Nov
06
2008
Animal Man, aka Buddy Baker, may be one of DC’s most underused characters. He had his own brilliant series, launched in 1988 and running through to the mid-90s, but since then, he’s only been a rare guest star: he had a supposedly major role that amounted to very little in 52 and a big part in Countdown to Adventure, and basically a cameo in a recent issue of Justice League of America. It really is a shame, as he is probably one of their best characters, and he and his supporting cast deserve better, as in a-book-of-their-own better.
Here are my six reasons why Animal Man is a great character, and probably one of DC’s best.
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Nov
05
2008
Because the reprint trade paperbacks bear the Vertigo label, people forget that Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man started before the Vertigo imprint was created. It was considered a mainstream DC comic book, with not even a hint of a “For Mature Readers” label on the cover. It was released without a Comics Code seal of approval because of its content, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t on the shelves with all the other hero books. I wonder what other kids in 1988 thought of the comic: I know I didn’t enjoy it at the time.
The Animal Man stories disturbed me. The portrayals of human cruelty to animals were unflinching, without even the safety net of the perpetrators being super-villains: whether scientists engaged in animal experimentation or drunken hunters, it was regular people doing the deed. Even when there were super-hero battles, they were complicated - a dying villain wanting to go out with a bang, for example. The rest of the work - the metafictional examination of the writer as God, and the exploration of the fragility of the human psyche - was beyond me at the time: Uncanny X-Men and The Avengers were more my speed.
Now, as an adult, I appreciate Grant Morrison’s Animal Man as a brilliant, innovative creation. It is one of the best things he has ever written, and the 5th issue, The Coyote Gospel, is the issue that really launched it into new territory. 20 years ago, I read it once and got rid of it; now I re-read it regularly in the trade paperback reprint, kicking myself that I don’t have the original issue anymore.
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