Animal Man (1988-1994)
Jan. 14th, 2023 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSo, Ixo had a pile of Animal Man comics they were looking to offload and I was interested, because it was pre-Vertigo stuff from before I was allowed to read Vertigo anyway. I’m reasonably certain I’ve read a few of these stories collected in trades, but I’m going to need to dig through the boxes and connect up what I already had with what I just got. To wit:
I got a complete batch of #3-21, and in the early issues, two things become clear: One is that Animal Man is kinda lousy at being a superhero. The other is that Grant Morrison is interested in writing about pretty much anything other than Animal Man. There are entire issues devoted to cartoon coyotes or Thanagarian artists where Animal Man kinda shows up at the end and accomplishes nothing. The “aliens” who ignore fourth walls rewrite reality to fix Animal Man’s post-crisis origin…but we see much more of the side characters than anything meaningful about said rewritten origin. Animal Man joins the Justice League and a bunch of the other characters guest-star; none of them hang around or do anything of significance. Then we have half a dozen issues of Animal Man being an eco-terrorist in “plight of animals” one-shots, only for his family to get killed and set off a reality-bending time-travel adventure…that I don’t have. The collection skips to issue #26, the final issue of Morrison’s run, where he reveals the comic-book nature of reality and makes fun of his own bad writing, and brings Animal Man’s family back to life at the end.
That issue also contains a sneak preview of Peter Milligan’s brief run on the book, where Animal Man wakes from a coma to discover that the world and his powers are wrong. But the next issue I have is #32, the final issue of that story, where it’s revealed that time travel and quantum superpositions messed up reality and Animal Man gets home.
Issue #33 was when Tom Veitch took over as writer, but I don’t have that. The next issue I have is #41, then #45, #47, #48 and #50. Which means I got the culmination of Veitch’s storyline, which involved both a drawn-out evil plot at STAR Labs to build a superhuman with Animal Man’s powers (that ends with that entire cast unceremoniously dead) and the former B’wana Beast returning, getting possessed by a destroyer from the beginning of time, and unceremoniously dying. Animal Man’s powers are revealed to not have come from out-of-continuity aliens, but instead from an immortal shaman named Stone who exists as part of the morphogenetic field. (We’re seeing the slow evolution towards the existence of “The Red” as the source of all animal powers specifically.) There’s also some sort of side-story where horrible things are happening to Animal Man’s son to keep him off-screen as Animal Man’s daughter develops mysterious superpowers, but I’m missing too much material to know what exactly was going on with that.
Then Jamie Delano takes over. I have three issues of the “Flesh and Blood” storyline (#53, #55, #56). Animal Man dies and has a wild ride to being reborn; but more notable is that this actually picks up a bunch of Veitch’s plot threads: Cliff is being abused by his death-worshipping great-uncle and eventually gets rescued. Maxine’s growing powers and pet dinosaur become the instruments of Animal Man’s rebirth.
Then we jump ahead to #62-68, where Animal Man starts collecting a new supporting cast to live on the farm. Fears of ecological apocalypse abound; it’s interesting that 30 years ago the “the human race has destroyed the world and there’s nothing we can do about it” was already such a prevalent train of thought. I’m missing an annual which apparently introduces a change in his powers (he transforms into chimera monsters as he takes animal powers) and got his daughter’s soul lost in the Lifeweb, turning her body into a feral child-monster. (As opposed to his son, who is just a normal severely-traumatized teenager.)
And then we jump ahead to #75, where the party has split, with Ellen and half the new cast off on a new farm, and Animal Man (in a dragon-man form) has formed a religion and is leading a parade of people and animals through America leaving devastation in their weird-hippy wake. And there are apparently other repercussions and chaos from this as well, but we’ve moved far enough from the world of superheroes in the early years that none of them have anything to say about all this. (At this point, we’re officially part of the Vertigo imprint; Buddy hasn’t worn his costume at any point in Delano’s run and is fully into his role as an “animal avatar”; and he’s existing in a different world from the mainstream DCU.)
The last issue in this collection is, entertainingly, #77, which holds a special place in my heart because I colored the first page of it.* In the midst of the “life-power church” trying to reunite in the Promised Land (Montana, apparently), Animal Man (still in dragon-man form) has knocked up his side piece, and Ellen is busy being bicurious. I’ll admit, I was kinda surprised it took as long as it did for Animal Man’s marriage to fall apart. Maxine has apparently recovered her soul and is imparting perfect childish wisdom. Cliff is calling himself the Kannibal Kid and gets shot in the butt.
There are only two issues after that in Delano’s run; the internet tells me that Animal Man’s crusade makes it to Montana and he dies again. Then the book changes creative teams for ten more issues and is canceled; and the next time Animal Man appears he’s back in the mainstream DCU and back in costume. (Entertainingly, the character biography on Wikipedia skips over Delano’s entire run, jumping straight from the events in #50 to Animal Man’s reappearance in the mainstream DCU five years later.)
Overall: This was entertaining to read (or, in a few cases, re-read—I think I have a few of these stories in trade, but I need to go digging through the Vertigo boxes to see), but it’s not actually a great run of comics. Animal Man is a shitty superhero and a crappy father pretty much throughout; and “there’s something weird going on with his powers” is far and away the most common plot element and it gets very tiring. The fact that the nature of the world realigned itself multiple times in the 6-year run because the writers ignored each other’s worldbuilding and characterization doesn’t help for a straight read-through, either. Of the great pre-Vertigo/Vertigo titles, there’s a reason nobody’s clamoring to have Animal Man get his own TV show.
*My dad was running the Production department at DC, and the company doing the computer color separations was based in Ireland, and flew us out to wine and dine him. While he did a bunch of business meeting and my mom and sister went shopping, I was parked in front of one of the coloring computers, where I colored the first page of Animal Man #77 and a page of a Star Trek annual. I apparently did a good-enough job, because they used my work, including a mistake I made on McCoy’s face.
