Animal Man: Crisis

[alicemacher]

From Animal Man 23 (May 1990).

In Arkham, Roger Hayden the Psycho-Pirate, having at last let the pre-Crisis contents of his mind spill out, has calmed down considerably. He also finds his old costume and Medusa Mask, which gives him the power to manipulate others' emotions. After warning the readers that he can still see them watching him, and that they won't get away with it much longer, he leaves his now-opened cell. Walking the halls, he uses the mask on the Scarecrow, making him happy and content to stay put in his cell despite Hayden having just insulted him. Then he comes across Ultraman, Power Ring and a large number of other characters who'd been erased from continuity after the Crisis.







The Yellow Aliens bring James Highwater to Arkham, explaining that they need him to help prevent the impending threat to reality, as worlds that were no more have started returning. The asylum, seen from outside, illustrates their point as its various architectural designs, which DC artists have given it over the years, morph into each other. To James's question, "What about Animal Man?", the aliens reply that he's currently beyond their reach.

Buddy is, of course, still trapped sometime in the late sixties, and in his despair. The Phantom Stranger, who can see and hear him just fine, offers a compassionate ear and introduces him to the Immortal Man (whom Buddy already will have met in the future) and Jason Blood. This is one of those times when the three deathless men meet up just to chat. Immortal Man, currently in hippie mode, asks Buddy whether Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey turn out to be right about humankind evolving into super-beings. "No. We didn't evolve. We just got worse," says Buddy. "Everything just got worse."










In the present, Hayden enthusiastically greets the characters who continue to pour out of his mind.







The characters/character variants in the top three panels are in fact Morrison's original creations. The Love Syndicate of Dreamworld trio would later reappear, together or singly, in stories by Morrison and others. Uberman, given his affiliation with "Axis Amerika", seems to be Morrison's AU version of the New Earth villain Ubermensch who was affiliated with a team by that name. Sargon the Sorcerer and this second version of Aquagirl (Tula) were of course created well before Morrison's time.

Anyway. Psycho-Pirate's pep talk is cut short when he realizes he's beginning to go translucent and feels "funny... a little strange." He explains to the astonished onlookers that the experience is "taking a lot out of me."










Back once again in the present, one of the Yellow Aliens goes to Buddy's home to look for him, while Hayden is distressed to find, within his brain, a world gone horribly wrong when Overman, a superhero created by a U.S. government experiment, contracts an STI which turns him into a giggling, drooling mass murderer. In addition to killing everyone in his path, including his former super-colleagues, he gets his hands on a Doomsday bomb with which he intends to wipe out the entire world. After concentrating hard, Psycho-Pirate thinks he's managed to prevent Overman and his bomb from getting out of his head. He's prevented no such thing.

Also in Arkham, the alien remaining behind shows Highwater the epicentre of the threat to reality: the various returned characters from expired worlds, while Hayden shows them the same thing Buddy saw in his peyote vision: the readers' faces staring down at them from another world, keeping them in their "cages." He's referring to the comic panel borders, which Ultraman now discovers.










"It's okay," says Animal Man with confidence. "I'm here."


Next: Animal Man takes on Overman, with help from callbacks to Issues 6 and 7, while Highwater figures out who he and everyone else in the room really are... and makes a hard decision for the sake of reality.