From the Batcave: Arkham Reborn

Battle for the Cowl wasn't written by Morrison, but it was important to the overall saga since thats where we saw the origins of the new Dynamic Duo. Naturally it had bunch of tie-ins/specials and two of them had acknowledgement to Morrison. One of them, Azrael: Death's Dark Knight, focused on the surviving fake Batman created by Dr. Hurt. But this time I'll write about the second one - Arkham Asylum.

Why the nod to Morrison? I'd guess that was done due Amadeus Arkham getting name dropped few times. Or maybe Morrison passed few ideas as well, who knows. Anyway it focuses on Jeremiah Arkham. He was the director of Arkham Asylum at the time and was obviously related to Amadeus. Besides that we get introduced to 3 new Arkham inmates and hints of interesting things to come. 

Story continues in Arkham Reborn #1-3 and Detective #864-865 and is collected in Arkham Reborn trade. Despite the irregular publishing schedule DC managed to keep the same creative team on the entire thing. I wouldn't say that I'm a big fan of Haun's art, but he does bring certain vibe to the story that stands out next to more generic artwork that Batman usually had at the time. 

In general I like Hine's writing and his involvement was one of the main reasons why I read this story. I think that he does pretty good job here, but unfortunately he had to deal with some plot developments that were outside of his control.

If you read Tony Daniel's Batman run then you know that there was new Black Mask. And well, spoiler alert, turns out that this new Black Mask was Jeremiah. How being crime lord works with Jeremiah working at Arkham Asylum and having various patients? Hine works hard to make it make sense and I think that he manages to do that in the end. Sure, there is lots of comic book logic with split personalities and hallucinations, but what can you do in such situation?

Bigger problem is that Arkham Reborn works more as a companion piece for Daniel's run than anything Morrison related. And well, asides of Battle for the Cowl #1-3 I don't really care about Daniel's run. But if you liked it then there are certainly worse books to pick up than Arkham Reborn.

But even if you don't like Daniel's run I think that it is worth getting Battle for the Cowl: Arkham Asylum #1 one-shot. It promises things that sadly never happen, but sometimes promise is good enough to be remembered.

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