Grant Morrison's Animal Man: Prologue in four issues

[alicemacher]

[Nick] Hasted: Is the whole Vertigo line based on Alan Moore as the Godhead of adult comics?

Morrison: Aah, no. [...] Really, what happened was that they got hold of somebody who was good at what he did, then they realized there were more [in the U.K.]. Actually, at one point there was a sense that we were all marching into the future together waving the same flag, then I realized we weren't [...] I really felt the need to get out from under [Moore's] shadow, because it had become so oppressive, and we were all being expected to do as he did. [...]

Hasted: Did you feel some pressure from DC to narrow what you and other writers were doing into some sort of post-Watchmen vision?

Morrison: Oh definitely, yeah. And I [...] slotted myself into it when I did the first four Animal Mans, with those poetic captions and scene-transitions, which seem so clumsy now it's unbelievable. [...] But obviously it worked enough to get me in, and it made the comic popular enough that I could then go on and do the stuff that was beginning to occur to me.

--The Comics Journal 176 (April 1995)

Warning for gore, misogyny and attempted rape. Also note there are graphic depictions of harm to animals.


Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man (#1-26, 1988 to 1990) is a seminal work within the early "British invasion" of the American comics market. Morrison not only successfully revived an obscure Silver/Bronze Age hero, but used that hero for a deep metafictional exploration of the relationship between creator, character and audience. Even today it remains a rare instance, in contemporary fiction, of extended fourth-wall breaking played entirely seriously, even movingly.

However, as Morrison says in the above interview and elsewhere, their Animal Man run didn't start out that way. That's because DC initially asked them for a four-issue miniseries pitch. Morrison, new to the U.S. comics market, gave DC what they thought the publisher and its readership wanted: a more-or-less straightforward Moore pastiche. So: lots of purple-prose narrative captions as in Miracleman and Swamp Thing, as well as thematically matching page-to-page transitions like in Watchmen. And -- *sigh* -- a gratuitous scene of attempted rape.

That said, those first four issues are overall an engaging enough opening to the series, but better appreciated, I think, as brief highlights within a single post. With Issue 5, we get into the more original and uniquely Morrisonian stuff, so most of my subsequent posts will take it issue by issue.



So without further ado, let's jump into Issue 1 (Sept. 1988). As the unfortunately-named Silver Age hero B'wana Beast, who can fuse animals together with his helmet, closes in on S.T.A.R Labs' San Diego location in search of his kidnapped friend, Buddy Baker tells his wife Ellen of his plans to relaunch his superhero career and make some real money. Despite Ellen's initial skepticism, Buddy gains a manager in his best friend Roger, whose media contacts win Animal Man an appearance on The Dick Griffith Show:







Despite that embarassment, Buddy's TV spot lands him his first case, investigating a break-in at none other than S.T.A.R. San Diego. There, he explains to a senior scientist that he doesn't shape-shift into animal forms.







Turning to the matter of the break-in, Buddy asks Myers what makes it a job for a superhero as opposed to the police.







In Issue 2 (Oct. 1988), Myers explains that in addition to that failed multiple-monkey fusion, the staff encountered a human-sized bipedal cockroach who apparently caused at least some of the damage to the lab and harmed two staff. Animal Man offers to track down this creature with a dog's borrowed sense of smell. (To Buddy's disgust, Myers provides him with an ill dog they'd been performing neurosurgery on.) Instead, he encounters yet another monstrous hybrid: a homeless alcoholic whom B'wana Beast has fused with a rat.










In Issue 3 (Nov. 1988), B'wana Beast escapes from a cop, who nevertheless manages to wing him with a superficial shot to the shoulder. Meanwhile, Animal Man, resigned to dying, instead finds that a part of his mind is automatically searching for nearby animals to borrow abilities from. It settles on the regenerative ability of earthworms.







