Reprinting:
Animal
Man #1-9 (1988-1989)
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Animal Man 1991 (SC TPB) 240 pages
Written by Grant Morrison. Pencils Chas Truog, with Tom
Grummett. Inks by Doug Hazlewood.
Colours: Tatjana Wood. Letters: John Costanza. Editor: Karen Berger.
Reprinting:
Animal
Man #1-9 (1988-1989)
Additional notes: intro by Grant Morrison; covers
Suggested for Mature Readers
Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
Published by DC Comics
Animal Man was an obscure 1960s character, briefly dusted
off in the 1980s in Action Comics, before being selected by Grant
Morrison for his own series. Morrison was one of the wave of British writers
DC Comics lapped up in the wake of Alan Moore's success, in the hope they'd
bring an unexpected edginess to quaint properties. Morrison attempted to
do just that with this character who could absorb the powers of any animal
in his immediate vicinity.
The first four issues form a self-contained story as Buddy
Baker, one-time super hero, now married with two young kids, considers
kick-starting his super hero career. Postulating the idea that super heroes
are like other celebrities, Morrison deconstructs how a hero becomes a
hero -- he trains, practices, gets an agent, puts the word out that he's
willing to fight crime, does talk shows, and hopes for the best. Soon he
gets called in to investigate a break in at a lab, and the kidnapping of
a test monkey. Buddy has some qualms about the assignment, particularly
when he realizes his animal powers make him especially empathetic to the
suffering of the lab animals. But things go from bad to worse when Buddy
quickly realizes he's out of his league, and that the super powered "bad
guy" he's trying to track down (another obscure 1960s character) is more
powerful -- and dangerous -- than he is.
For all the edgy trappings, for all the grittiness, Morrison's
initial spin on Animal Man reminded me of a 1980s version of Stan Lee's
Spider-Man,
where the super heroics are given a revisionist spin, contrasted with the
real world and life's mundanities. Buddy's a good guy, but can get whipped
in a fight, and things don't always come easy to him. His first fight with
his foe, when he realizes just how dangerous is this glib life he's chosen,
is particularly effective. And, like Lee's Spider-Man, there's a lot of
humour and humanity to the proceedings.
There's also a lot of nastiness and brutality, too. A
sub-plot evoking a "Deliverance" style Inhumanity Of Man theme is particularly
raw and, to some extent, not entirely justified -- or, at least, integrated
-- into this story.
The first four issues balance the needs of telling an
exciting adventure story, one that unfolds intriguingly as you try to figure
out who this mysterious figure is, or where things are headed, with Morrison's
quirky sensibility and deconstructionism. There's even an effective --
if very dark -- ironic ending.
In his introduction, Morrison admits he wanted to do a
mini-series, reviving Animal Man, and introducing a political sub-text
involving animal rights, then hand the thing over for others to run with.
Instead, DC persuaded him to stick around. And, at least initially, Morrison
seems unsure of what to do with his series, or his hero -- even the absorbing
animal powers aspect is muted (Buddy just consistently seems to have generic
powers like flight and strength). To varying extents, the next few issues
reduce Animal Man to a supporting part in his own comic, as Morrison tells
stories in which the focus is on guest star characters. "Coyote Gospel"
has been much heralded as a great story, and maybe it was because
of that hype, but I wasn't as smitten with it. It's interesting, but not
too much more -- though maybe a second reading will alter my perspective.
Later stories tie-in to DC's Invasion
story, which isn't too confusing for the first couple of issues, though
maybe gets a little more so in the post-Invasion issues, when Animal Man
is dealing with a loss of his super power (though Morrison's introduction
helps clarify things like that). But by then Morrison has begun introducing
sub-plots, and the final story ends with Buddy still suffering from haywire
super powers. In other words, the book doesn't really resolve or conclude.
The animal rights aspect is handled with soft fingers,
with Buddy talking about his views, rather than acting on them. At one
point it's mentioned that he's been helping some militant animal rights
groups...but it's not depicted, nor even explained how they knew of his
sympathies in order to contact him. Morrison writes a little like there's
stuff happening off the page...stuff that might be more interesting than
what's on it, sometimes. Maybe DC Comics felt -- perhaps rightly -- that
a comic book wasn't the place to proselytize, and that Buddy stating
his beliefs was as far as they wanted to go.