I got a complete batch of #3-21, and in the early issues, two things become clear: One is that Animal Man is kinda lousy at being a superhero. The other is that Grant Morrison is interested in writing about pretty much anything other than Animal Man. There are entire issues devoted to cartoon coyotes or Thanagarian artists where Animal Man kinda shows up at the end and accomplishes nothing. The “aliens” who ignore fourth walls rewrite reality to fix Animal Man’s post-crisis origin…but we see much more of the side characters than anything meaningful about said rewritten origin. Animal Man joins the Justice League and a bunch of the other characters guest-star; none of them hang around or do anything of significance. Then we have half a dozen issues of Animal Man being an eco-terrorist in “plight of animals” one-shots, only for his family to get killed and set off a reality-bending time-travel adventure…that I don’t have. The collection skips to issue #26, the final issue of Morrison’s run, where he reveals the comic-book nature of reality and makes fun of his own bad writing, and brings Animal Man’s family back to life at the end.
That issue also contains a sneak preview of Peter Milligan’s brief run on the book, where Animal Man wakes from a coma to discover that the world and his powers are wrong. But the next issue I have is #32, the final issue of that story, where it’s revealed that time travel and quantum superpositions messed up reality and Animal Man gets home.
Issue #33 was when Tom Veitch took over as writer, but I don’t have that. The next issue I have is #41, then #45, #47, #48 and #50. Which means I got the culmination of Veitch’s storyline, which involved both a drawn-out evil plot at STAR Labs to build a superhuman with Animal Man’s powers (that ends with that entire cast unceremoniously dead) and the former B’wana Beast returning, getting possessed by a destroyer from the beginning of time, and unceremoniously dying. Animal Man’s powers are revealed to not have come from out-of-continuity aliens, but instead from an immortal shaman named Stone who exists as part of the morphogenetic field. (We’re seeing the slow evolution towards the existence of “The Red” as the source of all animal powers specifically.) There’s also some sort of side-story where horrible things are happening to Animal Man’s son to keep him off-screen as Animal Man’s daughter develops mysterious superpowers, but I’m missing too much material to know what exactly was going on with that.
Then Jamie Delano takes over. I have three issues of the “Flesh and Blood” storyline (#53, #55, #56). Animal Man dies and has a wild ride to being reborn; but more notable is that this actually picks up a bunch of Veitch’s plot threads: Cliff is being abused by his death-worshipping great-uncle and eventually gets rescued. Maxine’s growing powers and pet dinosaur become the instruments of Animal Man’s rebirth.
Then we jump ahead to #62-68, where Animal Man starts collecting a new supporting cast to live on the farm. Fears of ecological apocalypse abound; it’s interesting that 30 years ago the “the human race has destroyed the world and there’s nothing we can do about it” was already such a prevalent train of thought. I’m missing an annual which apparently introduces a change in his powers (he transforms into chimera monsters as he takes animal powers) and got his daughter’s soul lost in the Lifeweb, turning her body into a feral child-monster. (As opposed to his son, who is just a normal severely-traumatized teenager.)
And then we jump ahead to #75, where the party has split, with Ellen and half the new cast off on a new farm, and Animal Man (in a dragon-man form) has formed a religion and is leading a parade of people and animals through America leaving devastation in their weird-hippy wake. And there are apparently other repercussions and chaos from this as well, but we’ve moved far enough from the world of superheroes in the early years that none of them have anything to say about all this. (At this point, we’re officially part of the Vertigo imprint; Buddy hasn’t worn his costume at any point in Delano’s run and is fully into his role as an “animal avatar”; and he’s existing in a different world from the mainstream DCU.)
The last issue in this collection is, entertainingly, #77, which holds a special place in my heart because I colored the first page of it.* In the midst of the “life-power church” trying to reunite in the Promised Land (Montana, apparently), Animal Man (still in dragon-man form) has knocked up his side piece, and Ellen is busy being bicurious. I’ll admit, I was kinda surprised it took as long as it did for Animal Man’s marriage to fall apart. Maxine has apparently recovered her soul and is imparting perfect childish wisdom. Cliff is calling himself the Kannibal Kid and gets shot in the butt.
There are only two issues after that in Delano’s run; the internet tells me that Animal Man’s crusade makes it to Montana and he dies again. Then the book changes creative teams for ten more issues and is canceled; and the next time Animal Man appears he’s back in the mainstream DCU and back in costume. (Entertainingly, the character biography on Wikipedia skips over Delano’s entire run, jumping straight from the events in #50 to Animal Man’s reappearance in the mainstream DCU five years later.)
Overall: This was entertaining to read (or, in a few cases, re-read—I think I have a few of these stories in trade, but I need to go digging through the Vertigo boxes to see), but it’s not actually a great run of comics. Animal Man is a shitty superhero and a crappy father pretty much throughout; and “there’s something weird going on with his powers” is far and away the most common plot element and it gets very tiring. The fact that the nature of the world realigned itself multiple times in the 6-year run because the writers ignored each other’s worldbuilding and characterization doesn’t help for a straight read-through, either. Of the great pre-Vertigo/Vertigo titles, there’s a reason nobody’s clamoring to have Animal Man get his own TV show.
*My dad was running the Production department at DC, and the company doing the computer color separations was based in Ireland, and flew us out to wine and dine him. While he did a bunch of business meeting and my mom and sister went shopping, I was parked in front of one of the coloring computers, where I colored the first page of Animal Man #77 and a page of a Star Trek annual. I apparently did a good-enough job, because they used my work, including a mistake I made on McCoy’s face.
