Wesley Dodds
Wesley Dodds was born in New York City on November 3, 1913, to wealthy investor Edward Dodds and his wife, Martha. In 1917, while his father was fighting in World War I, his mother died. Subsequently, he spent his youth traveling with his father in the Orient.
Dodds wanted to become a writer, but when his father died, he inherited his estate and became an investor and businessman himself. He lived in a mansion on Park Drive and played the role of rich playboy.
Amadeus Arkham
Amadeus Arkham was born in 1890. He became a psychiatrist and vigorous social reformer appalled by conditions in the Gotham penal system. He felt destined to improve the situations where those not mentally responsible for their actions were incarcerated side-by-side with hardened career criminals.
In 1921, on a parcel of land just north of Gotham City deeded to him by his mother, who had herself been a victim of mental illness, Arkham transformed his ancestral home into a high-security mental facility and founded the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
During the home’s remodeling, one of Arkham’s former patients, Martin “Mad Dog” Hawkins, escaped from prison, broke into the living quarters, and murdered his wife and daughter. Ironically, Hawkins became one of the first patients at Arkham Asylum. Insisting on treating him personally, Arkham saw no improvement in his condition. Six days after the stock market crash in 1929, when he lost his entire fortune, Arkham killed him.
While the incident was ruled accidental, Arkham began a slide into insanity and was eventually committed to his own hospital.
Adventure Comics #51
June 1940 (May 9, 1940)
$24.95
(The Pawn Broker)
10 pages
Writer: Gardner F. Fox
Artist: Craig Flessel
Editor: Frederic Whitney Ellsworth
Arkham Asylum HC
1989 (Oct. 3, 1989)
$24.95
“A Serious House on Serious Earth”
102 pages
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Dave McKean
Editor: Karen Berger
Who’s Who #1
March 1985 (Dec. 12, 1984)
$1.00
“Arkham Asylum”
32 pages
Editor: Len Wein
CODEX OMNIVERSA 