Animal Man (1988 Series) #11

July 13, 2012

Title: Out of Africa

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Chas Truog & Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

Getting into the meat of his run, in this issue Grant Morrison had Animal Man and Vixen in Africa, running afoul of a strange pair who have unusual designs on the pair. Meanwhile, the strange aliens who gave Buddy Baker his powers in the first place are back, tampering with his life from behind the scenes.

I have to admit, having an inkling of what’s coming up, the Vixen/Africa storyline isn’t really holding my attention the way it should. The subplot about the aliens, about Buddy’s true origin, and where the comic is going have me much more interested. That’s what I really want to follow here, and the book isn’t getting me there as fast as I would like. It’s hard to put yourself in the mindset of the reader from 23 years ago, who didn’t know where the story was going, much as I wish it could.

As usual, Chas Truog’s art isn’t helping matters for me. The stuff with Buddy, Vixen, and the aliens is okay. The villains actually don’t look bad at all. But when we go back to the rest of our cast, to where Ellen and her friend try to piece things together, or when we see other humans besides Buddy at all… it just doesn’t work.

I’m hoping to ramp up my reading of this book, because I’m ready to get to the good stuff.

Rating: 7/10

Animal Man (1988) #9

June 10, 2012

Title: Home Improvements

Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Tom Grummett
Inks: Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

It’s been a rough few months for Animal Man – the alien invasion introduced a gene bomb that has made his powers go haywire, and he’s concerned that his new position as a member of Justice League Europe may be in jeopardy, plus Mirror Master just trashed his house. But being a Leaguer has its benefits, as we see this issue when the Martian Manhunter drops in for a visit.

Here’s where we start to drift away from those Animal Man issues I’ve read before. Although I know that Grant Morrison is going to get meta in the coming issues, I don’t know too much about what direction he’s going to take, which may be the reason this issue seems a little by-the-book for me. It’s not a bad issue at all, far from it. It’s nice to see Buddy and company interacting more with the rest of the DC Universe, and the Justice League in particular. What we don’t get much of, though, are the larger ideas and bigger picture that Morrison has been slowly building towards. This feels very much like a standard DC Universe story, although a bit funnier than most (a feeling that’s mostly accomplished thanks to the workers J’onn brings in to fix up Buddy’s house). Not bad, but not what we’ve come to expect from Morrison.

I’ve been a big fan of Tom Grummett for years, since his Superman days, which actually happened after he drew this issue. The stuff I liked about his work then and now was already present here – it’s very clean, very bold work. The characters are expressive and the action is clear. It’s traditional superhero work, to be sure, but he does it very well. Brian Bolland, as usual, knocks it out with a great cover that really captures the feel of the story and the characters.

Rating: 7/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #8

April 14, 2012

Title: Mirror Movies

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Chas Truog & Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

Following the Invasion, two big things have happened to Animal Man. First, he’s been made a member of Justice League Europe. Second, his powers are all scrambled, not functioning properly. This turns out to be a bit of a problem when the Flash’s old foe, Mirror Master, attacks him in his own home.

At first glance, this issue seems pretty standard for a superhero comic. Buddy is placed in a predicament when he’s attacked by a villain and is, in essence, powerless. We’ve seen it several times. What’s more, the book even suffers just a tad by having the main character’s circumstances dictated by a recent crossover without actually explaining anything. People who didn’t read the Invasion! Crossover at the time probably would have no idea what’s wrong with buddy or how he wound up with the JLE. Having read a lot of those comics, though, I’m pretty comfortable with this stuff, and have a pretty simple time of inserting this into DC Continuity of the era.

The fight itself is clever. Although the mirror master scenes don’t really push the boundaries of comic book storytelling, Grant Morrison is finding ways to use his powers that I don’t think had been fully explored in the past, at least not all of them. What makes the book stand out, though, are some a couple of perplexing prologue and epilogue pages which both point to a larger conspiracy at work against Animal Man and, at the same time, begin to further set the stage for the really bizarre stuff that is to come.

