Animal Man: Fox on the Run

[alicemacher]

From Animal Man #10 (Apr. 1989). Inks by Mark McKenna.



The issue opens with a partial retelling of pre-Crisis Animal Man's second appearance, from Strange Adventures #184 (Jan. 1966), once again incorporating writer Dave Wood's dialogue, and now even mimicking Gil Kane's art. We'll see Morrison do some nifty variations on this segment in Issues 11 and 12.







In the present, Vixen is chasing a taxiing plane, when a man stops her and asks whether she's with the JLA. She spots a nearly-invisible clawed paw behind the guy and tries to warn him, but to no avail; it rips out his spine in a single swipe. The creature then continues pursuing its main target, Vixen herself, but she grabs one of the plane's wheels just in time for takeoff and makes her escape.

Meanwhile in England, Buddy uses his one functioning power, flight, to rescue a fox from hunters. And in Gotham, James Highwater uses his school ties with Dr. Roger Huntoon to obtain a visit with the Psycho Pirate, as the mysterious anonymous note advised last issue. Before they reach his cell, though, the Mad Hatter (who's slipped out of his cell) accosts Highwater just to tell him "We're all words on a page. [...] We're just a script, rushed out to meet a deadline."







Huntoon tells his perplexed former schoolmate to ignore Tetch and takes him to the Psycho Pirate.







"Worlds will live, worlds will die, and the universe will never be the same" was the advertising tagline for Crisis on Infinite Earths, written by -- yep -- Marv Wolfman. As for "One and Two [etc.]," those are simply the names of Earths that were either destroyed or merged into New Earth during the Crisis. And poor Hayden is the only one who remembers them.

James picks up the message, the author of which recalls his childhood, when he and his father would watch the lights flicker on a distant hill in Cardonald, Scotland. While the author now knows those were car headlights, at the time he believed they were signals.







"Years later I found out what my surname means in Gaelic. 'Son of the fox.'" Hint hint, readers.

Highwater, understandably, has no clue what that was about, so he turns the sheet over to find yet another pre-Crisis Animal Man segment, in unmistakable comic book form. (And it looks like I was wrong in my last post; that's one of the Yellow Aliens' names right there.)







As Buddy returns home to San Diego, Vixen, who's visibly exhausted, drops by the Bakers' ahead of him. Ellen's used to this sort of thing by now, so she gladly invites her in. When Buddy turns up, Vixen tells him of the invisible creatures chasing her and, since they have similar powers, she thought maybe he could help. She clarifies that her animal powers, unlike his, aren't inherent within her; rather, they come from a talisman, the Tantu Totem.







T.C.'s reacting, mere moments in advance, to Vixen's pursuers crashing into the house. Vixen tosses a smoke bomb to make them visible.










Ellen screams her husband's name and runs to where he was standing, whereupon one of the beasts tosses her against the wall, knocking her out. Then a voice says, "SILENCE."







Next post: rebirth in Africa.

Comments

[mcbangle]

I remember how this issue blew my mind when I first read it! I've always loved meta and fourth wall-breaking!

[tcampbell1000]

I s'pose this (or Secret Origins if that counts) was the point where the comic started going straight-up meta, with Animal Man comic books and some guy rambling about "the continuity" presented as clearly relevant to the plot, not just little winking asides like at the end of The Adventures of Superman TV episodes. There had been hints before this, but nothing that couldn't be explained without breaking the fourth wall.

The Psycho-Pirate's role here is clearly a spiritual sequel to the last page of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Immediately following that series, the Psycho-Pirate was put back together, psychologically, in time to get up to some shenanigans in Infinity, Inc. Morrison dismisses this wrinkle with a couple of lines of dialogue: "Must've had a relapse (shrug)." IIRC, his original super-powers are never even mentioned throughout his time on Animal Man: his chief role is to be the bridge between what is real on post-Crisis Earth and what is not.

[silicondream]

Actually, Psycho-Pirate's powers do come up later on in the run. When Pre-Crisis characters are being resurrected en masse, PP instructs them to "smile" and they do, thereby shedding most of their anxieties. It's a deeply uncomfortable moment.

[tcampbell1000]

Ah, yeah, forgot about that. Still, though, it was just the once, when that's usually his whole defining gimmick.

[silicondream]

That's true. Like the Red Mask, PP seems to have discovered that his powers are only really useful for villainy. Manipulating emotions won't help him get his multiverse back.