Batman?

[Dionysius8421]

Does anybody know if the name for the infamous asylum (Arkham) in Batman is named after where Nahum and his family went nuts? The location would be changed to New York, of course, since the main city, Gotham, is there, but is the influence there?

[Lambda]

Personally, I think that it is a direct reference to Arkham's own asylum, the Arkham Sanitarium. It even says so on Wikipedia.

[Dionysius8421]

The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, commonly referred to simply as Arkham Asylum, is a fictional psychiatric hospital in the DC Comics Universe, usually appearing in stories featuring Batman. Many psychopathic criminals from across the DC Universe, mostly from Batman's own rogues gallery (such as the Joker, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, Two-Face, the Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Black Mask, and Harley Quinn) have been imprisoned within the Asylum and also escaped from it. The Arkham Asylum is named after the fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts, found in many of H.P. Lovecraft's short horror and science fiction stories, such as "The Colour Out of Space".

I found my own answer using your resource.

[Genus Unknown]

A grain of salt is called for. It is Wikipedia, after all.

[Dionysius8421]

A grain of salt is called for. It is Wikipedia, after all.

True, true. I've seen the entire page for the Library of Congress replaced with a picture of Elton John before.

[Robert R.]

It's unlikely that it's a coincidence. Longtime Batman editor Julius Schwartz was a literary agent before he became a legendary comic book editor. And he sold at least one of Lovecraft's stories to the pulps. At the Mountains of Madness, I believe. As a comic book editor Schwartz was known to be very involved in the creation process, often doing much of the plotting, etc.

Under Schwartz's reign as editor of Batman, one of the first new villains was "The Outsider". A villain who was revealed to be a person, Alfred in this case, returned from the dead. Revived by a scientist investigating forbidden knowledge in a graveyard.

When Batman took a darker turn under Schwartz in 1969/1970, one of the most famous of those early stories was "The Secret of the Waiting Graves" involving a couple that was living an unnaturally long life via the use of a strange flower extract and killing people who would find out their secret. Sort of a low key version of "The Picture in the House" and Joseph Curwen's first life.

As it stands, while Schwartz may not have come up with Arkham Asylum himself, he certainly knew the literary significance of the name and signed off on it.

[old book]

It's definitely from Lovecraft's Arkham, no doubt at all.

Lovecraft's favorite asylum was Danvers in Mass. Quite an imposing towering brick edifice.

Washington Irving popularized the name Gotham for New-York supposedly from a Dutch tradition.

Bat-man sort of overlaps with Devil Man or Satan Man or someone from the pulps, who sort of overlaps with the Man in Black from the pulps and radio. His radio debut predates the first known Man in Black encounter associated with a UFO sighting, which was in late June, 1947.

Either the aliens have a good sense of humor, or we're dealing with something much grimmer, manifestations of the concrete imagination.

[davidsverse]

It's definitely from Lovecraft's Arkham, no doubt at all.

Lovecraft's favorite asylum was Danvers in Mass. Quite an imposing towering brick edifice.

Washington Irving popularized the name Gotham for New-York supposedly from a Dutch tradition.

Bat-man sort of overlaps with Devil Man or Satan Man or someone from the pulps, who sort of overlaps with the Man in Black from the pulps and radio. His radio debut predates the first known Man in Black encounter associated with a UFO sighting, which was in late June, 1947.

Either the aliens have a good sense of humor, or we're dealing with something much grimmer, manifestations of the concrete imagination.

Session 9 is a decent horror movie that used Danvers as a set.  Creepy place. 

[BookGwen]

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/78302

Now I want a puppy...and some bacon!

[TheFolklorist]

Ken Hite in his book Cthulhu 101 also traces Batman's Arkham Asylum back to Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium in "The Thing on the Doorstep."

He then proceeds to trace the history of Lovecraft references in Batman comics mentioning Batman #241 and #242 in which Robin fights Cthulhu Cultists and Batman #544 to #546 in which the Joker gets a hold of the Necronomicon. Lastly he mentions the three issue Elseworlds series Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham by Mike (Hellboy) Mignola and Troy Nixie.

He forgets to mention, however, Batman Legends of the Dark Knight #54 also by Mike Mignola which has Batman going up against a Great Old One worshiping sorcerer in a graveyard and the Batman/Hellboy/Starman crossover (two issues) - Mignola again - which has Neo-Nazis in South America trying to summon an Elder Thing-type monster to Earth. That crossover was recently reprinted in the Hellboy trade paperback Masks and Monsters.  

There are also all those other Lovecraftian Batman stories that Robert R. mentions that I've never even heard of.

So, yeah, apparently Gotham is just as "witch haunted" as Arkham.