Animal Man: At Play in the Fields of the Lord / A New Science of Life

[alicemacher]

The third act, so to speak, of Morrison's run begins with the famous "metafictional peyote trip" two-parter. (Note that Morrison wrote this before they began exploring psychedelic drugs in real life.)


Issue 18 (Dec. 1989) opens with Roger and his estranged wife Tricia (who's in tears) trying to get a response, any response, out of Buddy (from whose perspective the scene is shown).

That's two days in the future. In the present, Buddy gets acquainted with James Highwater, who's gotten his lower body back in between issues. Cliff and Maxine observe the visitor at a distance. She doesn't like him.







Apart from yet more foreshadowing of the tragic thing soon to happen, this dialogue may (this is just my guess) have inspired subsequent Animal Man writers, who gradually revealed that there was more to Maxine than "cute little girl," that Buddy wasn't the only Baker with special powers.

James relates the story of what led him to seek out Animal Man. However, when he gets to the part about the mysterious comic-book page about Buddy and pulls it out to show him and Ellen, he's astonished to find it's now a map indicating a mesa between Hopi and Navajo reservations in Arizona. This only strengthens his sense that something "momentous" is about to happen within their lives, and he now feels the answer lies in Arizona. Conferring privately, Buddy and Ellen agree that this may indeed explain all the weirdness they've experienced but not really understood. So Buddy decides to accompany James to the mesa. With a sense of foreboding, Ellen agrees and bids him be careful. The kids are silent.

Upon reaching the top of the mesa, Buddy and James find several peyote buttons, as though someone had left them there just for them. Highwater has concerns about the safety of tripping in a spot like that, so they spend the next few hours just talking.







Before long, the cosmic visions start.







"Foxy"... now where have we seen that name before?













That last panel is a teaser not for yet another DCU-wide crossover, but for a later arc within this title.

Following a cryptic speech, from three other totems, about an upcoming "Purification Day," the visions subside for a while.







The issue ends with Ellen answering the door. Her grinning visitor introduces himself as Lennox.


Issue 19 (Jan. 1989) opens with a just off-panel Morrison, at their desk, pondering the next part of the story, and deciding it'll be "the secret of the universe."







Buddy sees yet another recapping of his origin story, this time up to date and formatted as a Who's Who in the DC Universe entry. But then:







"That's not it," says a voice. "That's not the way it happened at all."













James gently prevents Buddy from falling off the mesa while freaking out over those "watching us! Everywhere we go! Everything we do!" Later, during another dry spell in between visions, Buddy tries to put what he saw into words.







He continues: "What if we're just characters and not people?" In support of this, he notes that everything in his life seems "disconnected." Serious incidents (a poacher killing his friend to stop him from raping Ellen) haven't had the expected consequences (a trial). He's abruptly found himself in various places around the world without a clear idea of how he got there.

Highwater, ever the physicist, counters that everything is connected, if not from the perspective of everyday reality, then from that of what David Bohm called the implicate order, a quantum realm of infinite potential out of which conventional reality is unfolded. What Buddy and other Westerners call Heaven, aboriginal Australians the Dreamtime and the Yaqui nation the Nagual are, James suggests, symbolic attempts to describe the implicate order. (Note: The term nagual doesn't in fact refer to a realm of existence. Rather, it means a person who can shapeshift into a jaguarform.)

That none of this, however interesting, begins to address Buddy's "Am I a real person or a character" question, soon becomes a moot point as the visions abruptly return. First a humungous whale, then Foxy, who asks Buddy, "You wanted knowledge, didn't you? You wanted the truth?"







Buddy immediately forgets this premonition as he experiences himself floating "outside" reality (i.e., the comic's panel borders), while his right hand reaches into a panel, perplexing James no end. Then James's own totem animal, Kwahu the eagle, reappears with a challenge.










