Absolute Batman continues to change everything we know about the Dark Knight’s mythos, with the latest update coming to Arkham Asylum. The fabled penitentiary is where Gotham City’s most crazed criminals are sent, differentiating it from Blackgate Penitentiary. Arkham is where villains like Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face are sent, and where Harley Quinn was working before she joined up with the Clown Prince of Crime. Batman fans are very familiar with Arkham Asylum at this point, with appearances across TV, film, animation, and video games. However, Absolute Batman is building a very different Arkham Asylum than fans aren’t accustomed to, and it’s looking like the scariest of the bunch. WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Absolute Batman #3. Continue reading at your own risk!
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Absolute Batman #3 comes from the creative team of Scott Snyder, Nick Dragotta, Frank Martin, and Clayton Cowles. Much of the issue deals with Bruce Wayne / Batman dealing with terrorist attacks from the Party Animals, who are being secretly led by Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask. The villain is one of many crime bosses in Batman’s rogues gallery, and he’s being set up as Absolute Batman’s first major test. Bruce is pretty early in his career as a vigilante, so he’s gathering information from every source available to him. That includes the friends he grew up with, such as Harvey Dent, who will one day become Two-Face. It appears Arkham Asylum isn’t merely a home for the mentally deranged. The people behind the facility have much darker and bolder aspirations.
Batman’s Arkham Asylum is going global
Arkham Asylum is a psychiatric facility that attempts — and often fails — to rehabilitate its patients. The Arkham Family founded Arkham Asylum, with some of its most prominent figures being Amadeus and Jeremiah Arkham. However, in the Absolute Universe, none of those names are used, and instead we learn from Harvey Dent that there are multiple Arkham sites.
There’s an Ark M Fund that’s being bankrolled by a company called J.K. Holdings. They specialize in building private prisons located on black sites, which typically means there’s no record of them or their locations. There’s heavy backing for these sites from other local governments spread out across the globe. Ark A was the first prototype in Santa Prisca, with Ark B in Russia and Ark C in China. Ark M will be the biggest and it is currently planned for Gotham. Bruce finds Ark M setup on its own island just outside of Gotham, and the weight of the task ahead of him is finally starting to weigh on our young hero.
You can imagine that if Ark M is a success, that even more of these Arkham Asylums will be fast-tracked across the world. Batman thought he only had Black Mask and his Party Animals gang to contend with, but things have gotten a lot more complicated.
Absolute Batman introduces an all-new Arkham Asylum
The change to Arkham Asylum in Absolute Batman represents a radical change to the institution that’s never successfully held an inmate. From the Batman: Arkham Asylum video game franchise to shows like Gotham and Batman: The Animated Series, Arkham Asylum has always been this spooking building in Gotham where the worst of the worst criminals are held.
There have been entertaining storylines built around the presence of Arkham Asylum in Batman lore, all based on the prolific inmates that terrorize the asylum and its staff. From breakouts to takeovers, Arkham is one of the most defining aspects of what many consider a quinessential Batman story. But now that Arkham Asylum is being set up as a government run prison center, all bets are off. Absolute Batman may be learning how to deal with street crime, but now he has to also factor in global politics on an unheard of scale. We’ll have to see if he’s up for the task.