The Chas Truog and Doug Hazlewood art team puts out a good effort this week. You can always tell Mirror Master, even in disguise, due to the expressions on his face, and there’s a nice consistency with the disheveled, just-rolled-out-of-bed look that Buddy maintains throughout the issue.

And as a final note, it’s a nice touch that the issue is dedicated to the creators of Mirror Master: John Broome, Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino… as well as “the late, great Barry Allen.”

Ah, how times change.

Rating: 8/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #7

April 6, 2012

Title: The Death of the Red Mask

Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Chas Truog
Inks: Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

With the alien Invasion over (or so it seems), Animal Man has come down to Earth in Miami. Before he can go home, though, the city is suddenly overrun with an army of stumbling, ineffective red robots. As they stumble around aimlessly, Animal Man manages to track down their master, the Golden Age villain called Red Mask… who is at the end of his rope.

Not everything in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run was super-bizarre or metatextual or a statement about comic books as an art form. This issue, at least, is just a really strong, sad story. The Red Mask we meet here is a man who was legitimately dealt a raw hand by fate and then used it to make his life even worse, leading him up to a terrible and tragic decision. There’s a little humor in here, but mostly it’s a character study of someone who is ill-suited for the world in which he lives.

Oddly, the book isn’t really specific to Animal Man. You could substitute virtually any superhero in his place and the story could play out exactly the same. Morrison was obviously trying something a little different here, and while this may not be a brick in his grander scheme, it was still a very effective issue in its own right.

Chas Truog did some of his best work in this issue. The flashback sequences are very strong, and the war-torn streets of Miami provide a nice visual punch to the proceedings. All in all, this is one of the better issues thus far of an already-legendary series.

Rating: 8/10

 

Animal Man (1988 Series) #6

March 18, 2012

Title: Birds of Prey

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Chas Truog & Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

Ah, the Invasion! Crossover. I’d nearly forgotten this one. Back in 1988, a coalition of alien races banded together and invaded the Earth, concerned that their proliferation of superhumans may one day be a threat to the rest of the cosmos. In the “First Strike!” crossovers, such as this one, the Invasion hadn’t begun full-scale yet and many of the heroes didn’t realize quite what they were facing.

Fortunately, even when staring down the barrel of a company crossover, Grant Morrison finds a way to do something unorthodox. Animal Man faces off with a pair of invaders from Thanagar, home planet of Hawkman. Instead of battling a warrior, though, Animal Man is facing a self-styled “performance artist” who uses death as his canvas. It’s a weird, unique way to work the title character into the crossover without doing just another “superhero vs. alien invader” story. It’s still that at the core, of course, but the trappings are different enough to make it feel like a different sort of story, and that’s exactly what readers were hoping for.

Chas Truog and Doug Hazlewood provide pretty strong artwork here. The characters look like a part of the greater DC Universe, with styles and designs that fit in with other depictions of Thanagar and its culture of the time. There isn’t quite as much of a chance to cut loose with typical Animal Man-style weirdness as usual, but it’s okay to go a little more straightlaced once in a while.

This issue is definitely a pit stop, something that takes us off the larger path of the Animal Man arc for an issue, but it’s not a bad one. It’s nice to see something a bit more traditional for a little while.

Rating: 7/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #5

March 2, 2012

Title: The Coyote Gospel

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Chas Truog & Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

When people talk about how great the early Grant Morrison Animal Man comics were, I can only assume that this is the issue where that buzz began. Don’t get me wrong, issues #1-4 weren’t bad, they had good moments and plenty of potential. But this is the issue where the book really takes a turn for the bizarre and begins to show itself as being far, far more than just another superhero comic.

In “The Coyote Gospel,” a mysterious creature is run over by an 18 wheeler, an accident that should have killed it. Instead, though, it begins to move. A year later, Buddy Baker gets into a fight with his wife over the meat in the house, while the trucker that ran over the creature has decided the recent string of misfortune in his life is due to the beast, and he must destroy it.

