Animal Man: The Last Enemy

[alicemacher]

[This is] where the revenge narrative kicks in. So does [Animal Man], in Hollywood action-hero fashion, grab the nearest weapons and go on a rampage until he kills the man responsible? Does he pull a Hamlet and contemplate the best course of action while pondering the mysteries of existence? Does he, like the Punisher, become a psychopathic vigilante with a cool shirt? Does he act like I would and cry and curl up into a fetal position for a few days? Or does he seek redemption?

All of the above.

-- Timothy Callahan, Grant Morrison: The Early Years (Sequart, 2012), 100

Warning for self-harm and contemplated suicide (thus my once again not posting the cover as a preview).


From Animal Man #20 (Feb. 1990).



Buddy, in the wake of his family's murder, is in a state of near-shock. As his friends and neighbours tend to him the best they can, he can't bring himself to eat, and barely moves or speaks, as he remembers what ended up being his final words to his wife and children.







Lennox visits his mysterious employers to inform them the job's done and express concern about retaliation (presumably, he hasn't had to face superheroes before). The silhouetted trio assures him they've got that covered, as they unveil a robotic armour they call Bug-Man. Meanwhile, the so-called Second Crisis plot gets some more foreshadowing:







The Psycho-Pirate, whether he realizes it or not, is quoting fom the Akkadian (Babylonian) myth Ishtar's Descent to the Netherworld. There's a similarly-worded passage in the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Ishtar tells her father Anu that if he doesn't let her sic the Bull of Heaven on Gilgamesh, she'll raise all the dead and make them eat the living. Ew.

Buddy receives a visit from his neighbour Morris Weidemeir (the one who saved Ellen in the woods back in Issue 3).







Morris's rescuer was quoting 1 Corinthians 15:26 (King James Version). The context is the resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming.



Roger and Tricia arrange the funeral. (They even, despite having split up before the beginning of the series, hold hands during the Lord's Prayer -- a touching background moment.)







Later, a police detective comes by to speak with Buddy about the murder investigation. In the basement room housing Buddy's JLE transporter tube, the cop explains that some teenage hackers have built their own, cheap tubes for fun.







Meanwhile, the mysterious trio gives Lennox a demonstration of Bug-Man's many combat features, which include a flamethrower equipped with napalm and two other chemical tanks, ultraviolet and infra-red vision with digital target readouts, and an exoskeleton that magnifies the wearer's strength by tapping into their bioelectrical field.







However, Buddy doesn't want to track anyone down. He doesn't even want to live anymore. He heads for the medicine cabinet and pours some pills into his hand.










Buddy's response: "What did you say?"

Next: Animal Man goes grimdark anti-hero. For one issue.

Comments

[deathcrist2000]

Suicide and suicidal ideation is a theme that crops up again and again in Grant Morrison's work. Be it Regan in All Star Superman, Nameless' ultimate fate, or Flex Mentallo literally being the story of Grant Morrison's suicide attempt. It's a fascinating theme that not a lot of people talk about when looking into Morrison's work.

[tcampbell1000]

You buried the lede a little there! I didn't know that was autobiographical! Knowing that detail casts the Regan scene in a different light, and arguably makes it even better.

I don't have any of my usual nitpicks or "not quite there yet" qualifiers to offer here: this issue is all about emotional devastation and it does a great job camping out in that space. No, my nitpicks are directed at another pair of comics altogether!

In light of Morrison's later line ("Someone else writes your life when you're with the Justice League. Haven't you noticed?"), it's mildly amusing that Buddy's last appearances with the JLE (#11-12) are a little... tricky to integrate with this story. Shortish version: Buddy shows up at JLE headquarters "to get my mind off what my life has become... if I don't, I think I'll go insane!" He gets involved in another hero's family drama, which results in a few super-fights in which he barely participates ("I never seem to do much when I'm with the Justice League," he'd say to Morrison later). This all does seem to distract him for a bit-- he makes a joke or two, is genuinely happy for his friend-- but it doesn't really fix anything. "Trying to forget by throwing myself into the JLE just won't work. I've got to come to grips with this... deal with my loss. Till then, I guess you won't be seeing me around much."

You could reconcile these two stories by saying that catastrophic grief is rarely orderly. Many people who've been struck by it do not go through the five Kubler-Ross stages in a simple progression-- they skip around, make progress and regress, think they're doing better or worse than they are. So maybe I can imagine Buddy's catatonia lifting for a brief high-functioning period, and he staggers into the office in search of a distraction before the shadows take him again (Didn't I tell J'Onn I was leaving the League at the funeral? he thinks. Maybe I just dreamed that).

But it doesn't really feel right in light of this issue. I'm pretty sure Morrison wanted us to think Buddy's depression was constant and constantly obvious. I've said elsewhere that JLE's Giffen and DeMatteis* posed an interesting challenge to the usual serious business of DC superheroes by (1) being lighthearted, (2) selling like gangbusters, and (3) shamelessly adjusting characterizations whenever they thought it'd bring a smile. In this case, when the character's inability to smile is literally the entire point, the issues with that approach are more visible than usual.

*(The above JLE scripts were actually done by Giffen and Bill Loebs, who'd soon be succeeded by Gerard Jones, but the approach Giffen and DeMatteis established would continue on all Justice League books until both of them left, after which the books were kind of caught between trying to replicate the Giffen feel and doing more generic stuff. The League wouldn't really find a new tone until some years later, when they began to be written by... Grant Morrison.)

[alicemacher]

Very interesting. What with my never having read JLE, it never occurred to me to wonder how that title's writers would handle Buddy's mourning. On the one hand, since the series takes place within the same continuity and in the same "floating present" as Animal Man, they couldn't very well ignore the tragedy altogether because readers would notice, even if Buddy was only a bit player in the title.

On the other hand, from what I do know of JLE having a generally lighthearted tone, I can imagine it'd be poorly equipped to handle what Buddy was then going through with the gravitas it deserved. Though with Buddy about to quit the League, at least Giffen et al. didn't have to worry about referencing his grieving process on an ongoing basis, thereby either trivializing it even more, or -- if they decided to address it head-on -- dragging the series itself towards a complete tonal shift.

[tcampbell1000]

They could sometimes go dark (there's a funeral issue not too distinct in tone from this one, albeit with the grief more distributed among the team), but they did so on their own schedule, no one else's.

[deathcrist2000]

It’s never been stated that they have tried it, but a lot of Flex comes from Morrison’s personal background. Being an ex rock star, the bomb zines, their parents divorce.