But for a nine issue collection, you find yourself wishing
there was a little more Animal Man in Animal Man, that Morrison
should've waited till he'd more firmly established Buddy and his friends
and family before embarking on his more "off-beat" stories. I had once
thought it would be a fairly unusual idea -- in a medium catering to teens
and young adults -- to do a series about a super hero who was married with
kids (and not just babies or toddlers). Lots of heroes have been teens,
dealing with parents, so why not the other what around? As such, I appreciated
what Morrison was trying to do, though even here, his Buddy slides a little
too readily into the "overgrown kid" mode DC Comics seems to use as its
template for many of its post-Crisis heroes,
leaving it to Buddy's wife to play the real parent.
It's ironic that Morrison's decision to imbue Animal Man
with a real world political sensibility (animal rights) seems to have impressed
some fans considerably less that the metaphysical direction in which Morrison
later took the series, in which Buddy eventually learns he's a comic book
character. Although such a story idea is not uninteresting, it says something
about readers who feel that that was somehow more sophisticated, more "important"
than tackling a real world issue like animal rights. Uh, deconstructing
a comic is more important than talking about real life?
The art by Chas Truog has been knocked by some, particularly
in contrast to Brian Bolland's covers, but I kind of liked it. There's
a kind of Bronze Age unsplashiness to it all, as Truog sets out to tell
the story, rather than indulging in bizarre musculature exaggerations and
extraneous splash pages. For a series that's going for a kind of quirky
revisionism and deconstructionism, where a sense of mundanity is meant
to intrude upon the four-colour heroics, the art serves quite nicely.
This collection doesn't come to a clean resolution --
though maybe it was intended just to act as a primer on the character,
establishing all the key points for people reading his then-on going comic.
But it seems like it was meant to be the first of a series of TPBs, collecting
the series. Yet there was, initially, no follow up...perhaps indicating
sales weren't what DC had hoped for. A decade and some later, DC finally
released a follow-up TPB -- Animal Man: Animal Kingdom. But here's
the rub. In his intro, Morrison suggests that the overall story arc didn't
resolve until #26. In other words, DC arguably needs one more Animal Man
collection to form a complete "graphic novel". But I'm not sure one's waiting
in the wings. Go figure.
As it is, I'm not sure about following up on this book
myself. I liked the initial story arc -- though part of that may say as
much about the initial excitement that can often accompany reading about
a "new" character. And later issues were interesting and even off beat,
but they didn't necessarily grip me, viscerally. A series often brings
you back because of your interest in the main character, but Buddy gets
sidelined too often (in the latter half) to allow us to fully bond with
him. Animal Man is a decent read, but a touch unsatisfying.
Cover price: $32.95 CDN. / $19.95 USA
Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis: Once and Future 2006 (SC TPB) 144 pages
Written by Kurt Busiek. Pencils by Butch Guice. Inks by Butch Guice with Tony DeZuniga.
Colours: Dan Brown. Letters: Todd Klein. Editors: Joey Cavalieri, Michael Wright.
Reprinting: Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis (frm. just Aquaman 2002-, series) #40-45 (2006)
Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
Published by DC Comics
The Once and Future story line begat -- yet another -- "new direction" for Aquaman, with the comic even acquiring the new sub-title: Sword of Atlantis. In the wake of one of its previous crossover "mega-events", DC Comics used a gimmick of jumping their reality ahead one year, hoping to tease readers with mysteries created by that one year gap. In the case of the Aquaman comic...Aquaman himself has disappeared.
So we are introduced to one Arthur Curry -- a blonde haired, water-breathing human who is frequently mistaken for Aquaman (who was also born Arthur Curry). But this Arthur Joseph Curry is not an Atlantean, but a human who had lived most of his life in an aquarium built by his oceanologist father. But a massive storm wrecked the aquarium and cast Arthur into the ocean...which is where this series begins. Arthur is recruited by the mysterious Dweller in the Depths, a mystical seabeing who is convinced Arthur is a prophesied hero destined to save the oceans, and even outfits Arthur in an orange and green ensemble reminiscent of the original Aquaman's.
One of the frequent gimmicks in comics is to take properties that seem to be floundering and try and kick start them by re-inventing the whole franchise. The discount boxes are full of such ill-fated re-imaginings. At the same time, it was just such a reinventing of old properties in the 1950s that gave rise to the Silver Age of comics. But the problem here is it wants to revamp the series by giving us a whole new Aquaman...even as he spends the first few issues bumping into characters from previous runs of the series, and dealing with the repercussions of past "mega events" (Atlantis had been destroyed by a rogue Spectre!). In other words, long time fans might be miffed about the change in the hero...even as long time fans are the only ones who are really going to appreciate a lot of the nuances.
