Animal Man, Vol 2 Animal Vs. Man is weird, creative and wonderful

Animal Man, Vol 2 Animal Vs Man is the graphic novel that collects issues 7-11 in the series.  Buddy is Animal Man, a somewhat normal hero who can channel various powers from the animals.  Maxine is his daughter who, in addition to Buddy can interact with The Red.  The Red connects humans and animals and allows animal powered heroes to get their powers.  Socks is their cat, who is actually a Totem who can speak to them about The Red and things that will happen to them.

Are you confused yet?  If you are don’t worry, just go with it because Animal Man is the best comic I’ve read from The New 52 re-launch of DC.   The art is imaginative and varied, with some panels taking up entire pages and angles that shift from page to page.  The story breezes between periods of psychadelia, cool monsters, family life, violence and elements of horror.

Much like the Frog brothers, I’m not into horror comics.  Animal Man is not horror per sea, but some of the images are bloody and show animals inside out or in various stages of morphing into something else.

An example of this is Buddy floating through a red world until he meets The Shepherd, where they cross a red lake on raft of bones.  When the story cuts back to the family, who is relatively safe in the modern world we experience the frustrations they have as a family, with a talking cat who can tell the future.

Buddy’s family is normal.  There’s a son who wants to brag (and score girls) by telling the world that his father is Animal Man.  Ellen is the wife who tried to keep a level head.  Ellen’s mother is traveling with them in the RV too as they’re on the road, trying to figure out if they should hook up with JLA or let Maxine get closer to The Red.

This book was awesome.  It was strange enough to really allow you get lost in their very different world, yet not too weird or violent to turn off readers who don’t dig that sort of book.  Some of the art was very graphic, so this is not the comic that your kids should read, but it’s also not as dark as a mature comic.  Teens would be able to handle this book, but it certainly all depends on their maturity.

Animal Man has moved up on our monthly ‘want’ list of comics.  If any of our current books start to lose steam we’ll switch over to it ASAP.

We received a digital copy of Animal Man Vol 2 Animal Vs. Man for review purposes from NetGalley.