CW: Sexually explicit imagery

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Grant Morrison’s script for Arkham Asylum focused on the geometric image of the vesica piscis.

I find myself grasping for my roots, awkwardly. And I wonder what my grandparents would think of me, were they to meet me today. Ask their shades about me and I imagine they would pull ghost photographs from their wallets and handbags, show you a solemn child with huge hazel eyes. -Neil Gaiman, Mr. Punch

Euclid’s Elements begins with one, using it to construct an equilateral triangle. Indeed, one can use it to construct a myriad of basic shapes—the square, pentagon, and hexagon can also be constructed from it. 

Within the Pythagorean religion the number one, represented by the circle and called the monad, was considered sacred and holy. The vesica piscis thus represented the dyad, combining as it did two circles. The generative properties outlined by Euclid, then, become the product of copulation, a meaning further emphasized by the visual similarities between the vesica piscis and the vagina. This mystical association, obvious as it was, served as a largely cross-cultural bit of sacred geometry.

Separately, however, the vesica piscis became a Christian symbol. By extending the lines on one apex one gets a distinctly fish shape, which meshes with a wealth of Biblical imagery. More mystically, various numerological associations between the proportions of the vesica piscis and the Bible are attested, if dubiously. The shape is also closely related to the ogive, which is essentially a vesica piscis with flattened sides, and which serves as the geometric underpinning of the gothic archway. 

For their part, Morrison ties the symbol to the larger body of symbolism in Arkham Asylum, using the fish symbol to relate it to the Moon Tarot card according to Hermetic lore while also drawing a Christ-Osiris link (familiar in Crowley) to bring up descent to the underworld imagery. Indeed, there’s an entire line of fish symbolism in Arkham Asylum. Clown fish make regular appearances, gesturing both to the Joker and to a theme of sexual ambiguity that got downplayed when Warner Bros. corporate refused to allow the comic to depict the Joker dressed as Madonna on the grounds that it might lead people to assume that Jack Nicholson was a cross-dresser, a fairly astonishing case of reaching the right decision for the stupidest reasons possible. (Morrison later rued that “in the end it was Heath Ledger who immortalized the tranny Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight, vindicating my foresight.”) And at another point they have Amadeus Arkham reflect on the French term for the victim of an April Fool’s prank, poisson d’Avril, while also connecting the vesica piscis to holography and the theories of David Bohm. 

The bulk of the discussion of the vesica piscis in Morrison’ script comes around a sequence roughly halfway through the book where Batman, shaken by flashbacks to his parents’ murder, snaps himself out of it by pushing a shard of broken mirror into his hand.…

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Previously in The Last War in Albion: Grant Morrison’s first major hit was Arkham Asylum, a Batman graphic novel whose dense symbolism included, among other things, the Tower card and the Great Dragon.

This particular lunatic claimed he was the Biblical Anti-Christ and promised to return to Gotham one day, on the eve of the battle of Armageddon. -Grant Morrison, Batman

This suits Crowley’s larger signification, but is tangental in the extreme, relying on Dīs Pater’s later conflation with the more traditionally bestial Orcus, who provided the roots for the French ogre and Italian orco, from which Tolkien’s orcs and the ensuing high fantasy trope emerged. More abstractly, however, the presence of a fire-breathing mouth implies a dragon, and Morrison’s association of the figure with primal chaos cements this tidily, suggesting again a flaw at the heart of things.

Morrison states that the dragon is opposed by reason, represented by the spear. Within the lore of DC Comics, then, this would imply Batman, the world’s greatest detective. Unsurprisingly, however, things are not that simple given Morrison’s conception of Batman. In the gallery at the end of the book that serves as a cast of characters, Batman is given a brief, anxious narration: “Criminals. Criminals are a terror. Hearts of the night. I must disguise my. Terror. Criminals are Cowardly.  Superstitious terrible omen. A cowardly lot. My disguise must strike terror. I must be black. Terrible. Criminals are. Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. I must be a creature. I must be a creature of the night. Mommy’s dead. Daddy’s dead. Brucie’s dead. I shall become a bat”. This invocation of “creature” makes it clear that Batman is not some dispassionate force of reason who can combat the Great Dragon within the Tower, but rather a force of the Dragon. The clear implication—which Morrison pays off—is that Batman is only ever confronting himself as he battles his way through the Asylum.

