Sunday, December 12, 2004
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. 15th Anniversary Edition by Morrison and McKean.
God, was it really 1989 when this first came out, when I first bought it? I was a callow thirteen at the time, what was I thinking? I certainly didn't understand much of the story or of the artwork by the inimitable Dave McKean and to be honest, there's still a lot I miss now. Luckily for this anniversary edition it's reprinted with the script, with notes by Grant Morrison himself. And therein is the problem.
Say what you want about Morrison but he really seems to have bad luck when it comes to collaborators. Specifically in the case of artists taking the script and not drawing what Grant tells them to draw. Now sometimes Morrison may not make it easy for them, there are those pages by Ashley Wood at the end of Invisibles 3.2 that Cameron Stewart had to redraw for the trade paperback version, perhaps that was a case of an artist who hadn't necessarily followed the series having to draw something that Morrison was describing semi-poetically rather than what he actually wanted to see. It was a tough gig and I think the Guide says that Morrison wasn't always around at this time to talk to artists on the phone. But then John Ridgway has the next page and clear instructions what to draw and just doesn't bother.
It's a bit like that here. I suspect there's interoffice politics that we don't hear about at play but if we assume, as we are led to, that this is the approved script that Morrison gave McKean to draw, and that what McKean drew was what was accepted and published by DC as 'Arkham Asylum', then McKean, who I really, really like, fucked up. Big time. All right, so obeying a direction to draw second-rate villain Clayface as 'AIDS on two legs' might be difficult but for a story where allegory and metaphor are vitally important, for McKean to not draw them is, well, I'm not sure what the best term is to describe it, negligent? His style, while it suits the mood of the piece fails on pretty much every other level, directions over depictions of body language and symbolism are just ignored by McKean. Without these keys to pieces we don't have much to understand.
Take the Maxie Zeus scene, Morrison describes how it is the room in which Arkham kills Mad Dog Hawkins and that Maxie is mainlining electric current and using it to sexually abuse/arouse a guard. Not that you don't see any of this in what McKean draws. Similarly, when Arkham looks at drawings his daughter has done, Morrison writes how important it is that McKean shows these drawing are of a man with two heads and a man with a wolf's face. Now, if we look at what is drawn, we see something which might be a man with a wolf's head, but not two-face. The script says that Arkham's wife is four months pregnant when they are killed (to reiterate her status as mother in the female triad in Arkham's life). Now drawing a four month pregnant woman might be tricky but McKean doesn't even try.
I could go on through, pointing out all the times when what McKean draws ignores directions in the script. Arkham Asylum looks fantastic (though why DC didn't take the opportunity to bind this better than the original, we still have text disappearing into the centre of the book), but the script would show the reason the story is perhaps not the greatest in the world is not for want of Morrison trying.
God, was it really 1989 when this first came out, when I first bought it? I was a callow thirteen at the time, what was I thinking? I certainly didn't understand much of the story or of the artwork by the inimitable Dave McKean and to be honest, there's still a lot I miss now. Luckily for this anniversary edition it's reprinted with the script, with notes by Grant Morrison himself. And therein is the problem.
Say what you want about Morrison but he really seems to have bad luck when it comes to collaborators. Specifically in the case of artists taking the script and not drawing what Grant tells them to draw. Now sometimes Morrison may not make it easy for them, there are those pages by Ashley Wood at the end of Invisibles 3.2 that Cameron Stewart had to redraw for the trade paperback version, perhaps that was a case of an artist who hadn't necessarily followed the series having to draw something that Morrison was describing semi-poetically rather than what he actually wanted to see. It was a tough gig and I think the Guide says that Morrison wasn't always around at this time to talk to artists on the phone. But then John Ridgway has the next page and clear instructions what to draw and just doesn't bother.
It's a bit like that here. I suspect there's interoffice politics that we don't hear about at play but if we assume, as we are led to, that this is the approved script that Morrison gave McKean to draw, and that what McKean drew was what was accepted and published by DC as 'Arkham Asylum', then McKean, who I really, really like, fucked up. Big time. All right, so obeying a direction to draw second-rate villain Clayface as 'AIDS on two legs' might be difficult but for a story where allegory and metaphor are vitally important, for McKean to not draw them is, well, I'm not sure what the best term is to describe it, negligent? His style, while it suits the mood of the piece fails on pretty much every other level, directions over depictions of body language and symbolism are just ignored by McKean. Without these keys to pieces we don't have much to understand.
Take the Maxie Zeus scene, Morrison describes how it is the room in which Arkham kills Mad Dog Hawkins and that Maxie is mainlining electric current and using it to sexually abuse/arouse a guard. Not that you don't see any of this in what McKean draws. Similarly, when Arkham looks at drawings his daughter has done, Morrison writes how important it is that McKean shows these drawing are of a man with two heads and a man with a wolf's face. Now, if we look at what is drawn, we see something which might be a man with a wolf's head, but not two-face. The script says that Arkham's wife is four months pregnant when they are killed (to reiterate her status as mother in the female triad in Arkham's life). Now drawing a four month pregnant woman might be tricky but McKean doesn't even try.
I could go on through, pointing out all the times when what McKean draws ignores directions in the script. Arkham Asylum looks fantastic (though why DC didn't take the opportunity to bind this better than the original, we still have text disappearing into the centre of the book), but the script would show the reason the story is perhaps not the greatest in the world is not for want of Morrison trying.
