Part of the general appeal of superhero comics is seeing how different creators face the challenges posed by the tight formulas. Some writers and artists manage to work their way around genre restrictions, others hang an amusing lampshade on them, or use them to their advantage by deliberately subverting expectations, or even try to turn them into a powerful symbol.
In the case of Batman stories, one convention creators have had to deal with for a long time is the fact that the members of the rogues’ gallery keep escaping from prison or, even more often, from Arkham Asylum.
Batman #527
These escapes happen with so much regularity that they can strain belief beyond the breaking point (yes, even if you accept that Gotham’s overwhelming levels of corruption suggest that at least some of Arkham’s guards should be eminently bribable).
The easiest approach would be to just accept the trope and move on. Indeed, many creators simply disregard the prison breaks and just expect us to play along with the fact that a dangerous villain who was caught last month (or even last week!) is already free and able to plot a new scheme on the outside. It’s not asking too much – after all, these have always been the rules of the game and perhaps it *is* more interesting to just get to the main story without having to show us all the nuts and bolts of what came before. Hell, even if they show us how it happened, it ultimately doesn’t change anything, as we would’ve been fine with a ‘S/he got out somehow. Deal with it.’ type of answer.
Still, comics do occasionally tell readers how the escape came about:
Batman #523
Authors like Doug Moench and Chuck Dixon do it, I think, because they see it as fair play. However, it’s also part of the challenge: every once in a while, there should a Batman tale with an ingenious prison break, so they know it’s up to creators to come up with something inventive and entertaining…
Detective Comics #693
And that’s the thing: escapes from Arkham Asylum don’t have to be a chore – a boring set-up for something that didn’t really need an explanation… There is a reason breakouts are a fiction subgenre by themselves, from POW tales (The Great Escape, Stalag 17) to civilian prison breaks (Brute Force, The Shawshank Redemption). They can be really fun to read about, if nothing else because they involve characters being smart, resourceful, and badass. Hey, this is why we like reading about Batman’s rogues’ gallery in the first place!
Take the three-issue arc ‘Only Happy When It Rains’ (Catwoman #58-60), by Devin K. Grayson and Jim Balent. This nifty story, set shortly after an earthquake destroyed most of Gotham City, pits Catwoman against Jonathan Crane (aka the Scarecrow). Early on, we see the latter break out of his glass cell, and it is one of the greatest sequences in the book:
Catwoman (v2) #58
One of the things that makes this sequence so great is that it smoothly conveys much of the Scarecrow’s characterization: he’s a brilliant chemist, he knows how to manipulate human psychology, he’s arrogant, smug, and quite sadistic.
Yet the escape trope can be used not just to establish the villain’s personality and abilities (and thus set up the stakes for later on), but also to flesh out the hero. For instance, the way writer Brian K. Vaughan, penciller Rick Burchett, and inker John Lowe decided to have Batman think, talk, and move in this scene – following a breakout by Jervis Tech (aka the Mad Hatter) – perfectly distils that Dark Knight coolness we all love:
Detective Comics #787
In conclusion, while I don’t need – or want – preludes with prison breaks to every single story, I do get a kick out of the ways in which many creators have handled them. They can be clever and exciting… even terrifying.
Also, every so often, they’ve been quite funny as well:
