10 Incredibly Dark Batman Moments To Haunt Your Dreams

2. Amadeus Arkham Comes Home

From: "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth" by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean One of darkest moments in Batman comics doesn't directly feature the Dark Knight at all. In Grant Morrison's 1989 book "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth", the main tale is intercut with flashbacks to the birth of the Asylum itself. Spurred by the vision and ultimate insanity of Amadeus Arkham, the madhouse has a history intricately linked to its namesake - a history of slow, torturous craze and unimaginable family tragedy. Amadeus is portrayed as a young doctor for most of the flashback. His mother Elizabeth had gone insane and committed suicide long ago, and so he founds Arkham Hospital in her name. As the wings of the hospital are expanded and remodeled, Amadeus is notified that a former patient of his - Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins - has escaped from prison. Sure enough, Amadeus arrives home to find his door wide open and his wife and young daughter brutally mutilated. There is an image of a certain dollhouse resident that I dare not describe. But the darkness doesn't stop there, as the death of his family triggers a repressed memory to resurface within Amadeus's mind - his mother's suicide had, in fact, been a murder, with a young Amadeus himself on the giving end of the killing stroke in a devastating attempt to protect his mother from her own insanity. Morrison intentionally wrote this book to combat the realism that was trending in the industry at the time (and to this day), purposefully crafting a kind of "right-brain" Batman tale based in dreamlike, emotional, and irrational imagery. I'm not a fan of everything Morrison has written, but his work on "Arkham Asylum" continues to haunt me to this day.