Animal Man #5

"Food Chain"
The Hunt, Conclusion
written by Jeff Lemire
art by Travel Foreman and Steve Pugh
inks by Jeff Huet

"Food Chain" certainly raises the stakes for Animal Man's gruesome horror.  So far, this series has demonstrated a gift for slight suggestions to make your skin crawl.  The third Hunter's tongue-tentacle creeping up Ellen Baker's nose, for instance, is unnervingly gross.  However, the vision the emissary of the Rot gives to Buddy Baker is genuinely horrific.  If his bloated and puss-filled face weren't horrible enough, the vision of his Rot-corrupted daughter literally eating his still-living face off his skull is monstrous.  Since no superhero comic in history has ever allowed its villain to triumph so completely, the veracity of this vision is undoubtedly to be questioned, but it nevertheless presents Animal Man with a dangerous conundrum, one that potentially pits the survival of the world and his young daughter against the lives of the rest of his family, including his own.

Maxine, stronger than even she yet knows, feels her father is losing his fight and summons the animals in the woods around her grandmother's farm to his defense.  Unfortunately, this proves to be a trick of the Rot, which nests itself in those same living creatures, essentially hijacking them, infecting them like a plague.  And, also like a plague, this threat spreads.  Once it has been introduced into the animal kingdom, it will spread like wildfire until all the Red is infected by the perversion.  The Rot, as the Hunter so proudly proclaims as it is being devoured by the wildlife, has already won.

However harsh Mary Frazier is to Buddy in his absence, in the crisis itself the woman comes through, even showing a little of her humor.

Cliff notices former avatar of the Red, Socks, talking:  "The cat talks!"
Mary, clutching the cross around her neck:  "That you're surprised by?"
(Animal Man #5: 13)

She's a difficult woman to like, an easy one to understand, but when she cries after having to leave her dog behind in their sudden escape from her home, she's incredibly sympathetic.  After all, no one likes to see a dog die.

[May 2012]