Somnopolis

Arkham Asylum is, simply put, one of the most successful games released in recent years. It is not only a fantastic action game, with cinematic cut-scenes that don’t distract from the gameplay but actually improve it (rare), side quests that add to replayability, but more than any of that it manages to synthesize every version of the Batman at once.

Written by Paul Dini, who also worked on the Batman animated series, Arkham Asylum also boasts the vocal stylings of three of the show’s voice actors. Returning are Arleen Sorkin as Harley, Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill knocking it out of the park with his demented Joker taunting the player throughout the game.

The ‘inmates take over the asylum’, plot draws on two miniseries from DC Comics. Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and Arkham Asylum: Living Hell by Dan Slott and Ryan Sook. The game retains the ghostly undertones of the first book, but also introduces characters from Slott’s less surreal and more plot-driven miniseries. Aaron Cash is one of the attending guards at Arkham, who lost his hand in an attack by Killer Croc. The game picks up on the allusions to J. M. Barrie’s Captain Hook, in keeping with the multitude of references stuffed into the Batman mythos by creators over the past seventy years.

Recently Mightygodking wrote an interesting piece regarding the animated series’ take on the Joker -

Now, the animated series’ Joker is a far more human character. One of the episodes I watched recently was “Joker’s Millions,” in which a flat-broke Joker gets a massive inheritance from a gangland rival, clears his name, and blows a bunch of money, only to find out later that most of the money was fake; with the IRS after him for inheritance tax, he can’t admit that he was fooled or he’ll be humiliated. Can you imagine the Joker, as seen in most contemporary comics, being portrayed as so down on his luck? [.....] This is a Joker with highs and lows, who feels joy and disappointment, a Joker with honest-to-God passion. This is a Joker who wants things, and can’t always have them. This is a Joker who retains the grandness of his philosophical and conceptual war against Batman, but is also petty enough offended when he’s tossed out of the Gotham City Comedy Competition.

Mark Hammill’s Joker sounds the same, cackling maniacally as he tears the asylum apart. But unlike in the animated series, this version of the villain is happy to take lives. Staff, emergency crews and police officers are slaughtered by his goons. The player’s Batman can do little more than contain the carnage on the island of Arkham (touches of Alcatraz here). The Batman does not kill, but there is something sick about the city of Gotham and life is cheap. The game embraces the twisted morality of the comic and while the masked Bruce Wayne does not take a life, he doesn’t go out of his way to save the criminals who fall to their death. A series of bonecrushing blows would appear to break every bone in a goon’s body, yet when the player checks them the game states they are ‘unconscious’. Yeah. Right.

The violent fight moves Batman uses in the game are acrobatic and swift, the most spectacular combos achieved by unbroken chains of contact hits against enemies. The developers introduce an inventive array of animations to give players the sense that they are the Batman. ‘Detective mode’, allows the player to analyse crime scenes and anticipate foes. It combines the character’s tech-savy side with his martial artist skills to great effect.

Now. Boss fights. Original games often introduce throwaway boss battles that become repetitive after the first couple of levels. Arkham Asylum has the advantage of being able to draw on an incredible rogues gallery. There’s the Joker’s lover and sidekick, created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for the animated series, Harley Quinn, here redesigned to look like a demented hospital nurse. Then we have Killer Croc, a monstrous sewer dweller, into whose lair you have to travel….moving very slowly. Bane is more muscle than man and in confronting the villain who broke the Bat’s back in the comics, you discover the true extent of the Joker’s plan. Poison Ivy essays a disturbing transformation that’s half hentai, half Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors. But the pick of the bunch, the absolute terror that is  – Scarecrow

The game makes excellent use of a villain who can cause nightmarish hallucinations due to a gas of his own invention. Batman is dosed at least three times during the game and forced to relive his parents’ deaths, not to mention in a great scene, a reversal of the game’s opening where he is brought to Arkham in chains by the Joker himself. The character’s redesign is a combination of the movie version played by Cillian Murphy and the comic book version, with some frighteningly Freudian dentata to boot. The Scarecrow boss fights are for me the highlight of the game.

Now I have heard complaints about the final fight with the Joker is anticlimactic, but personally I think it’s in keeping with his character. In a horrible way, once again in keeping with the Batman storyline, who’s to say he didn’t win in the end? Hundreds of lives lost, or destroyed and the Arkham institute itself turned into a death camp.

Fun game though.

The success of J. K. Rowling Harry Potter series was a starting pistol for children’s books, with literary agents searching the land for the next bestseller phenomenon. Thankfully many interesting writers have managed to ride this wave of enthusiasm. However, children’s literature has appealed to talented writers for years, with the advantage of writing for an audience whose imaginations are less troubled by having to suspend disbelief. Terry Pratchett gave a much remarked upon interview disputing that Pottermania had ushered in children’s literature. Stories told for an audience of children are nothing new. From Aesops Fables to the Brothers Grimm, Enid Blyton to Maurice Sendak – kids remain eager listeners when storytime comes round.

Author Sarah Webb has asked for recommendations of the best ten children’s books from the last ten years. I find I still enjoy reading books that the younger Me would have liked. The pleasure remains the same. In fact the older I am the more I appreciate the difficulty of writing a memorable book for children.

