Animal Man #0 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Steve Pugh (art), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: And now you know why Animal Man never channels the powers of a chicken.

The Review: Considering the popularity of this series, you can’t deny Lemire has done a good job making its star accessible to people who’ve never heard of him in their lives (read: most people).  That said, it’s always been obvious that longtime fans, particularly those of the Morrison era of Animal Man, had an “in” on the character the rest of us do not.  In that sense, these #0 issues can handily even the field between old and new readers.

Here we see Lemire integrating both old continuity and the new mythology he’s laid down, and the effect seems very unified and sensible.  Like Action Comics #0, you don’t see much in this issue that previous ones haven’t alluded to already, but Lemire clarifies some of the reasons behind certain changes and developments.  You get a sense of that these past events tie into the current “Rotworld” arc, but only in the vaguest terms.

Animal Man #12 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire & Scott Snyder (story), Steve Pugh (art), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: Animal Man and Swamp Thing do their best Starsky and Hutch impression.

The Review: And so it begins.  Hokey and overused, yes, I know, but the line seems apropos here, considering we are talking about an event long in the works and which every fan of DC’s “Dark” line of books has been looking forward to for months.  We have here two of the biggest hotshots in the wake of the new DCU working together on two of the biggest figures of DC’s counter-mainstream culture—for a mainstream book.  That is also popular, of all things.

So excitement definitely feels deserved in this situation.  That said, the meeting between our two heroes doesn’t have quite the punch it did in Swamp Thing #11.  Buddy finds it necessary to brief his new partner on everything that’s happened to him in the last ten issues, which might be handy for readers hopping aboard the Animal Man hayride for the first time, but a dull exercise for us longtime fans.

Animal Man #11 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Wayne Faucher (inks), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: I’m not sure you want a makeover from two yellow Coneheads in leotards.

The Review: To be perfectly frank, Animal Man has been in desperate need of a major upgrade in power set for a while.  Lemire made that clear every time he had Buddy face off against the Rot, only to quickly find himself overwhelmed, outmuscled, and just downright ineffective.  Granted, he’ll probably never be capable of his daughter’s feats, but you’d think at such a critical time, he should have more options than channeling the strength of a gorilla, or whatever.

So when the Totems offered to give Buddy a newer, better body last issue, it was about time.  At first glance, however, we don’t see any radical changes.  He certainly doesn’t look any different, though he says he feels “stronger…more pure…”  The Royal Tailors give him “limited species-shifting abilities,” and we see a bit of that here, as he transmogrifies in and out of several half-man, half-animal forms, similar to his bolstered powers in the Red.  But it’s not totally clear how this mere shapeshifting ability is more beneficial than his normal channeling powers.

Animal Man Annual #1 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Timothy Green (pencils), Joseph Silver (inks), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: Socks has a very “unique” idea of what makes a good children’s story, to say the least.

The Review: Most of the annuals we see tend to use the showcase format, offering short pieces by a variety of writers and artists, a mixture of exercises by creative veterans and samples from potential new talent.  Then there’s the other kind of annual: the self-contained interlude, a story which wedges itself between arcs and has some importance in its own right, but with a higher price point which limits how important it can actually be.

Lemire manages this tricky balance by giving you some details which help you understand the bigger story of the “Rise of the Rot,” but which aren’t so crucial that anyone who didn’t buy into the annual would be left out when they picked up their next monthly issue of Animal Man.  And there is no better narrative tool to accomplish all this than the flashback.  Diving into the past avoids any substantial interference with the ongoing action, but it could yield enough revelations to make the reading worthwhile.

Animal Man #9 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Steve Pugh (art), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: The Bone Orchard, huh?  Sounds like just the place to build a vacation condo.

The Review: Besides the craft of his storytelling, another reason why Lemire is so appealing as a writer is his obvious enthusiasm for what he writes.  The guy just loves his comics, as he proves in the opening page of this issue by inserting a neat little tribute to another great Animal Man writer, Grant Morrison:  “Then the dream got really strange…I met my maker…He was this skinny, intense, Scottish guy who claimed I was just a character that he wrote in a comic book.”

So far, Lemire hasn’t shown the sheer weirdness and conceptual abstraction that made Morrison’s Animal Man so distinctive, but Lemire has offered some memorable fantasy all his own.  Each time we visit the Red, it appears a little more alien, yet eerily familiar, a place where everything you recognize gets turned inside out—often quite literally.  If you didn’t know better, you’d imagine this is what the Rot looks like: a plain of blood, bones, and flesh.

Animal Man #8 – Review

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

The Story: Let this issue be a wake-up call to permissive, indulgent parents everywhere.

The Review: This may sound a tad hypocritical coming from someone who loves Young Justice so much, but I find the concept of kids getting caught up in the increasingly violent world of superheroics, frankly, rather disturbing.  Much as the Fantastic Four’s Franklin and Valeria try to emphasize the cuteness of the idea, I think that in any real life scenario, we’d get a result more along the lines of what happened to Red Arrow’s daughter in James Robinson’s Cry for Justice.

If you never considered this troubling problem before, you’ll almost certainly start thinking about it after this issue.  Maxine’s childlike confidence and legendary status may have lulled you into thinking nothing can really touch her, but here we see, in graphic fashion, that at the end of the day, she’s still a little kid with vulnerable flesh.  Lemire may like his warm, corny father-son moments, but he’ll let a four-year-old girl get mercilessly ravened by various animals when the story demands it.  The moment is an immediate punch in your gut, telling you once and for all that this series is not messing around with this horror stuff.

You don’t even have the comfort of feeling better when Maxine saves herself from bodily death, since it requires her to jump through some grisly body-snatching and body-disposing hoops to get it done.  Rather than charm you, her toothy smile and peppy, “It didn’t hurt at all.  It kind of felt good,” simply gives you the willies.  The only thing separating her on the creepy factor from the Children of the Corn is her obvious love and loyalty to her family, but her reckless and naïve behavior means we can’t count on those qualities alone to mean she won’t doom them all.