Of course, fans have long memories, and killing off the previous hero is rarely a permanent solution (with the Silver Age Green Arrow, Green Lantern and the Flash all coming back from death to re-claim their titles from their successors in recent years), so the comic doesn't even try and pretend this is necessarily a permanent arrangement, leaving the door open for the "true" Aquaman to return. Oh, I'm sure writer Kurt Busiek was hoping his Arthur would be the new and forever Aquaman...but I'm guessing he was realistic enough to know that might not happen.
Anyway, at first, the new direction works reasonably well. For one thing, the art by Butch Guice is quite striking with its mix of realism and strange, even spooky undersea scapes, coloured in richly textured dark, sombre hues that evoke the sense of the ocean's depths. Arthur is personable enough and collects an off-beat supporting cast, including the shark/human hybrid, King Shark (who the dialogue implies was previously a villain, but here is recast as a quirky if enigmatic ally -- though not to be confused with Green Lantern's shark/human hybrid foe, the Shark!) and the even more mysterious Dweller in the Depths. Actually, the clues are so blatant about who the Dweller is that I assumed they were red herrings...but by the end of these issues, it certainly seems as though he is who we thought. Which, um, is a clever bit of misdirection. I guess. And the run is heavy on the cryptic, with hints of things to come, and mysteries barely articulated.
I've complained that a lot of modern comics writers, knowing a trade collection is waiting down the line, will stretch out minor stories to justify the collection. But the flip side is writers still not thinking in terms of the graphic "novel" despite liking to use that term themselves. In the opening issue Arthur encounters some undersea barbarian marauders, and in the final issues of this collection he and his allies defeat them. So there is a story that begins and ends. But it's a fairly minor story, plot-wise. Much of these issues are taken up with episodic intervals as Arthur explores his new domain, gets into an underwater bar fight, encounters various players from the past Aquaman series, like Mera, and the Sea Devils. Things that are of more significance for their relationship to stories that went before, or foreshadowing stories to come.
Recently reading some 1960s Aquaman comics (in Showcase presents Aquaman, vol. 3), one can scoff at the corny dialogue, the (sometimes deliberate) goofiness...but what's appealing is the pure storytelling at work. Whole, imaginative (and diverse) plots -- with beginnings, middles and ends -- crammed into single 23 page issues.
For all the greater sophistication of character and theme and presentation of these modern comics, they're inferior simply as stories.
And, to be honest, even the characterization isn't as convincing as it pretends. Arthur is given a bit of a hot headed temper...which is one of those character quirks writers throw in because they aren't sure how to get their hero into trouble logically (kind of like the Back to the Future films where Marty would go berserk if someone called him chicken). And just the whole concept of a guy who lived his whole life in an aquarium but can take on bad guys and get into sword fights is a bit unlikely.
When Arthur returns to his father's storm-wrecked lab, he finds a body shot by a bullet. But though that is clearly setting up mysteries for later -- Arthur himself doesn't allude to it again.
Arthur also refers to how he always thought of Aquaman as a second rate hero which smacks a bit too much of the self-reflectiveness plaguing modern comics, as if Busiek is trying to confront some of the criticisms of Aquaman-as-a-comic-book-hero. But I find it hard to believe a guy who'd lived his life in a fish tank, as a freak, would regard Aquaman with anything but awe and reverence. Busiek maybe figured he'd go for the unexpected, but it was just one more thing that rang a bit false.
And ultimately, by the end of these six issues Arthur has failed to prove himself any more interesting than the original Aquaman and, indeed, is even less so, with even fewer powers (though toward the end there are hints he might have some of Aquaman's telepathic abilities). Nor have the supporting characters really developed much beyond their introduction.
As well, as the issues progress, Guice's art seems to get a bit rougher and sketchier. Whether that's a deliberate intent (perhaps trying to evoke, say, Joe Kubert or someone) or just a reflection of Guice getting a bit rushed (old timer Tony DeZuniga is brought in to ink one issue, implying Guice was having trouble meeting a deadline), it means the initially striking visuals can get a bit sloppy at times.
These issues do come to a climax, forming a story arc. But a lot is still left unexplained, meant to push us into seeing where it's all headed. But it means that as a TPB collection, it's a bit unsatisfying. And another problem I have with the way so many modern comics are written that way -- where it's rarely about this month's story, and all about the future "arc" -- is that you're never really sure if it will go anywhere. Busiek himself left the series a few issues after this, and the comic itself was cancelled shortly after that. So we have a TPB collection introducing a brand new Aquaman...that may or may not be intended to permanently replace the original, introducing a bunch of cryptic threads...that may or may not have ever seen fruition.
