Animal Man by Craig Lemon / May'98

After last time's discourse about how I got into comics, and how I think today's kids can be brought into comics, it's now time to move onto to what I hope will be the general thrust of my piece on a regular basis - reviewing comics. The way I'll be doing it is slightly different to the CBN regulars, though. Over the last few years, I've gradually been getting further and further behind in my monthly reading - a lot of this is due to the many multi-part storylines many titles seem to favour nowadays, so I'm more inclined to save a few issues of a title up to be able to read a complete storyline in one sitting.

Also, when there's been a title that I've missed a few issues of over the years, I tend to not read it at all until I've an uninterrupted run. Thus, for example, I only read issues 105-170 of Swamp Thing early last year after finding the final missing pair of issues (125 and 169).

The obvious problem with having such a large run to read is when the creative team changes from when I started collecting the title, I might hate it, yet feel forced to wade through it. I've tried promising myself that I'll treat each creative team's run on a title as a separate title, although failed miserably with today's review, Animal Man 1 to 89.

I'll probably switch between newer titles and older titles - and perhaps make some recommendations as to what back issues you may like to consider buying en masse.

A final word before launching into the review. I tend to concentrate on the writer(s) of a title, rather than the entire creative team, as, to my eyes, most comic artists are interchangeable. Therefore I will only be listing writers in these reviews, and comment on art where I found it particularly good or bad. That's just the way I am, I'm afraid.

To kick off, then, Animal Man 1-89, the complete run of which I read over the period of a couple of weeks, ending two weeks ago.

1-26 Grant Morrison, 27-32 Peter Milligan, 33-50 Tom Veitch, 51-79 Jamie Delano, 80-89 Jerry Prosser.

The problem with Animal Man is Morrison. For the first few issues the title is almost normal, animal-powered-based-superhero-fights-baddies. Then he seems to have thought of the central plot of his entire run, and starts including a page here, a page there, gradually building up the mystery and weirdness and generally enjoying himself in flouting all comic-book conventions until he finally reveals Animal Man's nemesis - himself.

The final conversations between Grant and Animal Man are a bit of a letdown. Just Grant telling Buddy Baker that he has been running his life, determining all of his reactions, etc, etc, before sending him off again. To be honest, I'd recommend a read of issues 1-25, and stop the title on the cliffhanger of Buddy meeting Grant at his front door.

So, how can Milligan follow this? By having Buddy wake up from a coma 'in a world he doesn't know', that old chestnut. For six issues, everything's slightly skewed, Buddy goes from meeting one version of himself to another in a horribly mixed-up storyline with a poor resolution. Then, for whatever reason, Milligan is off the title after his six issues and Veitch comes in.

It is really during Veitch's run that Animal Man ceases to be Animal Man and starts being Buddy Baker, this guy with some weird connection to 'the Red', an unoriginal take-off of Swamp Thing's 'Green'.

He essentially has just one story to tell, some goobledegook about where Buddy's powers come from (or do they?) and all the hassle this old shaman- type dude has to go to to get Buddy to understand his powers and save the universe in time for issue 50. This storyline grows tedious after less than six ussues, so you can imagine what I thought of it after 18!

In fact, the most memorable thing about Veitch's issues is that I can't remember much about them. To write this up, I had to go back and reread some of the sections to remind myself what happened. For Morrison and Delano, the details were fresh in my memory.

So, Veitch finally peters out, and it's onto Delano. And onto a couple of weird situations which occurred during his initial set of issues. First off, his first storyline (Flesh and Blood) is originally stated to last seven issues, but ends after six with a double-sized portion in issue 56, which looks like two issues sewn together.

Secondly, it's stated upfront that Delano will take a rest after a short while, and allow a guest scripter in for a few issues - this, of course, never actually happens, and Delano runs all the way from 51 through to 79, starting off by killing Buddy by being run over, and finishing off by killing Buddy by him offering himself up as animal feed.

The general concept during Delano's run of Buddy and friends trying to form the 'promised land' of animals and humans living in harmony is good, and most of the run is an enjoyable read, especially the promising initial storyline and an excellent foray in New York (separately) for Buddy and his wife.

Warning signs appear with a completely mad section on this hideous monster from the deep, woken up (psychically) by some woman with rather extreme behavioural problems - these get watered down and forgotten about fairly quickly, though.

Also, the sections with the animal army rolling through towns, devastating fields and towns in their wake requires a vast suspension of disbelief, as it really doesn't ring true. At times during this run, there's this government agent that tries to bring him down, but Buddy always foils her, until she infiltrates the Promised Land and manages to inject him with a fatal serum - nobody recognises her at any stage, and as the Prosser runs starts up she's still there, unnoticed and unpunished.

For the final few issues, Prosser just goes mad and creates a ridiculous situation with a spider queen and a white and black lady that makes little sense overall and is totally out of keeping with the tone and spirit of the book thus far. The change in direction is too jarring and nonsencical for me, and for most of the other readers too, as they seemed to desert the title in droves.

To sum up, I'd suggest treating it as two comics. Read 1-25 and enjoy them as one title, then read Delano's 51-79 and enjoy them (with reservations) as a separate entity. Both sets of stories will provide you with an interesting read and nice sense of closure, rather than leaving you with the tainted taste of the poor issues elsewhere in the run.

Disclaimer - all of the above nonsense is purely my personal opinion. No doubt most people may well disagree with some or all of my comments, but please feel free to e-mail me to discuss anything I write here.

Next time - Heroes Return I