Arkham Manor #1

By Gerry Duggan, Shawn Crystal, Dave McCaig

“Welcome to Arkham Manor.”

Wayne Manor gets a new look in the first issue of Arkham Manor #1. With the asylum gone, the city is trying to find a new place to put its residents, and with no place for them to go Bruce Wayne offers his family home as a possible solution.

Writer Gerry Duggan presents a dreary Batman that views his gesture and a necessity, but also a possible disaster. He knows the walls and has many memories there, but knows what could happen within the manor now that it’s out of his hands. Blood stains are hard to get out after all…

The artists on this issue are Shawn Crystal on art and Dave McCaig on colors. Crystal’s take on Batman is a gritty one. The first time we see Batman, he’s in his cave with his hands together under his chin as he sits in deep thought, he looks almost devious. From there on the artwork shows him as very grizzled, his face untamed, and those around him are in similar instances. McCaig’s colors are often times a pallet of browns and darker tones of green and grey. A scene featuring Batman walking up to the manor after it’s become the new asylum shows his Batmobile sitting in smoke that trails up from the bottom right corner of the page. McCaig uses brown and black to mask the manor, with the lights on being a light pale green, the Dark Knight a shadowed figure in the distance as he makes his way towards the door.

This is a cool story to see compared to the usual Batman tales. He gives up the manor, but does he ever really leave?