New 52 Year One Retrospective: Animal Man

Just over a year ago, DC launched the New 52. Relaunching their universe with a whole new set of #1 issues, and resetting or altering much of the tangled continuity. It was touted as being a great place for new readers to jump on. As someone who never read much DC, I decided that I would take advantage of that opportunity. I decided to read all of the New 52 titles for the year, then decide how I felt.

 So, a year later, how has it fared? What titles are must reads, and what didn't I care for? As a whole has it been successful?

In a series of posts, I'm going to cover all of the New 52 titles, looking over the past year, and trying to come to a conclusion on all of them. Some will be longer, whereas shorter reviews will be grouped together. Once I cover them all, I'll give the rundown on what I think about the overall effectiveness and success of the idea.

The first title I'm going to cover is Animal Man, a surprise contender for my favourite of the lot.

Animal Man
Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Travel Foreman, Steve Pugh

Animal Man wasn’t a character I was familiar with prior to the New 52. As such, I didn’t really have any expectations for this book, and from the name, it sounded somewhat lame. So I was pleasantly surprised when this turned out to be one of my favourite books of the New 52.

Animal Man is very well written, with creative use of his powers, and a story that is much more personal than just your average superhero derring-do. It revolves more around Animal Man (Buddy Baker’s) family than anything, with his daughter beginning to manifest powers greater than his. He discovers that she is an avatar of the force which gives him his power, called ‘The Red’. Unfortunately, agents of the corrupt power called ‘The Rot’ are after her. It’s nice to see a book where the hero’s family are involved, rather than being relegated to side characters sitting at home, and they behave in a pretty believable way too. I don't want to spoil the plot, but suffice to say the family plays a big part, and it's very much a personal struggle for Buddy.

The series ties in with the Swamp Thing series, with Swamp Thing being an agent of ‘The Green’, the third in the triptych of natural powers featured in the series known as 'The Balance'. There's also an appearance put in by the Justice League: Dark characters.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the art style in this book to start with, but by the time I was a couple of issues in, it had grown on me. I’m still not a fan of the appearance of the human characters, especially their facial expressions though, they’re expressive enough, but fairly ugly, and while they work on some characters, on others, especially the younger characters, they make the character look too old, or simply look out of place. The art really works well in some places though, particularly some of the more creepy imagery that’s prevalent in the book, of which there’s a lot, with some fairly graphic body-horror stuff, and Foreman manages to make it look very good. The animals are also drawn very well, which is something of a necessity what with how heavily they’re featured. There’s some variation in the artist in later issues, with Steve Pugh taking over the interior art from Travel Foreman. Personally, though I think Foreman did an excellent job on the body horror of the early issues, I find Pugh’s style to be cleaner, and more consistent in terms of the characters’ appearance. The animals are still well drawn, and the more graphic segments are less prevalent in the later issues anyway, though Pugh still does a good job when it’s called for.

Overall, this is definitely worth picking up, and I'll be continuing to read this title. It gets 4/5 stars for me, and with the Pugh art, probably upgrades to a 4.5/5.

Join me next time, for another look at DC's New 52, one year on.