Animal Man: Deus Ex Machina (final Morrison issue)

[alicemacher]

From Animal Man #26 (Aug. 1990).



So, this is it. Buddy Baker, Animal Man, at last meets Grant Morrison. (Technically, of course, he meets a comic-book character representing Morrison, not the flesh-and-blood Morrison themself, which would be impossible, but I'd rather not keep typing "Morrison's avatar" throughout this post.)

Buddy's initial reaction, upon learning Morrison is his creator, is to murder them. Or so he thinks; one panel later, there stands the writer, good as new. Buddy admits he's not normally violent and wonders why he did that. "I made you do that," says Morrison with a smirk. "I thought we needed some action at the start of the story, just to keep people interested."

As further proof they're his writer, Morrison shows Buddy the very issue in which he discovers his family dead. To his obvious question "Why?", Morrison replies it was for the drama, "and it's easy to get a cheap emotional shock by killing popular characters. "But that's not fair," says Buddy.







Morrison, admitting they've been awaiting this meeting for two years but are still unsure of what to say, has the two of them go for a walk. Buddy asks if he's in fact real. "You're more real than I am," says the writer, reiterating James Highwater's observation, two issues earlier, that it's possible for characters to outlive their very creators.

Nonetheless, Buddy feels Morrison's done a poor job at writing his life; once again, he complains that everything within it feels unconnected. The writer says that's just how life in general is.







To that, Morrison can only suggest Buddy's next writer may do a better job. Buddy doesn't follow, so the author explains that future writers will have their own approach to writing him, perhaps by going for "shock" by making him a meat-eater. Buddy is indignant: "I don't want to eat meat! I'm a vegetarian." "No," says Morrison. "I'm a vegetarian. You'll be whatever you're written to be."







The author reiterates that Buddy right now cares about the plight of animals because they do. Except that in their/our world, they're powerless to do anything about it other than join activist organizations and write this comic. Morrison, however, fears that as a result the title has become too "preachy," and they're not sure it'll do much good in the long run.







After more back-and-forth about this, Morrison decides it's time to liven things up with a fight scene. So, taking a cue from reader suggestions, they bring in a couple of villains (one fom Aquaman's rogues gallery and one off-the-cuff Morrison creation) and sic them on Buddy, suggesting he settle things "by beating [them] into the ground. Don't laugh. That's the way we deal with things in the real world, too." Not that Buddy's inclined to laugh, as he discovers Morrison's stripped him of his powers.

While the villains beat on the defenceless hero, Morrison handles what would normally be done in the editorial or letters page: thanking everyone involved in the production of the comic, as well as the readers, and wrapping up by urging those who share their concern for animal rights to join PETA (in Morrison's defence, the organization was a whole lot less extremist back then).

Animal Man, ignored through all this by his writer apart from a single "Shh! I'm talking," finally utters one last feeble plea for his life, and lies face down in his own blood.

And then...

























Normally I'd do some kind of summing up, but to this ending I have nothing to add that wouldn't come across as embarassingly gushing. So I'll just say thank you for reading, and special thanks to all commenters for your insights.

Comments

[cricharddavies]

"Yeah. Well, that's the trouble with my stories -- they always seem to build up to something that never actually happens."

And thirty years later, he's still doing things like this ...

[themajesticmoose]

I actually like Animal Man for the most part and I think it's one of Morrison's stronger works. Definitely not perfect and there are things about it which annoy me or that I just go "Oh for gods sake Grant..." at but I think it's a pretty good narrative

And I think the ending is a good one and I like that Morrison is able to poke fun at themself and acknowledge their own flaws as a writer here.

Oh and just to say, Morrison uses they/them pronouns

[informationgeek]

In the end, after experiencing this all again, I don't think my opinion or feelings towards this run have changed. It still really doesn't click with me. I just never felt for the characters at all, so the ending leaves me cold. The story never engaged me. The ideas just felt rarely compelling to me as well and Morrison's writing felt dry that it was a pain to read.

I can see why people love this run and why its so enjoyed, it's just something that I find leaves me so empty. It's like Sandman, Watchmen, or anything Kieron Gillen writes. I'll probably never get it and thats fine.

[bruinsfan]

It left me cold at the time too, though unlike you I loved Sandman, and at least enjoyed Kieron Gillen's work with Loki and the Young Avengers. I just have a low tolerance for writerly navel gazing, and so far as I can tell Morrison has never managed to emerge from theirs. If they as a writer can't take their characters and stories seriously, I don't see why I should.

[werehawk]

I liked it when Ostrander wrote this Morrison avatar into a Suicide Squad issue or two. Called him the “Writer”

[tcampbell1000]

I forget where I saw this (it might've even been in another of Alice's posts), but apparently Grant was a really good sport about it. "I think I probably deserved it after everything I put Buddy through," they said, or something close to that.

[tcampbell1000]

One quick (really nitpicky) correction before I really launch in: the Shark is not an original creation with Morrison: he's a repurposed Aquaman villain.

[alicemacher]

Noted. Will correct. Thanks, T.

[tcampbell1000]

First, a warning: if Grant's speculation leaves you at all curious about how Buddy's next writer, and the writer after that, handled his home life with Ellen and the kids, or just the title in general... do yourself a big favor and never find out. Trust me.