Some of this was apparent in another Aquaman TPB, The Waterbearer, but I still think I enjoyed that book a bit better. Once and Future is an okay effort, with (mostly) good art. But as a story, it's a bit thin, with a lot of padding, with a hero that doesn't entirely distinguish himself as a personality.
Cover price: $__ CDN. / $12.99 USA.
Aquaman: The Waterbearer 2003 (SC TPB) 128 pgs.
Written by Rick Veitch. Pencils by Yvel Guichet, with Norm Breyfogle, Joshua Hood, Dietrich Smith. Inks by Mark Propst, Sean Parsons, Dennis Janke.
Colours: Nathan Eyring. Letters: Mike Heisler. Editor: Dan Raspler.
Reprinting: Aquaman (2002 series) #1-4, Aquaman Secret Files #1 (2002-2003)
Rating:N/R (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
Published by DC Comics
Another example of a TPB where I haven't read the whole thing -- I came upon issues #2-4 in the cheap bins and picked them up. As such, I'm not going to offer a comprehensive opinion, but to say that I reasonably enjoyed the issues I read.
Poor old Aquaman has been caught up in the current fervor at both Marvel and DC that is never prepared to just let a property rest and recharge and be relegated to honourable guest star status for a while. Instead, because one assumes sales figures have been uneven, Aquaman's been knocked around, re-imagined, re-invented and ressurected a bunch of times over the last decade or so. This new series follows on the heels of some big, multi-title crossover epic in which Aquaman had been killed. Now he's back...but exiled from Atlantis which has become a tyranny ruled over by dark sorcerers. Aquaman finds himself in Ireland, with a new, magical hand (which replaced the hook he had...which replaced his real hand) and making a connection to a magical, Celtic force -- Annwn, the Secret Sea.
Of course this revival/reinterpretation clearly didn't take very well, as this creative team would be gone after about a year and a clean shaven Aquaman would be back to wearing his familiar orange and green costume and dealing with less magic-themed stories...before, of course, getting caught up in the whole "One Year Later" nonsense and being replaced by a whole 'nother Aquaman.
I told ya they aren't prepared to just let a property be benched temporarily with dignity.
But the Veitch/Guichet combo works reasonably well. Aquaman is personable enough, there's some effective humour, and character interplay between Aquaman and his new supporting cast, including a spunky female Irish cop. The art by Guichet is robust and detailed, with a kind of organic fucundity that suits the fantasy-flavoured plots, richly detailing the plants and rocks and ocean waves. It's a bit cartoony, and a bit cluttered -- particularly during the action scenes, there's just too much detail to always grasp what you're seeing (particularly with monsters that don't adhere to existing templates). But generally, it works. .
The plotting is a bit repetative, as it often involves the evil Atlantean sorcerers sending goons and/or sea monsters to try and kill Aquaman...and he keeps triumphing through the Deus ex machina of his magic hand. And a sequence where Aquaman and Tempest (the former Aqualad who also seems to have magic powers these days) infiltrate Atlantis in the bodies of possessed fish seems to undermine the environmentalism some previous writers attempted to instil in the character. Aquaman, when discovered, is only concerned about getting out of the fish's body before it's killed, rather than thinking he maybe owes it to the fish to try and save it to.
As well, though I can't say how well this establishes the new premise -- not having read the first issue or the secret files story -- I'll assume it gets you up to speed well enough (heck, only reading #2-4, I managed to piece together the gist). At the same time, these first four issues don't really form a story arc, per se. The issues are relatively self-contained (as Aquaman is bearded by a menace and defeats it), but Atlantis is still enslaved by the end of these issues, and Aquaman still doesn't fully know who the magical Lady is who gave him his new hand or why. Indeed, the final issue ends on one of the those "to be continued" epilogues (that is, the main adventure is over, then the Lady shows up uttering cryptic warnings of an impending danger).
The result is, it's readable enough on its own, if you want a few issues of this era of Aquaman...but it's best read as that, as a collection of a few issues, rather than expecting a "graphic novel" telling a full story. And since, as mentioned, clearly this period of Aquaman wasn't that successful, it doesn't look as though DC intends to release a TPB of the remainder of the story arc.
Yet, for all that, and maybe just 'cause I'm a softy (or because there are almost no Aquaman TPB collections out there) I kind of enjoyed these issues. Enough so that, if I could find the next few issues cheap (as I did these), I'd be tempted to pick 'em up.
This is a review of the issues as the appeared in the monthly comic.
Cover price: $__ CDN./$12.95 USA.
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