Animal Man promises the partially un-fused, ailing ratman he'll get some help. He calls Myers. Meanwhile, Ellen Baker has taken her little daughter Maxine on an outing to the woods near their home. There they encounter the newborn kittens of a neighbour's cat. They also encounter a trio of poachers who've just killed a deer. One of them, the loutish, card-carrying misogynist Ray ("You got a headache, huh?" he says to Ellen. "You wanna watch Dynasty?"), proceeds to feed the cat to their hunting dogs because... he just does. Ellen tells Maxine to run for it. She does so, and tearfully seeks out their gruff elderly neighbour Mr. Weidemeir for help.

Buddy is puzzled that the S.T.A.R. staff, whom Myers sends for the ratman, are all wearing hazmat suits. He's even more puzzled when they order him to ride back to the lab with them as a "precaution." Once they've reached their destination, they find B'wana Beast escaping with a seriously ill red ape on his shoulder. He knocks Buddy out of the way.







Myers explains that his lab's been working on a mutant anthrax strain for the military. The red ape was their main test subject. The team found her atop Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, home of the fabled "White God" (who, as previously revealed, is in fact B'wana Beast). Impressed with her unusual level of intelligence and friendliness, they took her back to San Diego and infected her with the experimental anthrax bacillus.

Meanwhile, in the woods, Ray apparently has decided he hasn't been quite beastly-for-no-reason enough.







Yyyyeah. I can only guess that Morrison, who as we'll see was rather adamant on animal rights then, might've felt that readers wouldn't see poaching as that bad of a crime, so why not make one of the poachers a cat-killer and a would-be rapist too. Sure.

Anyway. With her assailant dead at his friend's hand, Ellen strikes and screams at his corpse, until Weidemeir gently restrains her and reminds her of her daughter's presence. "What about the kittens?" asks Maxine.

Meanwhile, Buddy learns that B'wana Beast and his ape friend (whom we learned he's named Djuba) were spotted heading for the zoo. He goes after them, but not without telling Myers he hopes the scientist gets what he deserves. And B'wana Beast cradles Djuba in his arms, marking her death with a howl of agony and rage.

In Issue 4 (Dec. 1988), Buddy reads up on the Beast, learning of his onetime superhero status and of his helmet's ability to fuse animals together. He deduces that the blob of monkeys must've been an unsuccessful stab at combining more than two animals, and that the beast must've intended that, along with the giant roach and ratman, for the ape's rescue. When these all failed to do the job, he took on the rescue himself. Animal Man wonders whether the Beast had some sort of psychic empathy with the ape and could feel her agony at a distance.

At last Buddy reaches the zoo and finds both Djuba's body and the living -- but already visibly infected -- Beast. Buddy tries simply talking with his quarry, and receives a knock-down punch in return. So the chase is on, as Animal Man pits various temporary animal abilities against yet more of the Beast's fusions.







The Beast uses his helmet to psychically shut down Animal Man's essential bodily processes. Until, that is, Buddy realizes he can tap into his foe's powers -- and turn them back on him.







While Ellen copes with her ordeal by frantically trying to save even one of the orphaned kittens, her husband offers to save B'wana Beast by taking him to a hospital. He won't go, claiming animals suffer experimentation there too. So Buddy holds him as the anthrax brings him closer to death.







Buddy remembers he still has the animal-fusion powers he'd snagged during their fight, so he tries them out on the Beast's white blood cells. Never mind those aren't themselves animals.







He then returns to the lab and Myers, who's furious he let the Beast go and didn't bring Djuba's body back. But Animal Man's had enough. He tells Myers off for the immorality of his work and says he regrets getting involved. Finally he punches Myers after the scientist unleashes a torrent of insults. But it doesn't make Buddy feel any better, as B'wana Beast's words, about humanity's cruelty to animals and the world, have struck a chord. He finds a little consolation in Ellen joyfully telling him she managed to save one of the kittens after all.

