Arkham Manor #6

On the trail of Seth Squickem!

At the end of this story, is Batman going to have to pony up a few million dollars to rebuild Arkham Asylum so that he can get his house back? Currently over in Batman, Bruce and Julia and Alfred are working out of an apartment in downtown Gotham. But that might be an imaginary tale, so this story could end differently. If Batman doesn't get his house back, I at least want to see a panel where he's taking a break searching for psychopaths to take a nice relaxing dump in his own toilet.

This issue begins with Harvey Bullock wasting time pretending to help Eric Border hunt down the escaped psychopaths that Batman isn't hunting down. Well, Batman is looking for one of them and he is one of them. So the only one Harvey needs to worry about is Sybil Silverlock. But she'll be dealt with in Gotham Academy so Harvey can just go get a danish and relax. And even though he doesn't know that that's what he can do, that's probably what he's planning on doing anyway. Right after he phones STAR Labs to have them pick up Jokerface.

Here is a page of Alfred eating cookies because awesome eating awesome is awesome.

The above scanned image is also important because Alfred is working on getting Wayne Manor back! I wonder if Alfred can figure out a way to get Arkham rebuilt in Metropolis. Let Superman deal with the psychos for awhile. Although Superman will probably just throw them in the Phantom Zone and Arkham will stand empty in just a few months.

Is anybody else disturbed that Batman and Superman and Green Lantern have places where they can just stick people that they disagree with and nobody will ever hear from them again? Shit, even Wonder Woman has the Labyrinth of monsters where she can shove enemies. I think Aquaman just feeds them to sharks when nobody is looking.

Batman is too busy to talk about real estate with Alfred because he's about to get in a big fight with Seth Wickham. Wickham is just a normal guy with schizophrenia who has recently murdered his parents. He's mentally ill and dangerous which means, I think, it's okay for Batman to send him to the emergency room.

Well shit. Kudos to Gerry Duggan for writing a Batman who actually considers how much force is needed to stop a threat and who thinks about the consequences of his actions.

Seth Wickham is taken back to Arkham where they deny him drugs for his schizophrenia and just let him think that he's dead as Jeremiah Arkham tries other methods of curing him. Probably. I think the only drugs used at Arkham are tranquilizers.

Later, Bruce tells Alfred that he's not going to challenge the city's takeover of Wayne Manor. Until the city can pay for construction of a new asylum, Bruce would rather let Arkham have his house instead of paying for a new asylum out of his own pocket. Besides, Batman has easy access to the new asylum and he probably even thinks it's more secure. At least Batman has the place wired so he can keep his eyes and ears on everything that goes on.

Arkham Manor #6 Rating: -2 Ranking. I'm dropping the ranking on this last issue because it just kind of petered out. Instead of ending with a great big twist or exciting revelation, it just kind of pulled a repeat and fade. You know how when a pop song doesn't know how to end so it just keeps repeating the same shit over and over while the volume steadily decreases until you don't realize the song ended so much as completely forget that a song had even been playing. Although here's an idea for this title! Now that everything is set up and Batman has a close eye on Arkham, this title can keep coming back with another new short story every one or two years. And just keep the numbering going! It's just that Issue #7 won't come out for another fifteen months and then it'll tell a story about The Scarecrow taking over the asylum and Batman having to pull the Jack Shaw identity out for another infiltration. It kind of feels like that's what they've set up here, doesn't it? I'm all for that.