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The Animal Man Omnibus (2013)

by Grant Morrison(Favorite Author)

4.52 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1401238998 (ISBN13: 9781401238995)

languge

English

genre

Graphic Novels & Comics

publisher

Vertigo

review 1: There are stories about superheroes, and then there is Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. He had Buddy Baker put his thang down, flip it, and reverse it. I read the monthly issues as a kid and had my mind blown open, and that didn't change when I read this as an adult. It's almost hilarious how masterly and taut this is as an whole.If you're the guy who says he doesn't like comic books, read this and shut the fuck up. kthxbai.
review 2: Grant Morrison, why do you make my life so hard!I love some of your stuff. Then you get cosmic and I can't love you anymore. It's like we're dating. You're a super hot Scottish lady (for readers here, Grant Morrison is Scottish. So I've decided to turn his work into a Scottish woman I'm dating. I kept the geography, lopped ... moreoff the anatomy)and you're great, but every three days you drop acid and then I can't fucking stand hanging out with you because while you're still sort of sexy and interesting (god, I'm lonely) and look really great in the nude (ew, lonelier than I thought!)I just can't have one more conversation about how the planets and the moon and something something. I just can't.Here's the thing. This volume starts strong. Grant Morrison does some pretty interesting stuff with Animal Man, who is a total second-stringer. Which doesn't sound so bad, but when the first string is Superman, you aren't going to get a lot of time on the field. In fact, this book makes some arguments about the badness of eating meat that I wouldn't hear in the rest of the world for another ten or fifteen years. So it's pretty far ahead of its time there.And then this train derails and goes all Trial of Galactus on us.I'll explain.Once upon a time there was this guy named John Byrne. A controversial figure in comics, he wrote some great stories and some not so great stories. He also had a habit of getting himself in trouble by saying things like, well, when they asked him about Jessica Alba playing Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movie, his reaction was: "Personal prejudice: Hispanic and Latino women with blond hair look like hookers to me, no matter how clean or 'cute' they are."Woof.I mean, WOOF.But, y'know. Orson Scott Card says fucked up shit about gay people that would twist your head clean off your body, so this isn't new.Anyway, John Byrne writes this story. And actually, it's good. I might go so far as to say great. In it, Mr. Fantastic saves Galactus, a giant creature that eats whole planets and wears a purple tuning fork helmet thing. I mention the getup because he has committed many crimes against various races, but fashion crimes are EVERYONE'S jurisdiction.So the setup is that Mr. Fantastic somehow saves Galactus from dying, and then some Council of Weird Aliens (there's always one of these, right?) puts Reed Richards on trial, asking the question of whether or not he should be held responsible for the destruction of planets that follows his saving of Galactus.Okay, makes sense. Pretty good story, really.Here's how it ends.In the final issue, John Byrne shows up in the comic. Yes, the writer, for no real reason, is drawn into the comic, and all the characters seem to know him. "Hey, John." "Sup, John."Now, reading this, it's not really in tone with what's been happening. You're thinking, super serious trial, what's going to happen, holy shit!? I'm going to spoil the ending here. So if you were planning to read this, I guess stop now. Or skip to the next part. The ending is total bullshit, so in a way I think I'm saving you some wasted pages, but that's for you to decide for yourself, not me.What happens is, and this is narrated by John Byrne, is that some crazy eternal creature is summoned, and this creature uses some bizarre psychic mind meld shit to explain to everyone why Galactus must continue and cannot be allowed to die. HE DOES NOT ACTUALLY SHARE THIS REASONING ON ANY LEVEL. John Byrne just tells us that it's some very compelling shit, and we're pretty much left to understand that we could never understand. Even if he tried to explain it.I feel like he could have tried, but hey, that's me. I thought I was reading some sort of narrative that hinged on the ending here.Anyway, if you want to talk to me about John Byrne, I will ALSO rage for hours at a time about the machine Lex Luthor built to discover Superman's secret identity. My father left our family when I was in my early teens, and I still can't summon the emotion for that whole thing that I can for the Lex Luthor Secret Identity Gizmo of Shit.So back to Animal Man.At the end of his run, Grant Morrison writes himself into the comic. Animal Man is pretty confused, and so is the reader. But basically, Grant Morrison is himself, Animal Man is still the character, and somehow Animal Man has traveled into the real world and is now talking to his creator.Here's what I didn't like about it.It's not really a comic book anymore. Or it's not an Animal Man comic book. It's Grant Morrison Man. Who doesn't have a lot of super powers or anything, but there he is on the page. Also, I didn't care for the way this happened over the course of three issues. At some point, Animal Man is outside the panels, fighting bad guys by pulling them outside the panels and shit. I just...it's cute, but it's not for me.Here's what I did like about it.The final issue, the one where Grant Morrison shows up? It works. Sort of. The premise is insane, and it's still a bit of a cop out. But what happens is that he handles it differently than Byrne did. Instead of making him a character in the story, he uses the page to do a few things. He explains how he felt like the way he was writing Animal Man was getting stale, that basically he had Animal Man addressing whatever animal-cruelty-related issue had come up that day. He told a story from his real life that had been incorporated into the comic earlier.One of the most interesting parts, he tells about his cat dying. It's horrible, and he admits in the comic that the way his life was, his cat dying was terrible, but he caught himself saying, "Well, at least I can incorporate this into Animal Man somehow." He was almost excited about it, and that didn't sit well with him.It's a big reversal. Oftentimes you'll hear a writer say that he or she used pain to create a story. Channeled pain into something great. But rarely do you hear someone admit that they're starting to feel like a vulture, picking at the bones of their dead pets and relationships and the corpses of the selves that they've left behind. You don't usually hear about the guilty part, the part that feels bad about living life that way.So while I don't appreciate how we got there, I think the final issue was a success. It was a very different ending than I've seen in a lot of comics. And the way it differed from Trial of Galactus, I didn't get the idea whatsoever that Grant Morrison was trying to glorify himself by including himself in the comic. Instead, the tone was far more confessional and heartbreaking in some ways.I didn't get an ending to Animal Man, not really. And in that way, the book is a failure. It also broke the rules in a way that doesn't really work for me, and that I also consider a failure. But on the other hand, I'll probably remember the things he said about his cat and his imaginary friend that he used to signal by flashlight. So as much as it pains me to say: You win this round, Morrison. And I hope you're doing better. less

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