In the arc's final scene, the now fully recovered Beast, bearing Djuba's body, pays Myers one last visit. He orders him to call his staff and tell them he's retrieved the ape and wants her picked up. And then...










My next post will zero in on Issue 5, "The Coyote Gospel," where Morrison finds their own voice and the epic truly begins.

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

I'd like to say one could see clear hints of Morrison's talent here, but they're really only clear in retrospect. If this series had never gone past issue #4, I may have barely known it existed.

Morrison may have focused on imitating a few stylistic tics, but what's really holding him back here is a more fundamental nihilism... which is not usually a trait of Moore's, but is a trait of a lot of imitation Moore. He does let Buddy and Ellen squeeze out one small win each (Buddy saves a good man from dying, Ellen saves one kitten), but those wins are nearly drowned in all the upsetting drear: the testing that neither Buddy nor B'Wana can really do much about beyond attacking one scientist, the sickening and emphatically pointless cruelty, the attempted rape only stopped because one extra killed another. Even the revenge on Myers hardly seems satisfying, since its real effect is to put us in the position of the monkeys whose test-subject status Morrison abhors, and to remind us the testing would go on and on.

Anger can be what art needs, but Moore's Swamp Thing, even at its most angrily pro-environmental, was rarely so doomer. Some of that tone would remain in later Animal Man issues: the series is, as far as I can tell, Morrison's saddest, angriest work-- and as he confesses in his last issue, its fixation on a single aspect of civilization, however worthy a cause it was, could sometimes be a lot.

Later issues would at least be better about calibrating that tone. The unironic use of B'Wana Beast foreshadows Morrison's affection for the skimmed parts of Who's Who, and he would quickly come to understand that the more of that goofy shit he let in, the easier the medicine went down.

[alicemacher]

First, a reminder (perhaps you didn't catch the news post here) that Morrison has recently come out as nonbinary and prefers the pronouns they/them.

----

As always, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head with your observations. The only thing I'd like to add, with reference to the undeniably bleak tone, is that Morrison does offset it somewhat by giving us a reason to empathize with and root for Buddy: his compassionate, forgiving nature. He in fact saves two of his opponents, both of whom came close to killing him. (The other being the ratman; although Buddy's rescue of him was more mundane -- delegating it to S.TA.R. -- it still counts as a magnanimous and noble act and, as with the Beast, simply the right thing to do once he was no longer a threat.)

As the series progresses, we'll see Morrison continue to portray Animal Man's essential compassion not only for animals, but for human beings too. The flip side of this, of course, is that the very few times Buddy, when pushed beyond his emotional or psychological limits, acts utterly without compassion, it really stands out.

[tcampbell1000]

Pronouns: ah, I see. I knew that... they had expressed some gender nonconformity, but not that specifically. Noted!

[deathcrist2000]

Morrison's saddest, angriest work is probably either Action Comics, Multiversity, or The Mystery Play.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm not familiar with the last of those, but those aren't adjectives I'd attach to the first two. Multiversity especially seems like a love letter to DC's big, beautiful canvas.

[deathcrist2000]

Multiversity is a massive text about the limitations of comics. The things that the superhero cannot do no matter how much Grant wants them to. Ultimately, it's a work for hire gig.

[scorntx]

That does seem to be a thing with Morrison villains.
Subtle they are often not.
They usually do tend to be over-the-top, "I am incredibly EVIL" villains, going on about just how EVIL they are, to the extent a reader starts to wonder if they drink pureed kitten shakes.
Like their Talia al Ghul and Magneto.
And the Black Glove. And Prometheus. And Sublime...

[silicondream]

Counterexamples: Peter St. John, the Red Mask, the Psycho-Pirate, Mason Lang, John A' Dreams, Greg Feely, Mr. Nobody, the Mirror Master, JLA Lex Luthor, Donald Trask, Gwydion, No-Beard, the Undying Don Vincenzo. All of them are various shades of gray.