In no particular order:

Philip Pullman  – His Dark Materials

Michael Chabon  – Summerland

Terry Pratchett  – Nation

Lemony Snicket  – A Series of Unfortunate Events

Brian K. Vaughan  – Runaways

Philip Reeves  – Mortal Engines

Eoin Colfer  – Artemis Fowl series

S. E. Connolly  – Damsel

Jeff Smith  – Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil

Philip Pullman understands the importance of crafting a story that will live in the minds of its readers. Take his early attempts at science fiction for adults, the now out of print Galatea, and compare it to the excellent His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman wants to use his writing to impart his view of the world and challenge received ideas of social order and the nature of religious authority. Whereas the magic realism of his adult fiction falters, the adventures of Lyra and Will, pursued by agents of the Church across two worlds, manages to illustrate concisely how adulthood can be compromised by good intentions and failure of imagination. Children in Pullman’s universe are the ultimate rebels, as they have the freedom to think differently. He is the modern standard bearer for G. K. Chesterton’s much quoted phrase - Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is possibly the best book yet written about the comic book industry, a  fictional version of events that gives a greater sense for the history of what those men stooped over flattened squares in the years following WWII endured while dreaming up new heroes for their century. Summerland is equally epic in scope, Michael Chabon’s attempt to write an American fantasy novel to rival C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. Blending imagery from Norse myth with Native American mysticism, the novel is a love song to a childhood spent on the ballpark in the summer heat. Chabon is an ambitious author and Summerland a worthy experiment with the genre.

Terry Pratchett’s Nation is more of a thought experiment for children. Try to imagine how our world would be today if the role of the Church in colonial expansion was not as strong. A Robinson Crusoe without adult characters, two children from different cultures are forced to work together to survive. Like Pullman, the question is asked of the kids reading – can you imagine a better world? Try and make it so.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events achieves the rare feat of being both tragically sad and also whimsically comical. The entire series represents what may be the best modern fable for children published in years. Its collection of grotesques rival Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and the Beaudelaire children would send the Famous Five running home crying to their mothers with bloody noses. Assuming Sunny Beaudelaire didn’t bite them off. Once again these books carry the important moral that in the adult world, there is no one to rely on but oneself, but there can be relief courtesy of love and friendship along the way, while it lasts.

Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan may be an unusual inclusion. For one it’s an American comic book. Also the original creative team of writer Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona have since moved on.  Nevertheless for its original run of 24 issues, Runaways (following the adventures of a group of children who discover their parents are supervillains and, well, go on the run) achieved the seemingly impossible in American comics. It became a classic, original comic book series. Recommended for readers young and old.

Philip Reeves won the Guardian book award for the first entry in his Mortal Engines series of books for children and it is easy to see why.  A dystopian tale with the marvelous hook that in the future cities are mobile and only the larger, ‘hungrier’, metropolises survive. The writing is dark and imaginative and the main characters are forced to grow up too soon.

Eoin Colfer has taken a lot of stick recently for writing a sequel to Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hiker’s Guide. I feel the Wexford native was on a hiding to nowhere from the day the news broke. He was forced to compete with a dead man who still can claim a fanatical fan base and who know when they are being exploited. Better to stick to his own literary universe, the artful world of Artemis Fowl, scourge of the Fairy Folk who are surprisingly technologically advanced. A Celtic Tiger-cub who would give Irish bankers a run for their money, he wheels and deals his way through two worlds, bamboozling humans and Fairies with his intelligence and conniving. Fantastic fun.

Susan Connolly’s Damsel is the fairy tale every child should have already heard. The story of a young girl whose hero father goes missing on a quest, she ventures forth to rescue him aided only by his guidebook to heroism. Witty, imaginative and deserving of a much wider audience.

Jeff Smith’s Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil is a two-fold treat. An introduction to the greatest superhero of all for younger readers who missed him first, second and third times round; and a homage to the wonderful work of its creator C. C. Beck. When Billy Batson speaks the magic word Shazam aloud he is transformed into the hero Captain Marvel. Smith’s art references the style of Beck, while also containing some modern day satirical digs, including the villain’s resemblance to a certain member of the Bush Administration.

I find I don’t have a tenth recommendation, so instead I will mention books I am looking forward to reading, such as Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, as well as Dave McKean’s illustrated collaboration with Richard Dawkins on evolutionary science for kids. Now I just need to write a story of my own.

This evening, after the Dave McKean signing in Easons for Crazy Hair (lovely fellow, very accomodating – I must pick up Ctrl-Alt-Shift collection for his contribution on the AIDS village in China), I wandered around the young adults section where it was hosted.

And found this.

The Grauniad (yes I have in my old age started to read Private Eye) already ran an article on this ‘repackaging’, of the classic novel for the benefit of Twifans.

It just makes me want to spit. Pearls before swine folks. I was pleasantly surprised by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies when I read it, as Seth Grahame Smith managed to retain the themes more adequately than Meyer, who riffed shamelessly on Austen, despite stuffing the original text with assorted zombies and ninjas.

Bronte is mentioned in passing by Bella, so you can see the marketing-think here. However, the Harry Potter principle, much like the equally mythical trickle-down-effect, does not work. It is portrayed as follows. Due to a book’s popularity, the sum number of people reading increase, therefore books like Harry Potter or Twilight are good, as they encourage people to read.

The problem is lots of people reading bad books just leads to more bad books being read (and the readership themselves being unchallenged).

Books should not be treated as some ornery burden for modern-day readers (”Oh well if I have to read, I’ll tackle something by that Dan Brown chap, but nothing too heavy”). They should be enjoyed precisely because they are engaging, challenging, makes us think about ourselves and our world. These are the kinds of books that should be lauded, not reassuring fables, or ‘comfort reading’, that is attractively packaged.

The ‘Twilight’ book cover aesthetic – a simple image on black with raised lettering – is everywhere. It promises a light read with some supernatural themes and idealised romance. To render a master of language like Bronte subject to this marketing shorthand is a great injustice to the author and her talent.