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From SCIFIPEDIA
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Animal Man is a fictional comic book superhero owned by DC Comics.
He can pull out any animal ability he wants from the animal kingdom, and employ it towards his own end. He usually doesn’t change his appearance when he does this. For example, when taking a bird's ability to fly, he does not sprout wings, but simply propels himself through the air. When he was first created, he could only borrow abilities of animals in his vicinity, but later developed the ability to tap into the “morphogenetic field”, which was sometimes referred to as “The Red”, which is a kind of a collective life force of the animal kingdom. He has proven to have the ability to draw on the field of any planet, but cannot draw on Earth’s field when he is off-planet. While on Earth, he can even draw on the ability of extinct animals, like when he summoned the strength of a tyrannosaurus rex. He can also draw on animals that exist in space when that’s where he is located.
Character Origin
Animal Man is Buddy Baker, who begins as a hunter who can’t find the courage to propose to his girlfriend, Ellen. Later, on a hunting trip, he experiences an exposure to some kind of radiation from an alien space ship. Buddy discovers that he can mimic the ability of nearby animals. He uses this ability to help round up some escaped circus animals, as well as ending the rampage of an alien being, supposedly from that same space ship. At the end of the story, his animal powers fade and he proposes to Ellen and is accepted.
In his second appearance, another group of aliens accidentally stimulates his animal powers, and Buddy was in the super-hero game.
Animal Man became aware of himself as a fictional character.
History
Buddy only made about five appearances in Strange Adventures before his stories were discontinued. He began to make occasional appearances in the DC Universe about ten years later, in places like Wonder Woman # 267-268 (1980), and was a member of a group called “The Forgotten Heroes” for the first time in Action # 552 (1984) in an offbeat idea by writer Marv Wolfman. Essentially, this was a group of hero characters that were never very successful, but had short runs somewhere in a DC comic book, and were remembered fondly by comic creators.
Innovative writer Grant Morrison began Buddy in his own comic book series, Animal Man in 1988. The stories were different, to say the least. Grant established Buddy as an everyman in a crazy comic book universe, with his wife, Ellen, now with two young children, Cliff (age 10} and Maxine (age 6). Under Morrison, Buddy began to sympathize more with the animals whose abilities he would borrow. He became a vegetarian, refused to wear leather, and was involved in the animal rights movement.
Morrison was at his strangest when he explored the relationship between a comic book character and his creator. This involved Buddy becoming aware of himself and other DC Universe characters as fictional characters. The Animal Man issues written by Morrison are highly regarded, and are available in trade paperback at most comic stores.
The series got so popular for a while, that Buddy was even part of the concurrent incarnation of the Justice League for about a year. This led to scenes like the one with Martian Manhunter, showing up at his door to supervise the installation of a Justic League Transporter in Buddy's home. The contrast of the large green alien to the mundane setting of the Baker home served to emphasize the strange duality of Buddy's existence. The expression on Ellen's face was priceless!
When Grant Morrison left the book after issue #26, Animal Man continued its tradition of strange and unique plots and motifs. It became one of the books, along with Swamp Thing and Hellblazer, that helped establish the Vertigo label, which is DC’s special “mature audiences” line for horror and fantasy. The series lasted 89 issues in all.
Since the book’s cancellation, Buddy has appeared in the DC Universe from time to time. He became a more active player in the DC Universe in the limited series Infinite Crisis (2005), as well as the year long 52 (2006). The latter kept the tradition of Buddy balancing a very weird existence, with his normal family life.
The weirdness continued in the Countdown to Adventure (2007) limited series, featuring Animal Man, Starfire, and Adam Strange and its sequel The Rann-Thanagar Holy War in 2008.
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
