**SOME SPOILERS**I haven't been reading comics as long as some, but I've been reading them for a while now, and to this point I've managed to not really encounter much of anything Animal Man related. I'm aware of some of his history, notably the Grant Morrison Vertigo run in which he gains awareness of the fact that he's a fictional character, and has a conversation with Morrison himself. I'm also aware that Jim Lemere writes a current Vertigo series, Sweet Tooth, which has garnered some acclaim, but haven't actually read any of it save preview pages in the back of other Vertigo books. And I hadn't heard of artist Travel Foreman at all. But I'd heard nothing but good things about the book both from comic site and from friends, and so I felt I had to check it out, and I'm glad I did. I'm completely sold on the concept. It's going on my pull list.
Page 1 of issue #1 gives you the starting point for the series in the form of a fictitious magazine article, ala those in Watchmen. Buddy Baker used to be a superhero and now he's a family man who's trying to break into acting. Buddy still has a itch for crime-fighting through, and so when an insane man is holding hostages at the hospital, Buddy flies--'cause he can do that--to the scene to punch the dude out. Afterward though, Buddy starts bleeding profusely from his eyes, a symptom which the doctors on hard are unable to discern a medical explanation for, and so here's our hook for the book.
The early pages with Buddy and his family are decent, but it's the back half of #1 that really will really convince you that this is the start of something great. Foreman's art, while not uninteresting at the outset, really gets turned up to a new level of detail when Buddy gets pulled into a cryptic dream sequence. The use of color and the creative paneling (on one page, different images are separated by the sprawling roots of a tree) remind me a lot of what makes Batwoman so enjoyable and so different compared to most superhero books. The entirely dream sequence is genuinely creepy and leaves you genuinely confused as to where the book is going, but in the best possible way. The last page of #1, back in the real world, ends with the reveal, that Maxine, Buddy's daughter has apparently managed to raise several skeletal animals from the dead. Again, super-creepy and super-effective in making you want to figure out what's going on.
Issue #2 manages to keep all of #1's momentum going, as Buddy's mysterious hemorrhaging gives way to artery-like tattoos suddenly appearing on his skin which Maxine weirdly is able to identify as a map to "the red place." This leads into another surrealist sequence where Buddy and Maxine travel (in the real world? in a dream? we don't know) to something between a giant tree and a giant network of arteries, like those that manifesting themselves on Buddy that seems to represent something like the heart of all animal life. Foreman's art is again wonderfully imaginative here, culminating in a two page spread where Maxine tells Buddy to "let it take us into the red," and Buddy's face begins to morph into some shape that I can't even begin to describe. The Hunters Three, the villains of this arc, though their origins and motives are not yet clear, are three different and equally grotesque creations.
The best thing about Animal Man is that I don't have much of an idea where this opening arc is going to take me next, but that it makes me want to find out. Lemire and Foreman have taken a C-list superhero character and decided to reintroduce him by having him discover the nature of all living things in the DCU. It's a sort of broadening a character's mythos like what Geoff Johns did starting with Green Lantern: Rebirth, but this is much more interesting, original, and seemingly must more profound. I've bought into this hook, line, and sinker, and highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment