I was pondering as to what things could be made into comics, and I came up with an idea for a new twist for the Batman comics.
Basically the premise is, that with the launch of Batman Inc. Bruce decides to use to not just crime fight in a detection capacity, he's going to keep an eye on them once they're in the system as well.
He'll do this by buying Arkham, and rather than donating money to guards and directors who half the time are to corrupt or inept that they can't do their jobs correctly, he'll use his resources to monitor his enemies while they're in their cells, keep them correctly restrained, or actually getting them proper treatment so their conditions can be improved or at least not made any worse.
They could get the Grant Morrison rejigged version of Mr Miracle in to make things modernised and harder to escape from, as the place a lot of the time seems to not have been updated internally since the 1800s or early 1900s. Norman had actually done a similar thing to a supervillain prison in California prior to Seven Soldiers, which was actually referenced in-story.
With Arkham, and possibly the conventional prisons like Blackgate, under Batman's control, he'll be able to respond to escapes faster (they have to happen because of plot, just not as much) and the rogues can be made formidable by them having to up their game in order to escape from the now superadvanced facility. Plus, there'd be more at stake for Batman personally if the Joker was to escape for the umpteenth time, as Batman'd be more directly responsible for the Joker's actions, instead of the bumbling guards or cops.
There would then be the sequels and things that you could get into along the line, as the threats are escalated. For example, it's already canon that Bruce Wayne has put large spacestations in orbit that functioned as the JLA satellites. Why not adapt the concept to a supermax jail that is also a spacestation, which could only be accessed by shuttle or by the JLA's teleportation beams? Maybe the sppacestation branch of Arkham could be for the repeat escapees, like the Joker, Two-Face etc.?
By making Arkham actually difficult to break out of, it would make criminals such as the Joker more threatening, as they'd have to go back to the evil genius aspect of the character, as opposed to him just being really, really stabby. Also, the writers would have to think up more inventive ways for the villains to escape, as opposed to them escaping offscreen by going all Shawshank when no one was looking or something.
That's an idea anyways.
