DC Comics has announced Arkham City: The Order of the World, a six-issue miniseries coming out this October that features the employees and patients of Arkham Asylum. Taking place after the A-Day attack featured in Infinite Frontier #0, the institution has been gravely wounded, with only a few members of the staff and patients still alive. Some of the remaining patients who escaped death also escaped the very asylum itself, meaning they now need to be brought back in.
The miniseries is written by Dan Watters, whose previous works include the darker side of the DC/Vertigo Universe including The House of Whispers and Lucifer. It is pretty fitting that he's going to be tackling a story about Arkham Asylum. Watters has also worked on creator-owned series such as Coffin Bound and The Picture of Everything Else. The artist for the mini-series is Dani, who recently revealed some lovely variant cover artwork for the upcoming Barbarella comic. The creative team also includes Eisner Award-winner Dave Stewart, who has worked on The Walking Dead and BPRD: Hell on Earth, as the colorist.
GamesRadar+ revealed preview images and solicitation text for Arkham City: The Order of the World, with speculation on which individual escapees will be featured in the miniseries. There are strong hints that the escapees will include Joker's Daughter, Mad Hatter, Firefly, and Professor Pyg. However, it sounds like the main protagonist for the series will be Arkham's last living doctor Jocasta Joy, along with an "avenging angel" who, if the variant cover below by Francesco Mattina (Batman: Fear State, Spawn) is any indication, will be Azrael.
So far, three covers have been revealed for Arkham City: The Order of the World. This includes the main cover by Sam Wolfe Connelly (Daphne Bryne, Haha), the Azrael variant by Mattina, and a black-and-white cover by Steve Beach (Full Bleed: The Comics & Culture Quarterly). Mattina and Beach's covers confirm the presence of Mad Hatter and Professor Pyg. Beach's in particular seems to be very telling by adding a bunch of clear images of the characters on the cover. Mattina's cover takes a much more subtle approach regarding their identities, aligning itself with the style of the solicitation text. Although all the covers are gorgeous in their own unique ways.
This miniseries seems to be taking a more unique approach. Rather than having the world's greatest detective on the case, readers will instead get to experience a doctor from Arkham Asylum and an "avenging angel" taking on some of Arkham Asylum's escapees. The solicit is clever in leaving a lot of character identities up in the air, inciting a lot of guesswork on the Internet and getting people talking about the miniseries. This serves as both a nice marketing move as well as a great way to surround the story with some mystery and intrigue, possibly allowing for some nice surprising appearances (maybe even ones that don't feature characters on the covers?). Maybe readers will even get some characters that aren't villains but sympathetic people in need. Questions will start being answered soon enough when the first issue of Arkham City: The Order of the World becomes available in comic book stores on October 5, 2021.
Source: GamesRadar+