Animal Man: Hour of the Beast / The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

[alicemacher]

Warning for racism, and for cruelty to animals.


Today's post covers two non-consecutive issues (#13 and #15) instead of one. This is because they share two things in common: they're both "social problem" stories in the tradition of Neal Adams's Green Lantern / Green Arrow team-ups, and they both focus solely on their respective topics, thus standing apart from the ongoing metafictional mystery plot. Beyond this, while these stories are competent enough I feel that, much like the first four issues, they're not really representative of Morrison's Animal Man run as a whole. Your mileage may vary, of course; let's discuss!


Issue 13 (July 1989) takes place mainly in South Africa, where apartheid was still in effect at the time. A young activist, Dominic Mndawe, meets with a white journalist who's heading to the United States. Dominic talks him into smuggling out some undeveloped film he's taken of atrocities against black people, so the American press can get the uncensored truth. After the meeting, the police arrest Dominic, beat him and throw him in jail.

Meanwhile Buddy, after seeing Vixen onto her plane home, runs into the B'wana Beast. Or, rather, into Mike Maxwell, who explains over coffee that, after taking time over the past year to recover emotionally, he's decided to pass on the role to someone else. Buddy agrees to tag along with him to Tanzania, where Mike, in a special ritual, drinks his Beast elixir one last time. The ensuing psychic experience points him toward his successor.

Sometime later, in a South African jail cell, Mr. Van de Voort -- apparently some sort of government or police official -- bestows further physical and verbal abuse on Dominic as he ties a noose for the prisoner's "suicide." He also mentions that the authorities will apprehend the journalist at the airport, so all of Dominic's efforts have been in vain. As, Van de Voort claims, will be the efforts of Archbishop Mogatusi, a leading anti-apartheid activist (presumably based on Desmond Tutu, then Archbishop of Capetown). The government, he says, plans to entrap Mogatusi by inciting anti-apartheid protesters to violence, to which the cleric will characteristically respond by appealing for calm. At which point he can be arrested for "addressing an illegal gathering."







Buddy and Mike burst into the cell, knock Van de Voort out, and take Dominic to a safe location.










Later still, Van de Voort puts his plan into action, ordering a crowd of protesters to return to their homes. However, Mogatusi throws a wrench in by broadcasting his appeal for calm over a loudspeaker instead of appearing in person. The frustrated Van de Voort gives orders to prevent the protesters from dispersing, so the military will have a pretext to shoot them. Maxwell then steps forward as a human shield, claiming the government won't be able to explain an American national's death. Van de Voort shoots him anyway, fortunately only through the arm.

Just as the soldiers are about to receive "fire at will" orders, Buddy burrows onto the scene from underground, causing a small earthquake which allows the crowd to disperse safely. Van de Voort, in the confusion, manages to find Mogatusi nearby and points his gun at him, telling him he's finished. Then someone calls his name.










A South African government minister is enraged to find that the photos, for which Dominic's journalist ally was detained at the airport, are apparently just "holiday snaps." Meanwhile, Buddy turns up at the Daily Planet with the real photos and hands them to Perry White.



In Issue 15 (Sept. 1989), Animal Man joins his former Forgotten Heroes team members Dane Dorrance and Dolphin for a special operation in Denmark's Faroe Islands. (Meanwhile, a mother dolphin, in thought-captions throughout the issue, looks forward to reunion with her mate and child from whom she's gotten separated, and to the day when the pitiful "hu-men" abandon their murderous ways, shed their clumsy limbs, and join the dolphins peacefully in the ocean.) Dane tells him that the Faroese locals -- among them the particularly vicious Ongur Nielsen -- gather once a year for a mass slaughter of dolphins.







Dane explains that Buddy's and Dolphin's task will be to guide the dolphins away from the hunt using ultrasound, while he and Jóannes, a Faroese man opposed to the traditional slaughter, block the hunters by ship. When Ongur spots Dane and Jóannes, he harpoons one of the dolphins, reasoning that the others won't leave an injured member of their school behind. From underwater, Buddy capsizes Ongur's boat before he can attack the activists' ship, while Dolphin sees to the injured mammal and directs the rest of them away.

However, as the dolphins approach the shore, there's a spear-bearing crowd ready to strike. Dane fires a machine gun into the water as a warning to the hunters.










Later, as Dolphin swims happily home, Buddy regroups with Dane and Jóannes, who assure him the rest of the dolphins are safe for now. Dane asks about Ongur, and Buddy admits that he lost his temper and "gave him to the fishes." But -- enter the mother dolphin:










Of these two issues, I prefer "Hour of the Beast" by a wide margin. While I dearly wish we could regard it as a historical piece, post-apartheid, Van de Voort's "make them, not us, look like the bad guys, then shoot 'em" approach to anti-racism protesters remains all too familiar in present-day America. Mike Maxwell's character is further rounded out, revealing him as an individual still deeply devoted to universal justice, even as he remains short-sighted about some of the particulars, such as the colonialist offensiveness of the title "B'wana." (While some readers have called Dominic's new choice of title, "Freedom Beast," hokey or on the nose, it's definitely preferable to the Swahili word for "master.") And Dominic himself is one of Morrison's best original characters from the run, getting all the best lines and making it clear he'll continue the Beast's fight -- his way.

"The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," while it also deals with a still-unresolved societal issue worthy of our attention, comes up a bit short as a story. Whereas there have been, and still are, many Van de Voorts in the real world, Ongur Nielsen comes across as an over-the-top cardboard cruelty-dispenser like Ray the poacher from the first arc. What's more, his constant (not just in the page I posted) pejorative dismissal of his opponents as "Americans" both ignores that one of them is Faroese like him and, in a more external and troubling way, implies that Americans somehow have a monopoly on concern for animal welfare. Finally, I think Buddy's deliberate (if impulsive) attempt to kill a villain is totally out of character for him at this juncture of the ongoing story, and thus dilutes the dramatic impact of certain... actions further down the line where they're more understandable and arguably justifiable in context.

Next up: a ghost story. A temporal mirror-image of an issue to come.

Comments

[mastermahan]

I was surprised about The Brave and the Bold using B'wana Beast over Freedom Beast. They used the Jason Rusch Firestore, Ryan Choi Atom, and the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle (though Ted gets an episode too).

At least they recognized the same thing as Morrison - that the only thing making Beast memorable is his beautifully weird power.