Written by Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Travel ForemanMaxine’s new abilities continue to terrify Ellen and Buddy Baker, and 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. Meanwhile, The Hunters Three arrive on Earth and set their sights on the Baker family. The Hunt is on as DC’s most surprising new series continues to take ANIMAL MAN in shocking new directions.
From the New 52 to the new #2 — will Animal Man live up to the promise of its first issue, or crash to Earth like a… a wounded bird, or something? Should we consider it for the Endangered Species list already? Well, maybe you should just click after the jump and keep reading.
After a month-long fling, the comics-reading populace of wherever and everywhere must now wake up, newly sober and skull throbbing, and take a long look at the New 52 it brought home last night. The backlash will probably be swift and volatile — already in Multiversity’s own staff discussions, things we called amazing last month seem a little (or a lot) less so with #2. One of those books that seemed so promising was Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman’s Animal Man. Now, though, I find myself a little less sure.
Part of that is down to Travel Foreman’s art. From the texture of his lines and the conspicuous lack of an inker in the credits, these pages are clearly being shot from his pencils. The problem with that is that whatever digital-inking technique they use, it assigns the same value of darkness to every single line. I’ve seen Travel Foreman’s pencil art; he posts quite a lot of it at his blog. His linework is subtle and shaded, but in the current process, all nuance is lost and people go from “delicately detailed” to “exploding with lupus.” Look at the first couple pages, with Animal Man talking to his family, to see what I mean. Foreman’s art, especially in these pages, is spare and focused — but it’s being held back by production techniques that leave the rotten skeletal baby animals looking adorable and the people looking comparatively terrifying.
What Lemire brings to Animal Man #2 is a wider sense of the book’s plot. Something’s up with the Red, the primal dimension that connects all animal life and gives Animal Man his powers. Unfortunately, Lemire brings these issues to the fore through one of my least favorite devices in all of fiction: the innocent, vulnerable little girl who secretly harbors an encyclopedic knowledge of the strange phenomena currently burdening the main character, and who (because of youthful naivete or whatever) only doles out that information in gnomic “keep diving” koans. The know-it-all in Animal Man is the lead’s daughter, Maxine, who’s inherited some variant of his powers and seems to understand them way better than he does his own, for no really clear reason other than it’s meant to be mysterious and unsettling. The gambit backfires: while the plot of “what’s up with the Red, y’all” is good stuff, the info delivery system Lemire uses is such an unimaginative take on an already weak stock character that the issue suffers.
It’s not all bad, of course. In fact, when it’s good, it’s quite good. Like I said, the overall plot is a good one, since the best possible antagonist for an avowed nature lover is the force regulating nature itself. The relationship between Animal Man and his wife, Ellen, is well-written, and their conversation about possibly putting their kids in danger is one that can almost be heard rather than read. The sparseness of Foreman’s panels makes his eye for little details, like characters’ clothes, stand out — seriously, you can infer something about each member of Animal Man’s family from their choice of pajamas, and none of them are ridiculously obvious, metaphorical fashions. And when Foreman has to get nasty, he gets nasty — the hippos re-enacting the atomic pregnancy nightmare from Class of Nuke ‘Em High is maybe one of the queasiest things I’ve seen in comics all year.
Right now, Animal Man is like a car that drives smoothly except for that nagging thump you keep hearing from under the hood. Key parts — the digital inking, the “I know stuff” deployment of Maxine as infopixie — just aren’t working, but there are so many other pieces that do come off well that it’s not a crippling set of problems yet. Still, if left alone and not addressed, they could well be the gateway for Animal Man dropping off its current level of quality, which would just be a damn shame.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – Don’t let me down, you Animal Men
