Tradewaiting – December 18th, 2019 Releases: Complete Comic Champions

Animal Man by Jeff Lemire Omnibus

The New 52 was a fractious initiative. Many of the series felt like padding, while some escaped from its gravity to be remembered as notable runs outside the context of the reboot. DC’s most familiar faces were left alone while their second string were reduced to zero, leaving fans to wonder what still counted, ironically making the launch alienating to some new readers. And, while heroes known around the world threw the baby out with the bathwater, desperately seeking to fit the company’s biggest heroes into a one-size-fits-all mold, some of the forgotten names and genres in DC’s toybox got a chance to do something truly different.

Through the fullness of time, the New 52 has lost something of its significance though. DC even acknowledged in their Rebirth initiative that previous attempts had failed to connect. Eight years later, many stories have been papered over while its offenses have diminished with distance and perspective. Regardless, a few of its series really have stood the test of time.
At the time, Animal Man was almost certainly the biggest success of the New 52–though the meteoric rise of Scott Snyder has admittedly led his Batman run to supplant it for many. Building on the relatable, metatextual foundation that Grant Morrison’s acclaimed run had established some twenty years before, Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman showed us exactly how an ordinary man deals with being the champion of flesh and sinew.
Rather than focus on fourth wall breaking or animal abilities, this was the series that front-lined The Red, the concept of an organic, animalistic force that ties kingdom animalia together in the DC Universe. A counterpoint to Swamp Thing’s Green, The Red was immediately horrifying and visceral in the most literal fashion. Most animals on this planet share a basic body plan and Animal Man was all too happy to show us not only how those bodies were connected by veins and chitin but how they could cease to be and how afraid we are of our very bodies. And it would only grow worse once The Rot took hold.
A family epic that mixed tender moments between parent and child with some ghastly attempts by death to masquerade as life, Lemire and Foreman’s Animal Man took the character (and his family) to the height of their fame and set the tone for the DCU going forward. Throughout the New 52 characters were tied to The Red and The Green, the series hosted one of the first and largest crossover events of the New 52, and DC’s horror landscape has been deeply tied to their parliaments ever since. Despite this, the intimate family focus of the original run has always been the most celebrated manner in which these concepts have been explored.
Lemire’s touching writing and Foreman’s monstrous but controlled art revived the ‘superhero as horror comic’ tone that made the classic proto-Vertigo titles so effective. The series has long been collected in five individual trade paperbacks, but now DC is offering it all in one place with this beautiful (if unfairly named) omnibus collection. If we’re being honest, it’s actually still cheaper to pick up all five trades at full price than to grab this behemoth, but, if you want to be a very generous gift giver your $99.99 gets you the entire saga, all in one place at an increased size, including the previously collected “Rotworld” crossover, an original introduction, and 80+ pages of behind the scenes back matter. Especially if someone loves this series or the distinctive tone it brought to DC, this has certainly been positioned as the premier way to enjoy one of DC’s most unique and celebrated runs of the last decade.
Lemire and Foreman’s Animal Man has faded from memory a bit since it took over the comic book news back in 2011, but whether you’re looking to upgrade or want to let someone experience the story for the first time in its most impressive format, the omnibus provides a reminder of why.