Animal Man: The Clockwork Crimes of the Time Commander

[alicemacher]

From Animal Man #16 (Oct. 1989).



In Paris, the amnesia-afflicted John Starr becomes increasingly manic as he gradually remembers his identity, a process accelerated when the local man he asks for the time finds his watch has stopped at 11:55. Starr retrieves a clock-themed supervillain costume and an hourglass from a locker he's just recalled, and suits up.

Back in San Diego, Ellen learns that her children's book manuscript has been accepted for publication. Eager to celebrate with her, Buddy arranges for their neighbour Tricia to watch the kids, and for the two of them to enjoy a date in Paris -- by teleporting to the JLE headquarters. Inside said location, Sue Dibny's made an odd discovery.







The "someone," or rather two, who've just beamed in are of course the Bakers. Ellen, woozy from the experience, flops onto a chair... which turns out to be the (formerly) sleeping Metamorpho. "Buddy, this is a madhouse," she says with a smirk as Rex and Ralph rib each other. But that's nothing to what the couple discover while on a walk outside: a rampaging Tyrannosaurus rex. Buddy knocks it out, but soon learns from his JLE teammates of still more anachronistic weirdness.







Ralph tells Buddy to suit up and regroup at the Place de la Concorde. He and the others head there, but not before Dmitri Pushkin (aka Rocket Red 4) politely takes his leave of the Bakers and tells them (while doing the Twist) how much he loves their "English beat music! [...] Fab gear!", leaving the Americans unsure whether he's putting them on.

Meanwhile, a local woman spots the Time Commander in a cemetery.










The JLE tries to stop Starr, but they're unprepared for just how versatile his magic hourglass is.







The Time Commander next deals with Rocket Red 4 by, apparently, reversing his earlier armouring-up, leaving him plummeting in his boxers and socks as the Elongated Man stretches into a trampoline shape to catch him. This leaves Animal Man, who's been quietly observing the various reunions with deceased loved ones.
















That evening, at a fine restaurant, Buddy indicates he still feels bad about Starr. Ellen says one can't always do the right thing, so he decides to focus on the happy things in their lives.







That guy watching them from the car? That's Lennox.


This is one of the more "all-around" entertaining issues from Morrison's run. It includes some much-needed comic relief in the form of the JLE's more eccentric members, while focusing once again on an antagonist who really isn't a "bad" guy. (A welcome refresher after the recent trifecta of thoroughly evil villains, with varying realism levels.) All Starr wants is to make the world happier and more fun. Tragically, his severe mental illness prevents him from understanding that playing havoc with time, ageing and causality wouldn't achieve that goal in the long run. Also welcome, after the anomaly of Issue 15, is the return of Buddy's essential compassion and preference for talking things over instead of violence.

Next post: James Highwater has a crucial -- and dangerous -- epiphany, while Buddy learns the hard way that (to greatly paraphrase Vonnegut) we are whom we associate with, so we must be careful whom we associate with.

Comments

[bradygirl_12]

Yeah, poor Starr just wanted to make people happy, but fooling around with time? Probably not a good idea. There's always a price!

[scorntx]

Only if you're a superhero.
Supervillains can muck about with time all day long and get no comeuppance for it whatsoever.

[skjam]

Remember that this was the fellow who started his career as a supervillain by trying to clear his civilian identity's name of a crime he may or may not have committed, while simultaneously committing crimes that had nothing to do with clearing his name that would send him right back to prison anyway.

[tcampbell1000]

True enough, but by the (cough) time this story begins, he seems to have undergone some personality changes, possibly due to long use of his powers having twisted his perspective.

[tcampbell1000]

Morrison walks a fine line here. I think it's meant to be highly ambiguous whether clocking the Time Commander is a good thing or not: he does nothing harmful in this story unless you count defending himself against the heroes, and the time stunts he performs elsewhere are blessings to ordinary people, blessings cut cruelly short with his defeat.

On the other hand, leaving such a plainly addled man to do whatever he wants with the flow of time kinda seems like a bad idea. "The final transformation" could've been some glorious new golden age for humankind, but it seems a lot more likely to be one of those attempts at utopia that backfires quickly.

Ultimately, it's just not worth taking the chance. But Buddy acknowledges the possibility. And once TC's power is broken, Metamorpho's last punch just seems cruel. It's justifiable as part of hero work... how many times does it turn out that a seemingly defeated villain has one more ace up their sleeve? But it feels wrong, not just to Buddy but even to the other heroes present.

The line Morrison walks, then, is the firmly pro-superhero position of DC Comics overall and the view of heroes as agents of the status quo (and therefore, roadblocks against any real improvement of society) that runs through a lot of deconstructive work. Moore's 1980s creations often defied that status quo: Swamp Thing the hippie, Dr. Manhattan the living superpower, V the anarchist, Ozymandias and Miracleman the utopians.

Buddy does not have the moral confidence of any of those figures. He's a man apart, capable of neither joining in with his colleagues' undignified tomfoolery nor unquestioningly joining the fight. But he's not really capable of carving his own path either, so he's tried to join forces with others (the JLE but also animal activists) whose values align closely with his but who seem more certain of their way. This will backfire badly before much longer.

It's crucial to the balance Morrison strikes that Buddy's nonviolent tactic is not an averted solution: he's not in any way getting through to Starr when Metamorpho smashes Starr's hourglass. Once again it's not as simple as Buddy really having all the answers and lacking only the conviction to listen to himself. That sort of problem would be a lot easier to resolve, but a lot less relatable.

[cainofdreaming]

*Looks at Kang's various tragedies with Ravonna, the whole Kang/Immortus thing, multiplying into various alternate versions of himself...* Umm, yeah, about that...