Product Description

From Grant Morrison, creator of The Invisibles and writer of New X-Men and JLA, comes a classic tale of a man whose struggle to save human lives becomes something more...Buddy Baker is Animal Man, able to take on the characteristics of any creature he touches. After some time away from high-profile heroics, he decides to get back into costume - much to the chagrin of his wife and son - and is soon involved in a series of dangerous and exciting adventures. But Buddy has some decisions to make, and some shocks to come; because for the first time, he's listening to the animals. And he doesn't like what he's hearing...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154215 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Grant Morrison is one of comics' most innovative writers. His long list of credits include JLA, Doom Patrol and Judge Dredd, prior to his largest masterpiece, The Invisibles. Author of the award-winning Batman: Arkham Asylum, Morrison is currently writing the US' bestselling comic, Marvel Comics' New X-Men.

Customer Reviews

Morrison's first American comics work
Grant Morrison's first American work is represented here in this graphic novel. While ostensibly a superhero, Buddy Baker, and, latterly, Doom Patrol, along with Neil Gaiman's Sandman, were the impetus for DC to create their 'mature' Vertigo line. This is now packaged as a Vertigo item - a fact rather at odds with its' contents.
To begin with we have a four-part, animal rights-leaning, superhero story, with all the requisite fights, Superman appearance, etc. It's very well done, nice dialogue, interesting basic concept, and so on... then we get 'The Coyote Gospel', which is nothing short of an apotheosis for both Morrison, and, causally, comicbooks. A metatextual critique of Warner Bros. cartoons, among other things - what more can any discerning reader want? This one story raises the bar, for Animal Man and for the form, and is followed through on by the quite wonderful, Crowley-fronticed 'Birds of Prey', and a couple of interesting, fun sidelines into the life of a family man turned superhero, dealing with failed old supervillains, and property security.
Some recurrent themes of Morrison's become apparent in this work: fractal geometries, planes of existence, etc., but the work is performed with a fantastic lightness of touch. And! Scottish readers, features a Glaswegian bad guy, using phrases which I must imagine sound like nonsense to the American ear. Great.

Brilliant!
Grant does it again, with another excellent animal man set. Highly recommended to anyone who likes reality warping/post-modern fiction or any other Morrison work (though you should read the first two animal man's to understand it). Funny, sad, confusing and halluceogenic

The dawning of Vertigo
What we have here is a TPB that reprints one of the earliest works of Grant Morisson, now famous mostly for "Invisibles". Morisson took an already existing, but underused and relatively anonimous, character that is named Animalman and he tried to make him into something more appealing to people/readers. A goal in which he succeeded reasonably well. This trade makes clear why Animalman later turned out to be suitable for the Vertigo-line, the 'feel' is already here. Overall it is a pretty good read. There are 9 issues in here with 6 of them good, 1 superb and 2 a little less. The flaw of those two issues that aren't that great is that they are both part of a multi-series cross-over DC had going at that time named "Invasion". These issues are a little hard to place without reading the rest of the cross-over. The other issues are a very nice read for both people who are into superheroes as for people who are more orientated outside the superhero-scene. ONE issue named "The Coyote Gospel" stands out because it is THAT good. It's a great tale about an animal who everybody fears but turns out to be the only reason mankind as it is still exists. Full of methaphors and symbolism it's one of the better issues there is from the early days of Vertigo. I'd recommend this trade to people who are into Vertigo and to people who like to read about the more human side of superheroes. If you are in one of those categories you'll probably like this trade.