Like in "The Coyote Gospel," Morrison's normally unrelated themes come together into one big meta-theme: cruelty. Not so much deliberate cruelty: rare-meat peddlers and comic-book writers don't often think of themselves as being willfully cruel. Yet the endangered animals and fridged supporting characters they kill are still dead. And just as humans' intelligence makes their actions and world pretty well incomprehensible to the animals, writers exist in a space that characters like Buddy can barely understand, and then only briefly.

Morrison may have joined the protest groups and cut meat from their diet, but they don't absolve themself from this second form of cruelty or its link to the first.

Character-meets-their-author narratives sometimes make the creator into a benevolent god, sometimes a sadistic jerk, sometimes a talentless hack. Morrison incorporates each of those approaches but holds back on the benevolence till the end. They're pretty self-effacing: bemoaning their inability to fit everything they wanted into 22 pages, their commercial impulses ("easy to get a cheap emotional shock"), and their tendency at the time toward anticlimax in their longer arcs. "That's the trouble with my stories: they always seem to build up to something that never actually happens. That's the trouble with my life, too." (This issue would break with that pattern, but it almost has to mention it to manage the reader's expectations.)

The fight scene carries their self-criticism to the level of Mad-style parody, with the villains beating Buddy to an inch of his life for literally no reason at all. One gets the sense that if Morrison is a sadist, it's sort of by accident. They don't hate Buddy or even take satisfaction in his suffering. They just couldn't seem to think of a better way to be, in this medium and marketplace.

At least not consistently. But maybe they can make up for that, or at least some of it, with one bold stroke. There's no need to come up with next issue's conflict, so why not leave him better than you found him just once? Forget "realism," forget story logic, just perform one decent act while your author avatar is around to justify it.

And after that act is performed... well, things are better. But Morrison's not done balancing the scales. The last few pages are about leaving a bit of themself in the work, showing a little vulnerability after all the vulnerability they've inflicted on Buddy.

When Alice started posting these, I said that Animal Man was the work of a promising talent who mostly had yet to hit their peak. A lot of accomplished writers who get the chance make their final issue a victory lap, a chance to summarize their ideas (as Morrison does with the case for animal rights) or throw in a few ideas they couldn't fit elsewhere (as Morrison does with the two villains). But one thing that sets this story apart is that the writer weighed their own performance, found it wanting, resolved to do better...

...and did. Morrison would have some hits and misses, to be sure, and put some characters through the wringer now and then. But rarely if ever after this would one feel that they were doing anything just because they felt the market was calling for it. Among other improvements, Morrison stopped worrying about what the market did and didn't consider "adult," to the point where they were willing to show themselves, on the page, indulging in the magical thinking of a child. That transformation made them a better writer, and to all indications, it made them a better person, too.

[tripodeca113]

Is it all down-hill for Animal Man after this? I've never heard anyone discuss another run of this comic, so I assume it got overshadowed.

[stubbleupdate]

He was one of the best parts of 52, and the follow up mini series (Countdown to Adventure) was so bad I couldn't even finish it.

[deathcrist2000]

Notably, those bits were written by Morrison.

[lordultimus]

New 52 Animal Man was a pretty good horror comic, which utilized Buddy's family better than Morrison ever did.

[tcampbell1000]

Basically yes. Admittedly, this was a very hard act to follow, not just because it was good, but because writers had to choose between upbeatness and existential anxiety. Upbeatness would continue the tone promised by this ending, anxiety would replicate the tone of the rest of the series. There are arguments for both, but they mostly chose anxiety, and I think they chose wrong.

[johnnychaos]

It's mostly downhill from here. After Morrison's run, Peter Milligan wrote a short, weird arc riffing off of William Burroughs. Then the book was written by Tom Veitch, Rick Veitch's lesser-known brother. That plotline was interminable, but was nicely illustrated by Steve Dillon. It's what Dillon did before teaming with Garth Ennis on Hellblazer, Preacher and Punisher.

Then Jamie Delano took a turn and did kind of a horror thing, with good art by Steve Pugh. Then a writer named Jerry Prosser completely lost the thread. Then the book got canceled for a long time, and Buddy made appearances in various "events." When they brought the book back for the New 52, Jeff Lemire wrote a critically acclaimed run, but I hate hate HATE a certain thing that happened to Buddy's family.

Sorry, I'm a little obsessed with this series.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I bought all these comics back then. Maybe I was chasing that initial high from Morrison's run.

[alicemacher]

I've read a smattering of post-Morrison Animal Man, nowhere remotely close to the whole deal. Some of it I've found at least reasonably entertaining, and some... not. But part of me still feels Morrison's run was such an achievement that, ideally, "Deus Ex Machina" should've been the very last Animal Man story ever, the character permanently retired except for cameos in other titles.

But I'm the first to admit that's as realistic and reasonable a stance as Moore's often-stated wish that Watchmen had been the last superhero story ever. Never gonna happen, never was gonna happen.

[themajesticmoose]

I remember I liked the talking cat in the New 52 run

[themajesticmoose]

The ending of this issue always makes me feel very very melancholy

And it only makes me more so the more time passes