Grant Morrison, Chas Truog, Tom Grummett, et al — Animal Man - Page 6

You can't throw a rock at a page of Animal Man without hitting some nut who wants to bury the space-time continuum in gray matter. You may remember the Red Mask's friend--The Veil? An insubstantial avatar, to be sure. He's got the vision. But he's terminally lacking in the power department. Spoons his eyes out when he can't take it anymore...


The Time Commander is another story entirely. I believe I've read somewhere (haven't I?) that he's supposed to be a version of Dr. Manhattan--that makes sense, he certainly possesses the latter's enlarged temporal awareness--but he's not content (as the blue guy was) to keep this to himself: "There is no death! Love denies entropy! Through love, we abolish death!" uhhh... no dude! Through love, we give meaning to death--without love, death would be meaningless. And love needs time to grow. Yes, the man does beautiful things for people in this story--mourners steal moments with dead spouses, parents, pets...unfortunately, he's also turning Paris into a version of the whacko cartoon world that Crafty opted out of! "We've just seen German tanks and cavemen chasing Jean-Paul Sartre... The French Revolution's happening right around the corner!" Is there any doubt that the "final transformation" this man is preaching would fulfill the art martyr's mission?


Next up we've got the Psycho-Pirate--whose memory defies the raging current generated by the Big Bang of the Crisis... The end of time is bad enough, but the convergence of every dimension upon one poor asylum is catastrophic! How many story angles can dance on a pinhead? The Psycho-Pirate resolves to find out--chanting the names of the abolished dimensions... Meanwhile, Buddy walks through his own past trying to warn his family of the dangers that await them--unable to make himself known to them, like George Bailey in IAWL; or Scrooge in the Past; or Mary Henry in Carnival of Souls... There's a simple message here: "Time is cruel"... But the desire to go back is crueller still...and the desire to forget is worst of all... Only the (often jagged) ground of remembrance gives meaning to the present, gives us the power to be kind... There really aren't any other options--just canonball dives into loneliness and the void. Solipsism. There is no death 'cause I made this--and every choice is up to me. Emerson trod this path for years, off and on, but he could never quite rinse the dirt from his first wife's grave off of his fingernails--and if he had, he wouldn't have had much to say now would he...

Finally, from out of the catacombs of the Psycho-Pirate's hubristic mind comes the Overman--a memory that even this mad conjuror wants to repress...but the floodgates are open, and the super-demon leaks out, armed with a warhead. Ranting, drooling: "IvegotthebombIvegotthebomb", he stalks around the asylum, boasting of his plans... It's a clear case of unchecked ontological aggression upon the phenomenal world--the Overman comes to bomb Morrison's humane society back to the stone age.

Article Author: David Fiore

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