attempt to wean Two-Face away from dependence on his coin for decision making, first with a die and then a deck of cards. It once again portrays the asylum as having been taken over by its patients.

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