Animal Man

Every Missing Blue Beetle, Doctor Fate, Deathstroke Omnibus & More, Mapped | 2025 Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Poll

May 22, 2025 by krisis

It’s time to map the DC Universe! In June, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 2nd Annual Poll! This post explains every DC Hero from A to E I haven’t already covered in other posts – including Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Doctor Fate, & Deathstroke omnibus mapping – all of which will appear as options on the 2025 poll.

Through the end of May I’ll be covering DC entire publishing history by mapping missing omnibus volumes to fill in every gap in your DC oversize shelf! That’s all leading to the kickoff of the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 2nd Annual Poll on Near Mint Condition the first week of June.

Here’s the full list of the characters this post covers: Adam Strange, Ambush Bug, Amethyst, Angel & The Ape, Animal Man, Arak, Arion, The Atom, Black Adam, Black Lightning, Blue Beetle, Blue Devil, Booster Gold, Cameron Chase, Captain Atom, Captain Carrot, Creeper, Cyborg, Damage, Deadman, Deathstroke, The Demon Etrigan & Demon Knights, Doctor Fate, & Elongated Man.

Vertigo Heroes & The Sandman Universe Omnibus Mapping for the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Poll

May 11, 2024 by krisis

It’s time to explore the darker side of DC – Vertigo heroes and the Sandman Universe omnibuses! I’ll be loosely mapping missing and most-wanted DC omnibus volumes every day until May 19th! Then, on the 19th, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the first annual Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Annual Poll! This post covers omnibuses missing from DC’s in-continuity Vertigo titles – and not creator-owned Vertigo work.

This post explains potential Vertigo heroes and Sandman Universe Omnibus Mapping for votes on the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Secret Ballot. I’m posting all of these maps before the poll begins to give people the time to consider their favorites, correct our mapping mistakes, and catch books I might have missed.

What characters am I including in this broad category? Any Vertigo character who originated in DC continuity or later returned to it. That includes Animal Man, Hellblazer, Shade The Changing Man, Swamp Thing, and the extended Sandman Universe (including Black Orchid, Books of Magic, The Dreaming, Lucifer, & Sandman Mystery Theatre).

If you don’t know DC well enough to know what to vote for, stick around for my explanations! Learn why the team behind the poll decided on these books and titles – including giving us feedback if we missed the mark.

If voting is now open, you can use this as your crib sheet! Or… just find some great comics to read!

Remember: These mappings are just my suggestion of how DC could assemble these books. They are meant to help you decide on your votes and build your personal reading list, but your vote on the poll is NOT an endorsement of my specific map. It’s a vote in favor of DC creating a book with that title or covering that period.

High-effort, heavily-researched, over-the-top comics posts like this one are made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis. For less than the cost of a single comic issue a month you can fuel my in-depth comics coverage, plus gain access to dozens of exclusive collecting guides & reading orders – including all of the Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics.

New For Patrons: Definitive Guide to Animal Man

April 6, 2017 by krisis

Launched just moments ago to my Crushing Comics Club Patrons is a guide to my favorite New 52 hero, Animal Man!

I feel like I’ve always been aware of Animal Man, but had never read a single issue of him prior to Jeff Lemire’s wonderful run in New 52. Putting this guide together was an eye-opening experience about Animal Man’s history, and about ultimately how much of a blank slate he became in the decade after the end of his famous Vertigo series launched by Grant Morrison. The guide includes his every appearance, with brief descriptions of his action to accompany nearly every issue.

Want access to this guide? Right now this guide is planned to be available to the general public in May, but Patrons at the Crushing Comics Club level have access right now!

Definitive Animal Man Collecting Guide and Reading Order

DC New 52 Review: Animal Man #1

September 13, 2011 by krisis

Similar to my avoidance to yesterday’s Justice League International #1, I was really putting off my read of Animal Man.

Past authors (including Action Comics’ Grant Morrison) have done great things with this bizarre mid-60s hero, who harnesses the powers of the animal kingdom, but that simply didn’t sound like a feat that would be repeated by Jeff Lemire in his relaunch about Animal Man as a family guy with a daughter who is developing powers.

Add to that a somewhat hideous front cover, and this book lingered at the bottom of the pile.

Was I right to judge a book by its cover and its solicitation copy written by some intern in Marketing?

Animal Man #1

Written by Jeff Lemire with art by Travel Foreman & Dan Green.

Rating: 4 of 5 – Excellent

In a Line: “Gotta fix those damn floor-boards. For now, I just take on the weight of a bumblebee so I don’t wake the kids.”

140char Review: Animal Man #1 equals former scribe Morrison’s Action Comics #1 at finding sophisticated nuance in DC’s world, here w/an indie & horror tinge

Plot & Script

Lemire knocks this debut plot out of the park with a nuanced first issue that’s absent a major villain but crammed with memorable character beats. He renders Animal Man Buddy Guy as a tangible, relatable family man who occasionally nips out to tackle a problem on the police scanner … but only if he has a freshly laundered costume.

Animal Man’s complex powers are explained with ease during a brief battle as Buddy Baker quickly cycles through sets of animalistic powers (effectively, he can take on the physical ability of any animal he can connect to, scaled to the size of his body). His special confrontational “cocktail” of abilities is not only funny, but a nuanced glimpse at how power sets could really work – not exactly Green Lantern creating a massive emerald fire truck, if you catch my drift.

An extended dream sequence is heavy with portents for future stories and leads to a chilling final panel. Here the affable everyman vibe melts away, and we’re into a fantasy/horror comic. I wasn’t as fond of this, but I took it for what it was – foreshadowing. I wouldn’t expect entire issues to have this tone.

An intro interview with Buddy in the half-hipster half-stodgy style of actual magazine Believer is a treat.

Artwork

Look past the ugly, over-lined cover – the watchword for Foreman and Green’s artwork is “sophisticated.”

Foreman draws Buddy Baker’s domestic world in plaintive, clean-lined panels that would look at home in a b&w indie title. Faces are hyper-real and beautifully clean.

It’s in Buddy’s connection to animals and in his dreams that the cover style emerges, and there it is in context. Faces are cluttered with sketch-marks, with ink crackling across them like razor-fine gashes.

The latter half of Foreman and Green’s artwork may be an acquired taste, but it fits the tone perfectly and sets a beautiful contrast to the cleaner half of the book – especially as it bleeds into Buddy’s waking life.

Foreman communicates so much with faces. Animal Man’s wide, hazy smile during his first outing in costume perfectly captures the conflict between his home life and his heroic adventures.

Credit where due to the colors from Lovern Kindzierski. When Foreman left faces and bodies unlined and open, Kindzierski indicates contrast with varying screens of the same color. Though comics tend to sketch all shadows as black, that’s not how we really see a face – this is!

Animal Man’s new costume is a little awkward – the blue and white colors are great, but the wide stands of the “A” emblem across his hips can give the illusion of his body being oddly proportioned.

Animal Man’s 1965 debut

CK Says: Buy it!

Animal Man completely toppled my pre-opinion of it from its solicitation. I was sure that I was squarely uninterested in the domestic life of a C-list superhero, or the trite passing on of his powers to a young daughter.

I could not have been more wrong.

In a single issue I’m more sold on the split between superhero and family man than I’ve been in anywhere else, aside from perhaps Pixar’s The Incredibles. That Lemire establishes such a compelling “everyman” hero in just a single issue with Buddy Baker is a delight.

Whether the book sticks with the divide between domesticity and heroism or veers to the horror vibe of its cover and creepy final panel remains to be seen, but you should absolutely pick up the next issue to find out.