Written by Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Travel ForemanMaxine and Buddy swim to the heart of the Life Web and come face to face with the Totems…caretakers of the Red. But before they can get answers, the Hunters Three attack. Meanwhile, Ellen and Cliff fight for their lives back home. The Hunt heats up!
At New York Comic Con, we got to chat with Jeff Lemire about a variety of topics, including Animal Man, so before you read this review, check out our interview. It’s ok, I’ll wait.
[Brian whistles the theme to the Andy Griffith Show]
Back? Good. Click the jump to see how this issue stacks up to the first two issues of, in DC’s own words, “the surprise breakout hit” of the New 52.
When Jeff Lemire started working in the DCU proper, on both the Adventure Comics Atom backup and Superboy, I enjoyed both efforts. However, something about the fit didn’t feel quite right to me. Lemire’s work on Sweet Tooth and the Essex Country trilogy has a distinctively uneasy feel to it, and the bright sheen of those DC books never felt like the best place for Lemire to tell his particular brand of stories.
Animal Man, along with Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., feels like a much more comfortable place for Lemire to stretch his artistic legs. Both of Lemire’s books feature artwork from two of the least conventional artists currently under DC’s employ, Alberto Ponticelli (on Frankenstein) and Travel Foreman (Animal Man), and the books, artistically, only really suggest each other. There is a weird, disconcerting corner of the DCnU that is built around Lemire’s books, and this both works for and against Animal Man.
This book reads like no other book on the shelves right now; each page has images that are unsettling in a way that I can’t really put my finger on. The plot is beginning to take shape and, along with Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette’s Swamp Thing, we are beginning to see how this book fits into the grand scheme of what DC is publishing (hint: The Rot is bad, yo).
Travel Foreman’s art has been one of the more divisive points of the DCnU thus far; I think this issue has been his best work so far. Because so much of it takes place in the Red, Foreman’s twisted imagination is allowed to run rampant. My only real criticism with Foreman’s art is that there are times when the inks overwhelm his pencils (and, to some degree, Lovern Kindzierski’s colors), and I wish there was a lighter touch to them.
As Buddy begins to adapt to the Red, we see his body twisting and distorting into truly disgusting shapes, while Maxine seems just as at home in the Red as she does in her home. Perhaps that is because she is, in a way, home in the Red. It is revealed here that Maxine is the true Avatar of the Red, and that Buddy is merely superpowered to usher her into existence and protect her. She, being in the heart of the Red, is setting foot where she will one day reside, as this is where the Totems, or former Animal Men/Women, reside. This is an unexpected turn of events for the book, and it really makes this even more a family book than before, and further sets it apart.
This may also help out what my Multiversity cohort Patrick had a problem with in issue #2, which was, in Patrick’s words, the “Maxine as 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.” If Maxine is truly the Avatar of the Red, then her natural understanding of the Red would surpass Buddy’s, even if she is a little child. I understand why Patrick wouldn’t love this (I don’t either), but I think this issue’s revelations make it a little more understandable.
Continued belowThe Hunters Three continue to hunt the Baker family, with one of the hunters remaining focused on Cliff and Ellen, while the other two enter the Red to take out Buddy and Maxine. The final scene, featuring a disguised Hunter, is terrifying. Lemire has, even more so than his compatriot Scott Snyder, created a horror comic disguised as a superhero comic, and even the disguise is starting to wear off (anyone who looked at the cover for #3 [or really, any of the covers] should know that this is more than your average tights and cape story). Lemire, unlike Snyder, has taken the Animal Man origin and simplified it quite a bit, and placed it somewhere that fits in nicely with the rest of the New 52.
Earlier on, I mentioned the unease that comes from this book, and that is the best word I can think of to describe the feelings I get from this comic. The characters all seem so well defined, and because they seem so real, the danger they are in also feels real. And because of Foreman’s unique world that they live in, even the happy scenes seem on the verge of disaster.
That, along with a story with real consequences for Buddy and his family, and the connection to the entire Animal world, makes this book a page turner bar none. Each issue is so densely packed with ideas, both visual and plot-wise, that every page deserves a long look, but the story is so engaging that you want to plow through them to get to the next page. That makes this an extraordinarily re-readable comic, and one that keeps getting better and better with each passing issue.
Final Verdict: 8.7 – Buy
