Animal Man #4 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer), Travel Foreman (artist), Jeff Huet (inker), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist)

The Story: Over the mountains and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go…

The Review: Animal Man’s cult popularity comes less from anything inherently cool about his powers or himself, but more from the way writers have used him for highly experimental, even radical, storytelling.  When you think of Animal Man, you tend not to think of his iconography or mythos, but rather the fact that he once starred in one of Grant Morrison’s delightfully bizarre works.  What you know of him as a character is far less concrete.

Lemire has been filling the gaps in that area since this series started, and done it quite poetically too, though he poaches off Swamp Thing’s continuity for some of it.  You especially can’t help seeing the resemblances in this issue: humans acting as avatars of the Red, returning to the Red once their work is done to become Totems in the “Parliament of Limbs.”  Here, just as in Scott Snyder’s sister title, the Red has found its greatest avatar of all to fight its greatest enemy of all.

We’ve seen hints of how far Maxine’s power can go, particularly in reanimating the corpses of several small animals.  But now we really get a sense of the difference between her, a true avatar of the Red, and Buddy, a mere “agent,” as the Totems called him last issue.  Buddy’s ability to channel the powers of animals makes for some entertaining action, but Maxine wields power over flesh itself, as she shows when she heals her daddy’s wounds, molding his skin like clay.