Animal Man #18

"Rotworld: The Red Kingdom Epilogue"
Rotworld
written by Jeff Lemire
art by Steve Pugh

Let it never be said that comics shy away from hyperbole.  As the #18's stark black cover proclaims, "This is the most tragic day in the life of Buddy Baker!"  From its beginning, the strongest part of Lemire's Animal Man run has been the Baker family, particularly since Buddy's one of the very few—startlingly few in retrospect—superheroes to have one.  Throughout the Rotworld arc his wife Ellen and his two children, Cliff and Maxine, have remained his motivation, the solid center in his increasingly concerned Ellen and especially her mother, ever the disapproving mother-in-law.  In the epilogue, this tension comes center stage when, separated from Swamp Thing in the time-travel Death portal, Baker returns to Louisiana, just at the point of Maxine's surrender to the agents of the Rot, in an attempt to save his family.

Like Snyder's Swamp Thing, Lemire's Animal Man eschews the completely happy ending, which the resolution could have provided.  In sending Baker back in time to the crucial moment of his family's destruction, all personal consequences of Arcane's maniacal plan could easily have been undone, fully restoring the Baker family to their pre-Rot state.  The cover's proclamation may be hyperbolic, but it is also likely true.  The tragic consequences of its events will, no doubt, reverberate for a long time in the series, both immediately and in the long view.  They also make revisiting the first few episodes of Lemire's run, which I did upon completion of #18, all the more poignant knowing the future of its characters.

William Arcane has been, for quite a while now in Animal Man, a foil for the Baker children.  His isolation and abandonment by his own family, including but not exclusively his elder sister Abby, has always made him a somewhat sympathetic character in my view, particularly in contrast to the gregarious and loving, if perhaps slightly unconventional, Baker household.  His desire to please Anton Arcane, the only of his relatives seeming to show an interest in his well-being, is all the more perverse for Cliff and Maxine's dedication to their father.  Despite the horror of such a young villain perpetrating such gruesome acts and terrorizing others for most of his story, both Snyder and Lemire have been, in my opinion, less inclined to judge William than they are to underscore the inherent tragedy in his decisions.  This is nowhere more apparent than his appearance here in the Rotworld conclusion, in which Buddy retaliates against a warrior of the Rot who strikes William—"Whatever he did, he was still a little boy!" (Animal Man #18: 12)—and then pays the consequences for his intervention.  Though his fate at the end of the issue is somewhat unclear, William remains one of the more interesting collateral characters in the arc, and even if not right away, I hope that Lemire might later return to him.

In addition to the personal tragedy, which weighs heavy and grounds the issue emotionally, Lemire provides a few surprises regarding the history of the Rot's recent conquest, as two of the Rot's warriors are revealed to be different than expected.  In the words of totem-turned-family-pet Socks, "I've no idea what to make of this" (17).  Though the direction the rest of the issue takes leaves their identity and the mystery of their possession by the Rot to quick speculation, their place in future Animal Man issues is delightfully suggestive.

[May 2013]