Slasher Scarecrow Gets his Close-Up

Posted by Adam Sweeney (adam@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 9, 2008

Scarecrow has always been one of the greatest Batman villains, as was evidenced when we got a small dose of him in Batman Begins. But how much mayhem could he cause if there were no ratings system to hold him back? Writer Joe Harris and artist Juan Doe have an answer to that question in their one-shot “The Joker’s Asylum: Scarecrow”, a take on Scarecrow…if he were in a slasher flick.

Newsarama got a chance to interview Joe Harris and get his take on the comic and the psyche of Scarecrow.

“He enables our worst fears, not by necessarily distorting threats or anxieties… but by giving that which we repress, what we stuff down deep and like to pretend isn’t there, the oxygen it needs to burn.”

Those who miss the classic 80’s slasher flicks (was there a more fun era of movies ever?) will be pleased to hear that Harris is drawing his inspiration from them.

“I decided to tell Scarecrow’s story as though it were an 80s horror movie… with a touch of “Heathers” and various John Hughes films from the era thrown in for depth and context. I was raised on a steady diet of movies like Friday The 13th as well as other slashers, along with higher- concept movies like April Fool’s Day and the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. I treated Scarecrow like a slasher movie threat… a masked maniac in the mold of Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger, but with a pathology known to Batman readers and let loose upon a house of unsuspecting teenage girls having a slumber party.”

Scarecrow in Shermer, Illinois? Images of Dr. Crane battling Long Duck Dong are dancing in my head. All jokes aside, anyone looking for their Joker fix will love these comics. The man with the million dollar smile will play the role of “crypt-keeper” in the asylum, offering intros and bookend the one-shots.

Scarecrow. Slasher flicks. Slumber parties. Need any more reasons or alliteration to read this comic? For further convincing you can read the rest of Joe Harris’s interview here.

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