Animal Man #4

"The Rot"
The Hunt, Part Four
written by Jeff Lemire
art by Travel Foreman
inks by Jeff Huet and Travel Foreman

Like Swamp Thing's Alec Holland, Buddy Baker finds his family, his personal life, caught in the crossfire of competing life (and un-life) forces, and unfortunately for him, his only teachers in the Red are the Parliament of Limbs, a collection of fused-flesh former avatars.  In the words of Ignatius, a.k.a. Socks, the avatar who chooses to leave the Red to help Baker and Maxine, "No price is too steep to protect the child.  You know that.  Your years here have made you complacent" (Animal Man #4: 14).  Though most may once have been human, they are no longer.  They see only the epic potential of young Maxine and cannot sympathize with Buddy's paternal love, though they have no trouble exploiting it.

She's extremely difficult to like, but the inclusion of Ellen's mother in the Baker family dynamic adds to the credibility of Lemire's Animal Man.  Baker's too damn lovable to warrant his in-law's unfettered criticism, but it can't be easy watching your grandchildren live so close to a world so dangerous.  The irony, of course, is that it's not at all Buddy Baker who's brought the danger into their family, but Maxine herself, for whose protection Buddy was granted the special powers he uses as a superhero.  It certainly undermines the possible validity of Mary Frazier's shrewishness.

Foreman has delivered excellent and creepy artwork for Lemire's unusual anatomical story demands, but here he really gets to shine.  The conclusion to Animal Man's fight with the two Hunters is all flesh and muscly sinews, but it's Maxine's full-page explosion of the Hunters over her father's bloated, misshapen body (4) is beautifully grotesque.  Likewise, the two-page spread illustrating the perversion of the Hunters Three, former avatars of the Red seduced by the promise of power beyond life, is a fine use of negative space and organic, fluid lines (11-12).

[February 2012]