The shadow of Grant Morrison looms large over the character of Animal Man. Morrison’s 26 issue run with the character in the mid-80s brought newfound attention to the almost forgotten character, and left an expectation for the character moving forward. DC Comic’s New 52 initiative in 2011 sought to erase the previous continuity and give readers a new experience with familiar characters. However, even with continuity erased and an attempted fresh start, it’s hard to escape a character’s legacy. With Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man, we see both a reverence for the past, and an embracing of the future.
As Animal Man, Buddy Baker finds himself with a connection to The Red, the web of life that connects all animals and allows Buddy to draw abilities from different creatures. While he’s not the most popular hero, he has a loving family and a fledgling career in the movies. However, when The Red begins to leave strange markings on Buddy’s body, and his four-year-old daughter Maxine is capable of powers far greater than his own, Buddy finds that his powers are far more of a curse than a blessing.
Despite family being pivotal characters in previous Animal Man stories, Lemire puts them to the forefront far more than any other writer. This is especially shown with Buddy’s relationship to his children, the powerless Cliff Baker, and the Red Avatar Maxine Baker. With Cliff and Maxine, we see two different reactions to having a superhero parent, as well as the positives and negatives of inheriting said powers.
Maxine, despite her very young age, inherits a connection to The Red that is even stronger than that of her fathers. Born as the next Avatar of The Red, Maxine is capable of channelling The Red in ways her father never dreamed. Able to give consciousness to reanimated corpses of deceased pets, capable of regrowing her body using a passing animal, and the ability to travel to the Parliament of Limbs at the centre of The Red at will. Maxine inherits a massive responsibility just as The Red begins to turn on the Baker family. The Red exists in harmony with The Green and with The Rot, the embodiments of nature and decay. When one of these forces grows out of control and disrupts the harmony, it can cause catastrophic damage. At the point that Lemire’s run begins, The Rot has begun to take over due to the defection of three former avatars of The Red and by taking control of the new avatar, Maxine, they can overtake both The Red and The Green. The series becomes an escape from the Rot with Maxine at the centre. Maxine embraces her powers and sees them as a way to help the world and form a closer bond with her animal friends. However, given that she is only four years old, the immense power and responsibility now placed onto this child becomes an intense source of stress and worry for Buddy and his wife. Ellen has watched her husband come back from hero work with wounds and having just escaped near death situations, now she needs to worry about her daughter entering this world and being put into extreme danger just by existing. This is compounded to Ellen when she watches Maxine’s body get ripped apart by Rot infested wild dogs. While Maxine is capable of recreating her own body within a matter of seconds, no parent ever wants to see such a horrific act, much less to a four-year-old. Despite the danger, Maxine faces The Rot with a brave face and with her family at the centre of her concerns.
Cliff’s perspective of the events differs greatly from his younger sisters, however. Cliff comes across as very cynical, focusing on his phone and passively arguing with his parents. However, this cynical exterior hides a very hopeful but disillusioned little boy. Cliff looked up to his father when he got his Animal Man powers, thinking the powers were amazing. However, when Maxine shows those same abilities, its clear that Cliff feels like the lesser child and is using his cynical attitude as a cover up. While on the run, Cliff uses the remaining battery power of his phone to watch a film his father stars in. A film that centres around a former superhero trying to reconnect and earn the respect of his estranged son. It’s clear that Cliff sees this film as an allegory for his own relationship with his father. Cliff wants to be seen as important in his father’s eyes, and dreams of being able to help him, to make his father proud. But as Maxine’s importance to the universe is explored, Cliff becomes a background character in his own life. Despite this, Cliff does try to break out of being the ‘dead weight child’ and at the climax of the stories second act, its shown that despite his lack of powers Cliff might actually have been the most heroic of the two children. Giving his life so that his family could carry on.
The final arc deals with the death of Cliff from multiple family member’s perspective as well as an avatar of The Red deciding to take control as they wish to shift the balance in the Red’s favour. This twist in the Red itself becoming the enemy, paired with the loss of Cliff feels like a parent’s defiance against a world that took their son away. This final arc acts as the stories biggest meta-narrative component and brings Lemire’s story to an earned conclusion.
Mikayla J. Laird 