It is worth stressing that this is not all a bunch of mystic interpretation being imposed onto the text. Arkham Asylum makes active and extremely literal use of these symbols in accordance with their occult implications. The aforementioned passage in which Amadeus Arkham’s journals transition from talking about the Dark Tower to the Dragon plays out as narration overlaid with Batman encountering Killer Croc, a relatively recent addition to Batman’s rogue’s gallery created by Gerry Conway in 1983, with “And face the Dragon within” appearing in a half-page panel of Killer Croc. The Dragon easily gets the better of Batman, hurling him out a window. McKean draws this with clear resemblances to the Pamela Coleman Smith rendition of the card—a tall panel in which Batman crashes out of an upper spire of the Asylum, lightning crashing behind him. Batman falls, then catches himself, pulling himself up to find a statue of Saint Michael defeating Satan. 

This, of course, is the event described in Revelation when the “great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his head,” provoking a “war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.…

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Previously in The Last War in Albion: Grant Morrison made their debut and early reputation in the US with a relaunch of DC’s Animal Man. But soon after came the comic that would establish them as a superstar.

Like Babel, meant to heaven reach
All towers men build a lesson teach
Lightning, descending from the sky
Reminds man there’s but one most high.
-Alan Moore, Promethea

Morrison pitched what would become Arkham Aslylum at the same February 1987 meeting where they successfully pitched Animal Man. The exact terms in which Morrison sold it are not entirely clear, but their earliest allusion to it in a January 1988 interview described it as, “you know the asylum from Batman stories? – yeah, well it’s April the first and the inmates take over the Asylum. They are holding hostages, and they demand that Batman be sent in because he belongs in a nut-house with the rest of them! So it’s a sort of psychological thriller, with Batman going through all sorts of mental and physical cruelties at the hands of his worst enemies. The story draws its inspiration from the medieval Feast of Fools and the World-Turned-Topsy-Turvy ceremonies when the rich would swap places with the beggars, criminals would become clergy and they’d all enjoy a day-long orgy of role-playing. So we look at all the familiar Batman paraphernalia from the viewpoint of these insane villains.”

The project faced a number of delays—Morrison claims it “took a year to research and was written in one fevered month in 1987, generally late at night and after long periods of no sleep.” Given the pitch date, a late 1987 composition seems most likely. By early 1988 Dave McKean, a fellow Brit who had pitched alongside Neil Gaiman at the same 1987 meeting, had been put on art duties. McKean, however, was doing a three-issue Black Orchid miniseries (with 48-page issues) and the first ten covers of Sandman at the same period, and so was slow in getting the 128 pages of Arkham Asylum finished. A final delay from Warner Brothers corporate to coordinate around the release of the 1989 Batman movie meant that the comic did not see light until October of 1989, by which point Morrison was well into both their Animal Man and Doom Patrol runs.

From DC’s perspective, Arkham Asylum was clearly a spiritual successor to Moore and Bolland’s The Killing Joke—a bespoke Batman story by ambitious British creators. But where Moore and Bolland were known properties teaming up on one of DC’s most popular characters, Morrison and McKean were unknowns being launched to prominence with a major Batman project launched so as to coincide with a movie. 

Given this, there is a certain perversity to the book, which sees Morrison at their most ruthlessly obscurantist, crafting a story that was absolutely drenched in occult symbolism and references both literary and philosophical. The story was that of a dark night of the soul for Batman—a transformative and cathartic experience in which he descended into a personal hell and emerged stronger for it.…

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