There’s plenty to love here, not the least of which is the way Morrison managed to take what is essentially a parody of the Looney Tunes and turn it into a metaphor for mythology and religion. The way he does it also begins to point us in the direction of metafiction – using a fictional work to comment on another fictional work – which would later become a hallmark of the run. At the time, this no doubt seemed like a quirky little one-off. I can only imagine the shock when readers realized that Morrison had, in fact, been setting the stage.

The back-and-forth art of Chas Truog is back this issue. His depiction of the Coyote is bizarre and spot-on, a character that looks like something ripped from animation and forced into a realistic world in which he does not belong. The human characters who do belong in this world don’t look quite as great. And I’ve got to tell you – I’ve read a lot of comics from the 80s. I can’t remember any where the clothing and hair feels as terribly dated as they do in this book. I know that wasn’t an issue at the time (except that nobody, ever, in the history of the universe, looked good in the sort of cut-off jeans short-shorts Buddy is sporting in front of the refrigerator).

All in all, though, this is where it’s really getting good.

Rating: 9/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #4

February 18, 2012

Title: When We All Lived in the Forest

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Chas Truog & Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

Animal Man has tracked down the rampaging B’wana Beast, whose grief-fueled rage has pitted him against S.T.A.R. Labs and, in the process, infected the hero with a genetically manipulated strain of Anthrax. This issue, the two face off – but how hard can Animal Man fight against a hero whose cause he agrees with?

The hero-fights-hero trope was even overdone in 1988, but Grant Morrison at least found a way to make us sympathize with both characters, making for a more compelling story. While B’wana Beast’s rage is justified, he’s a danger not only to himself but could potentially infect the entire state of California if the anthrax he’s carrying is transmitted. Morrison uses an interesting application of Animal Man’s powers here, something we haven’t seen too much of in recent years, and that’s probably to the good. If you followed this to its logical conclusion, Animal Man could theoretically be the most powerful superhero in the DC Universe, and that doesn’t really fit the perpetual B-list, underdog tone of the character. (Even now, when he’s once again become a critical darling, he seems farther removed than ever from the likes of the Justice League.)

Chas Truog’s wildly inconsistent art swings back to the good end of the spectrum in this issue. The fight between Animal Man and B’wana Beast is exciting, with some great action. It weakens when B’wana takes off his helmet – his unmasked face looks simply bizarre – but that’s not a big problem in context of everything else. And the last two pages, an epilogue to this opening storyline – are absolutely haunting, some of Truog’s best work on the title to date.

Now that Animal Man has been reintroduced and we’ve got a clear sense of his place in the DC Universe, I’m anxious to see what Morrison did with him next.

Rating: 8/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #3

February 18, 2012

Title: The Nature of the Beast

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Chas Truog & Doug Hazelwood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

The reveal which was pretty obvious from the first issue is made here – the strange man who is wreaking a horrible vendetta on S.T.A.R. Labs is the old DC hero B’wana Beast. For those unfamiliar with the man with the goofiest superhero name of all time, B’wana Beast was a white man who protected Africa with the power to merge different animals into a single organism, combining the characteristics of both, and then separate them again. It’s actually kind of a cool, unusual power when you think about it, but that doesn’t excuse his terrible fashion choice or superhero name.

Anyway, while Buddy Baker tries to recover from the rather violent way he was disarmed last issue, B’wana flashes back to the devastation he recently witnessed in Africa, the death of a friend that pushed him over the edge, and how it all led to his targeting S.T.A.R. Labs in the here and now. B’wana Beast’s story is, actually, a little pedestrian for Grant Morrison, a little too by-the-book, a little too much of what we’ve seen before. Of course, this was still an early stage in his career, and the story isn’t over yet, so I could see him putting a twist on the formula, but it doesn’t make this issue as compelling as it could be. Far more interesting is the story of Buddy’s wife and daughter, who have fun across a group of hunters in the woods and now find themselves in the midst of a brutal confrontation. All things considered, this is a fairly straightforward subplot, without the sort of wild mysticism one expects from the writer, but it’s handled here in a well-reasoned, compelling fashion.

