Today, we look at the New 52 debut of Animal Man and how it changed the DC Universe's approach to the "Green" and the "Red" forever with the introduction of "The Rot."
This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.
You might have noticed that we're in September now, without a June, July or August "Look Back." Since I was behind, I decided to just go right to September. However, I will address all of the comics that I was going to do Look Backs for for June, July and August, they'll just be secret Look Backs. In other words, they'll go up as other features (When We First Met, Meta-Messages, etc.) and you'll have to figure out which ones are actually secretly looks at June 1996, July 1971, August 2011, etc. It shouldn't be TOO hard, but it might be a fun little game for y'all.
Okay, on to this one. We're now on the 10th anniversary of The New 52, so I asked you all on Twitter which New 52 #1 you wanted me to write about and the winner (barely edging out Wonder Woman #1) was Animal Man #1 by Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman, Dan Green and Lovern Kindzierski), so here we go!
A common occurrence in the history of mainstream and independent comic books is that indie creators are given the opportunity to then write mainstream comic books and that transition is always a fascinating one, as how do you adapt the approach that worked for a small, indie comic book to a big, mainstream superhero? Some creators never really pull it off, and you wonder, "How could this person, who is such a great indie creator, be SO bad at writing mainstream stuff?" Others pull it off, but lose a lot of the charm of their independent work. Jeff Lemire, on the other hand, has always been able to take his character-driven work and apply it to mainstream comics while still being able to do his indie stuff, as well. You get that same introspective character-heavy work whether it is about an underwater welder or if it is about an old man version of Wolverine.
So it was no surprise that Lemire's take on Animal Man was heavily character driven. However, the New 52 rebooted DC's continuity, so how do you establish where Animal Man exists in this new universe? Lemire cleverly does so through a snippet of a magazine interview with Buddy Baker, Animal Man, that drops TONS of exposition but does so in a light, entertaining way that gets us to the heart of Buddy as a person...
Early on in this first issue, Lemire lures us into a false sense of security, where we think that this is "only" going to be a charming look at an almost-retired suburban superhero and his family. His son wanting to tag along for the action, his wife worrying about his safety (but also where the money is going to come from) and his daughter pestering him for a pet dog (that he can't give her because he can't spend too much time around one animal or it messes with his powers).
And if that was ALL that Animal Man was, then the series would still be a fun comic book.
But that, of course, was not at all all what Animal Man was.
After a bizarre series of feedback when using his powers that results with his eyes bleeding, Buddy has a terrible dream about his daughter, Maxine, lost in a sort of dream world where his son, Cliff, has been murdered by his sister. Buddy then meets the representatives of "The Rot"...
This really shows off Foreman's skills on this issue. He was able to convey a good deal of character and emotion in the happy family scenes, but when he is then given a chance to draw some disturbing stuff, boy, did he really embrace that idea! His "Rot" designs are FAN-tastic, and he still has one more super disturbing page to go (and how he chooses to depict it is what makes the later page even MORE disturbing).
This all goes back to the early work of Alan Moore on Saga of the Swamp Thing, that revealed that Swamp Thing was connected to an elemental force that was eventually dubbed "The Green" as one of its champions. Later, Grant Morrison connected Animal Man to a similar force, which Jamie Delano ultimately dubbed it "The Red."
In a rare show of coordination between New 52 titles, Lemire and Swamp Thing writer Scott Snyder coordinated their books to both deal with the introduction of "The Rot," basically the evil version of the Green and the Red. It would become a major focus of both series as they continued, giving these book a sense of focus that was lacking in a number of other New 52 books (Snyder, of course, also had that same sense of focus in his Batman series, especially as I noted in a recent Look Back that his earlier Batman work led right into this new series, as Snyder was going to be taking over the main Batman book whether there was a New 52 or not).
With a first issue, especially one in a new continuity like this, you really need to stick your cliffhanger page, and Lemire, Foreman, Green and Kindzierski certainly did so, as we see that Maxine has powers of her own, only rather than synching with animals, she re-animated dead animals, in a truly disturbing final page that Foreman makes all the freakier by showing just how chill Maxine is about it all...
This was just her doing problem-solving, as she REALLY wanted a pet (Lemire paying back his earlier scenes in a big unexpected way).
Animal Man #1 was one of the best first issues of any of the New 52 issues and the series proved to be a very good one, overall (and its crossovers with Swamp Thing went well).
If you folks have any suggestions for October (or any other later months) 2011, 1996, 1971 and 1946 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.