Something is dangerously wrong with the life web and it looks to be Maxine that will be the key to it.
What They Say:
As a part of the acclaimed DC Comics—The New 52 event of September 2011, Animal Man Buddy Baker, has gone from “super” man to family man–but is he strong enough to hold his family together when Maxine, his young daughter, starts to manifest her own dangerous powers? As these new abilities continue to terrify Buddy and his wife Ellen, things take a turn for the worse as Buddy begins a startling transformation of his own that will lead him on a journey into the heart of The Red. Collected here are the first 6 issues of this dramatic new series from writer Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth) and artist Travel Foreman (The Immortal Iron Fist)!
This volume collect issues 1-6 of Animal Man, part of the DC Comics—The New 52 event.
The Review:
One of the titles I was very keen on with the New 52 was definitely Animal Man as I loved his usage way, way back in the 90’s when Grant Morrison made him something truly fascinating. I did grab the first few issues of this when it came out, but as is often the case, time gets away from you and it’s easier to just grab the trades. And it makes for a very good reading experience to have the first six issues together for one sitting and just go through it. Written by Jeff Lemire with artwork by Travel Foreman, the two have taken Buddy Baker, a long time DC Comics character, and given him a new lease on life after a few years drifting through other series without a strong narrative of his own. And this series, in conjunction with Swamp Thing, breathes some good life into the DC Universe with that proper air of the Vertigo books to give it a bit more edge.
With this soft reboot of the character, compressed into the newly established timeline, Buddy makes out well here as the guy who has had a few careers and is kind of considered a little bit of a kook because of his environmental activism side. He’s basically retired the superhero gig, but he’s been considering getting back into it. His wife, Ellen, isn’t actively encouraging or discouraging it, but she does make it clear she knows that he’s happier when he’s in costume and helping people or helping the world. Buddy’s powers are kind of changeable in a way as he taps into what he calls the Life Web and uses different animal powers for whatever he needs, but it’s also been tweaked over the years so that he can combine them in a cocktail as well to make something even more potent. He has a pretty good array of abilities but he’s also not the most polished hero and that gets him into a bit of trouble since he has a more amateurish feeling, but not completely.
The book does a good job of getting us to know his family here early on as he lives with Ellen and his two kids, Cliff and Maxine. Maxine is pretty young here, a bit too mature for what she says at times, and Cliff has that ten year old kind of male rebellion to him. It’s not a bad family by any means but there’s some mild tensions there that drift down from the parents because of Buddy’s wanting to do something more with his life and powers. Where there’s concern, that spills out huge here, is when Maxine basically reveals that she has a good deal of the same kind of powers that Buddy does, but just in a different form as we see her bring back to life all sorts of dead pet animals in the neighborhood. Not that they’re anything but bones though, which makes it terribly creepy as she converses and plays with them.
What Maxine does here though is to be a catalyst for events as she’s far more clued into the life web, “The Red” as it’s really called, and knows that there’s something bad happening to it. A rot is infecting it and only she and her dad can help fix what’s going on. It’s a hard situation for both parents to deal with, especially for Ellen, but it really is something that’s handled well as Maxine makes it clear the two of them have to go on a journey to find the heart of the Red and to help save it since all life is connected. We’ve had some mildly varying interpretations of the Life Web before but this one takes it up a few levels and makes it very elemental and a part of the structure of everything in a nway way, relating it to the Green that is part of Swamp Thing’s world as well. Similar in structure with its avatars, we get an amusing bit of a rewrite of the past when it comes to how Buddy got his powers, something that does shock him but admittedly works in a pretty solid way with his history, and it helps to smooth out some of the bumps in making the series work by being Vertigo-light in a sense.
Lemire’s writing here is pretty good as he has some very tough shoes to fill, at least for the old time fans. Buddy’s not been well handled for several years across a few extended series like Countdown as he’s been distilled to just the family man who gets caught up in things too big for him. Here, Lemire is able to make it so that we see his family is key, they have a strong bond but not one without problems, and then shows that it’s not going to be all about that but rather the larger family of life on the world. His writing style is pretty well suited to things here though some of it could use a bit more expansion in places to draw you in in a more detailed way. Conversely, I have a hell of a hard time with Foreman’s artwork. It’s definitely distinct and it most definitely gives it that Vertigo feeling that many fans associate with that imprint. And it does work in its own way, especially when dealing with the Red, but the character artwork is a huge, huge turnoff. It is one of the reasons I stopped with the singles as I didn’t feel like I was getting my worth in buying them with artwork that I disliked so much. He’s an interesting choice and one that will have strong supporters and detractors, but it just didn’t work for me. His artwork in the Red was where it worked best, but it was just so surreal at times that anything seemed like it could work.
In Summary:
Animal Man is a character I have great love for based on the distant past of the character and is one that is entirely adaptable to new interpretations, especially as we see from his DC Nation animated appearances. With the first few issues of the New 52 as they came out, I liked where the story was going but really struggled with the artwork and always felt bad with that. While I didn’t keep up with it in that form, I did thoroughly enjoy this edition of it in reading all six issues in one sitting and getting the opening chapter of a larger storyline that can unfold beautifully if given the time. Lemire’s work here is a good, strong starting point as it hits all the basics and keeps events moving while hinting of where it can go. I like the way the Red is being dealt with and I like the path that Maxine can take and how Buddy truly figures into it. Some of Maxine’s dialogue is a bit too much for her age in my opinion, but kids are notoriously hard to write for in the comics world. Animal Man has plenty of room to grow here and I’m curious to see where it’ll go to next and how deeply connected to the more standard superhero fare of it.
Grade: B+
