10 Hugely Influential Comics That Changed Everything

7. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth (DC Comics)

If you have ever owned any hardcover graphic novels over the years of your comic book fandom, any oversized Absolute Editions or Marvel Premiere books, then you have Arkham Asylum to thank for popularising the form. These gorgeous, expensively produced coffee table volumes that can be shown to family and friends, as if to say 'Check this out, comics are classy now!', can be traced back to this haunting, weird and scary story, written by maverick Scotsman Grant Morrison and painted with terrifying verve by Dave McKean. Released in October 1989 at the height of 'Batmania', in the wake of Tim Burton's ludicrously successful Batman movie, Arkham Asylum was a mega success and made Morrison a superstar writer virtually overnight. Fans hadn't seen anything like it before, and in many ways the idea of publishing a $20 hardback comic with impressionistic painted artwork was a big risk for DC, but it paid off in a big way (it is estimated to have sold at least 600,000 copies and counting, according to Morrison's website). Arkham Asylum was also one of the first comics to delve deeply into the scarred psyches of Batman and his rogues gallery, and it does it to exhilarating effect. Many Batman writers in the years since have taken this idea and went even further, making Batman, The Joker, Two-Face, Catwoman and company some of the most psychologically complex and studied characters in all of literature.