Highwater isn't really dead, of course. He abruptly snaps back to reality atop the mesa and laughs with relief. (That said, Morrison would revisit the "leap of faith as an actual, physical, death-defying leap" idea in the first arc of The Invisibles.)







In good spirits, albeit with vague concern about the upcoming Second Crisis, Buddy flies home. Inside, however, his sense of smell alerts him that something terrible has happened. Forcing himself to enter the kitchen, he finds the bloodied bodies of Ellen, Cliff and Maxine.


Next issue: a hero broken, a villain scared of retribution, and an Arkham patient with a troubling prophecy.

Comments

[tripodeca113]

Realizing you and you existence bend to the whims of DC editorial.....What a terrible fate.

[themajesticmoose]

As depressing as the fate of Buddy's family was in this issue the part that really got me crying came in a later issue when, on top of everything else, he makes it back home after some time in Actual Comic Book Limbo and the pets have died

Just because of how much it scared and upset me as a kid (With a dog) to think of them all alone and not understanding why Buddy never came back.

[tcampbell1000]

Yeah, I get that for sure. One of our cats got old and frail earlier this year, to the point where I didn't want to take any trips without her. (Yeah, I know, it's not been a year for globetrotting anyway, but even quick trips to see family meant bringing her along.) We were with her at the end, and that was important.

[themajesticmoose]

I am so sorry for your loss. I am sure she knew just how much she was loved and how much she meant to you all

[tcampbell1000]

In this story, the ones with the power over Animal Man's life seem to be us, the readers, and by extension the fallen world in which we live. In Morrison's finale, the ones with the power over him would seem to be DC's current and future writers... and that finale concludes a thread that's been running through the series since at least #10, so it's not like Morrison changed their mind. Both statements are true in different senses, but Buddy is barely able to grasp one of them at a time, let alone their oxymoronic relationship with one another. Still, it's an interesting progression.

If you were doing this kind of story today, when the reality-reboots are coming thick and fast and the company's more centralized, you'd pretty much have to acknowledge that DC editorial also had a say in Buddy's life. ("They might cancel your book, overruling all the writers' plans and the remaining readers' wishes. They might not be able to help themselves, if the phone company that owns their media company cuts their budget in response to shifts in our international trade wars. I'm sorry. Our world's not like yours. It's messy and complicated and almost everyone is controlled by someone else.") But at this point, DC policies were still loose enough to make writers feel like they had a pretty free hand, especially with characters no one was at risk of optioning for the screen.

It's an extremely smart choice to frame this story with Lennox's massacre of the Bakers. Not just because it's a powerful tonal contrast. Not just because Buddy being absent for it is superheroic subversion done right. It's because Buddy, ironically, feels most real in Morrison's run when he comes right up to the edge of realizing his own unreality, and therefore bringing personal tragedy into his life right then means that we feel like it's happening to a real person. So it hits much harder.

When Harley Quinn shouts, "I'ma knock you right outta the panel border," it's just a quick laff at the expense of all of us, readers and creators alike, for pretending comics are stories about real people. At the time this story was written, Ambush Bug and She-Hulk were addressing the readers of their books directly all the time, for similar funsies. But when Buddy stares into the middle distance and says, "Why wasn't there a trial?", that contrast between our pretense and our knowledge becomes dramatic tension. And it's a relatable tension, because we too confront absurdities in our own lives, things that seem to make less sense, not more, the more we examine them. (Remember Back to the Future, when Doc Brown called bullshit on the idea that Ronald Reagan, a mere actor, could ever become President?) We think we know how the world works, but many of our cherished beliefs are guesses at best, and sometimes disproven.

Also, "Peyote can make you feel on top of the world... but when you come back down, you may find your whole life has fallen apart" might've been the most effective anti-drug PSA until Requiem for a Dream. Morrison, you narc. :-P

[silverzeo]

Huh... it was yesterday I was listening to the "Spook CIty" chapter of "The Never Ending Story" and the "truth" here reflects the "truth" G'Mork of the book was talking about....