Chas Truog, whose second issue was a marked improvement over his first, seems to be going back in the opposite direction in issue three. B’wana Beast shows off some markedly impossible anatomy throughout the issue, made all the more obvious as he’s naked save for his loincloth, boots and helmet. The scenes with Buddy’s family, which are among the best written in this issue, feature the weakest artwork, with flat poses and bizarre proportions in the faces, especially Maxine’s.

The germ of the brilliant story to come is evident, but hopefully the artwork will pick up soon.

Rating: 7/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #2

February 11, 2012

Title: Life in the Concrete Jungle

Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Chris Truog
Inks: Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

Animal Man is called in by STAR Labs to investigate a break-in of the most unusual sort: someone has fused all of their laboratory apes into a horrible mass of bioflesh. IF that wasn’t bad enough, he seems to have escaped in the form of an eight-foot-tall cockroach. Buddy starts his investigation only to get an unexpected pep talk by Superman himself.

When Grant Morrison is on his game, nobody can pull together different parts of continuity like him. We’ve seen this in recent years with All Star Superman and his remarkable Batman run, but it’s interesting to go back in time to see this relatively young writer beginning to do the things he would later be great at. Although the presumed antagonist in this story is relatively obscure, people who are well-studied in DC Universe lore have more than enough clues at this point to piece together who he likely is, and with it, turn to the obvious questions about why he would suddenly be taking on this sort of role. The story is already rewarding people with a history with these characters, but it does so in a way that doesn’t feel inaccessible if you haven’t spent years learning the ins and outs of the DCU.

Chris Truog, whose work I thought was lacking a bit in the first issue, has developed considerably in issue two. A lot of the facial problems I had before seem to be fixed, and the increased emphasis on the monsters really plays to his strengths. The last couple of pages are particularly good – very nice layout, interesting use of the grid, and some pretty good, shocking images on those pages. I’m impressed here.

The series is picking up steam pretty quickly.

Rating: 7/10

Animal Man (1988 Series) #1

February 4, 2012

Title: The Human Zoo

Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Chas Truog
Inks: Doug Hazlewood
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover Art: Brian Bolland
Editor: Karen Berger
Publisher: DC Comics

The biggest purchase I made at last week’s Wizard World New Orleans was a complete run of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man series. I’d read the first trade paperback years ago and enjoyed it, but couldn’t find volume two. Now that Jeff Lemire has made me a serious fan of the character, when I saw this stack of comics bundled together, I knew the time had come to scope it out. So for the next several months, I’m planning to review this series an issue at a time, Saturdays here at the Back Issue Bin.

Issue one re-introduces us to Buddy Baker, part-time superhero with the ability to borrow special talents from animals: the agility of a cat, the deep-sea swimming ability of a fish, the flight of a condor and anything else you can imagine. Buddy never cracked into the big-time as a superhero, and with his career as a movie stuntman stalled, he’s thinking of going back into superheroing full-time… something that bothers his wife, Ellen. As Buddy begins the quest to reinvent himself, another animal-powered metahuman begins a quest of his own… something far more sinister.

This book is very much a product of its time. Grant Morrison draws on then-current happenings in the DCU, such as the debut of the Justice League International, to inform Buddy’s lifestyle choices, and while the weirdness that would later (and still does) characterize Animal Man is hinted at in this issue, at the beginning it reads more like a family drama. There’s tension between Buddy and Ellen, there’s problems for his kids Cliff and Maxine… Buddy’s home life and family is ingrained into his character makeup in a way few other superheroes enjoy. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine him as a single, childless man, and much of that is owed to Morrison’ characterization.

While the genre-defining work that would later come is hinted at this issue, the artwork is less impressive. Chas Truog’s character designs – particularly when it comes to hairstyles and clothing choices – don’t age well. Even for a comic produced in 1988, the styles look like 80s clichés rather than the way an average family really would look at the time. The better scenes, artistically, are actually those where we leave Buddy’s family behind and follow the shadowy figure who will be our first antagonist.

It’s an interesting first issue, looking back with the perspective of someone who knows where this title would later go. We can see it pointing in the right direction, but it definitely had a long way to go.

Rating: 8/10