Headscratchers / Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

• When Batman is surrounded by the inmates, he suggest to let Two-Face decide his destiny and gives him a coin. Harvey reluctantly gets it and announces: He's free. At the final scene, we see him staring at the coin. It has the bad side. Does this mean Harvey lied to save Batman or that he thinks that Batman punishment is to continue living in a mad world?
  • Morrison seems to be suggesting in the script that Two-Face is sparing the Batman as an act of compassion.
    • That could explain why Harvey throws out the cards, he is already free.
  • There are a few possible implications. One is the symbolism of April Fools Day that the story takes place on, a day when everything is reversed and topsy-turvy, including Two-Faces dual compulsions. Another is the symbolism of rebirth that's present throughout the story, when Two-Face is given back his coin, he is reborn as a man instead of the shell he was, and in one last act of independence, chooses for himself instead of letting random chance choose.
  • I read into it being the coin saying it's Bad Heads to let him out - although, who is it Bad Heads for? But Harvey knows he can choose to do it anyway, whether it's a good idea or a bad one.
    • I took it as Harvey realizing the inherent paradox of his coin; if the "bad" head comes up, he must do something "bad", and if the "good" head comes up, he must do something "good", but there's absolutely nothing controlling who he does those things to. By releasing Batman, he's doing something bad... to his allies. No reason he can't apply that to all his decisions from that point on.
• Anyone has any idea why the Scarecrow doesn't appear in this comic? Or he does appear, but I missed him? I think he is particularly convenient to show in a work like Arkham Asylum, but I didn't see him.
  • The Scarecrow appears in this comic.
  • Now my question is: Why Morrisson didn't give him some lines? He is a psychology professor, well read, and it could have been interesting.
    • It's a worthwhile question (Scarecrow is also conspicuously missing from the files at the end). I'd be hard pressed to think of Morrison ever having written the Scarecrow (feel free to correct me). Perhaps he dislikes the character for some reason.
    • I think Morrison gave Professor Crane, The Scarecrow true identity, a cameo in Gothic, A Romance as a teacher for young Bruce, in one of Batman's allucinations.
    • The version of the Scarecrow that appears in this graphic novel is meant to represent fear in its primal, maddended form, not the psychological one, hence his muteness and his spastic, frantic movement in the hallway.
    • Also, on a practical level Morrison's already juggling quite a lot of Batman's rogue's gallery in this particular story. He can't give everyone a meaty, juicy, substantive role in proceedings, so he presumably went with the ones he wanted to include or which fit the story he wanted to tell better, and presumably for whatever reason Scarecrow didn't fit in there beyond his brief cameo.
    • It might be that Scarecrow is too obvious of a character to use here. He experiments on his victims and analyses their fear. The viewer may feel spoon-fed if Morrison used Scarecrow. Plus that panel could already symbolise an approaching horror, or, it's Morrison slapping the reader on the back of the head and saying "there's a reason I'm using these characters and having them do uncharacterised things". Batman's psyche is always debated on and analysed by fans, Morrison's version of Batman is someone who never mentally left the alleyway and is still mentally prepubescent due to his trauma. As shown with Morrison's annotations when he explains the scene where Joker spanks Batman.
  • Let's face it: if there's any story that Scarecrow would be perfectly content to just sit back and watch, not needing to lift a finger to see dread and torment shredding others' personalities piece by piece, it's this one. No fear-toxin required: its job's already done.
• Why does Max Zeus eat his own feces?
  • He's in an asylum for a reason, y'know.
    • Yeah, but what does that symbolize with his God Complex or Greek Mythology?
    • Maxie Zeus doesn't eat his own feces, he collects them in the oak chalice because he believes his divine matter will bring life to the barren earth, as part of his messiah complex.
• Why the main page states that it's implied that Amadeus and Constance sexually abused Harriet? Amadeus is implied to have been sexually abused by his parents because of the way his face is situated in the "Tunnel of Love" imagery from his childhood dreams, but what suggests that Amadeus and Constance did that to Harriet? If Amadeus had suffered because of that and was running a mental asylum, thus knowing what was wrong, it's unlikely he would have done the same his parents did. And while some can argue that a hint to this is seen when in Harriet's drawing of her parents there seems to be depicted female genitalia, maybe Constance was dressing on her room and her daughter entered into the room without asking first and saw her naked?
  • The main source of this observation is Morrison's own script notes released with the 25th Anniversary Edition, which descibre Amadeus having a disturbing incestuous attraction to his children once or twice.