Animal Man

Animal Man (Eng. " animal man ") is the title of a series of comic publications are issued by the U.S. publisher DC Comics since 1965.

The focus of the comics to Animal Man, which go back to the Americans Dave Wood (or France Herron ) and Carmine Infantino, is a man named Buddy Baker, who has a gift ( super power), the capabilities of all animals with which he in Contact comes to imitate.

While Animal Man comic books were originally created as an entertaining Science-Fiction/Fantasy-Stoff, standing since the late 1980s, when Animal Man was transformed into an "adult comic", especially socially critical topics. Naturally treats the series, especially problems that are derived from the ratio of animals and humans arise. Recurring aspects are about the theory of evolution, or the question of the moral commandments awareness of the vegetarian lifestyle and the transferability of animal experiments. Further philosophical reflections are also repeatedly interspersed Man comics to the animal, so be metaphysical discussions on the " fundamental questions of being" hired and is broken into self-referential digressions the so-called fourth wall, which is actually the fictional plot within the comics from the reality of ( outside of fiction standing ) creators and readers separates them.

Publication data

The first Animal Man story was published in September 1965 in issue # 180 of Strange Adventures, a series that was equipped as a "colorful potpourri " with different series varied contents. Author of this story and creator of Animal Man was either the author or the author Dave Wood France Herron, the then wrote the stories for Strange Adventures. Since the former comic books contained no information box that the enumerated at their contributors could be no clear identification of the author of this story until today. The drawings of the story, however, were (secured ) done by the penciler Carmine Infantino and George Roussos the Tuscher who also developed the visual appearance of Animal Man. In the following years every once appeared Animal Man stories in Strange Adventures, no that the figure was a sonderliche resonance.

Until the 1980s, Animal Man then came mainly as a " guest star " in series such as Wonder Woman on.

1988, the Scottish writer Grant Morrison was assigned to the character of Animal Man generalzuüberholen to put them at the center of a " mature " comic book series aiming at an adult audience. Developed by Morrison new concept was finally marketed in a eponymous short series called Animal Man, DC published from September 1988 to November 1995. The series, originally planned as a four-part mini-series, was due to surprisingly good sales figures in a regular, ongoing indefinite time series, inverted, and eventually reached eighty-nine editions. For identification of the more adult nature of the series it was issued from issue # 57 from 1993 within DCs mature readers label Vertigo.

Morrison wrote the issues # 1-26 ( 1988-1990) conceived by him Animal Man series Thereafter he handed the job to the British writer Peter Milligan (# 27-32 ), the Tom Veich (# 28-45 ), Jamie Delano (# 46-74 ) and Jerry Prosser nachfolgten. The visual representation of the stories of Morrison took over the artist Chas Truog, together with the technical pens Doug Hazlewood and Tom Grummett. Later signatories were Steve Dillon ( Veich - Run) and Steve Pugh ( Delano - Run). The covers of the series finally were designed by the British artist Brian Bolland.

After this series setting Animal Man was reinstalled as a guest character in the series other characters like Resurrection Man or JLA, before 2006, together with the sci-fi hero Adam Strange and Starfire ( a sort of space Amazone ) at the center of a feature of the anthology series has been made 52. Currently, Animal Man is one of the three main characters of the series written by Adam Beechen '' Countdown to Adventure ''.

Plot and main character

The Animal Man stories begin with the fact that the Americans Bernhard " Buddy" Baker finds a crashed spaceship. Immediately after, he finds that he has gained through contact with the alien vehicle the amazing ability to stay temporarily to acquire the properties and capabilities of all known animal by mere concentration and make -to-use. Among the animal abilities, which he uses include the skills of dinosaurs ( starch), skunks ( stink ), eels (electricity), ( regrow lost body parts ) worms, birds ( fly ) fishing (buoyancy ), and snakes ( agility ).

The body set up by Morrison Modern Animal Man differs markedly from the type of the " standard superhero ": Unlike most superheroes, where they are childless singles, Buddy Baker has in Morrison a wife, Ellen, and two children, the son of Cliff and the daughter Maxine.

Very much the plot of Animal Man was mixed to this moral and political appeals. So Morrison drops the title character propagate the vegetarian lifestyle and walk him as an advocate of animal rights very far-reaching steps: To Animal helps Man in a story of a group of self-proclaimed eco-terrorists while a dolphin hunters fleet to attack and is a fisherman whose cruelty shocked him, the drowning rate, which this only survived because he is just saved by a dolphin.

Reprints

Since 2001 DC Comics has written by Grant Morrison Animal Man stories reprinted as anthologies.

• Animal Man Book 1 -. Animal Man, New York, 2001 (contains Animal Man # 1-9)
• Animal Man Book 2 -. Origin Of The Species, New York 2002 ( Animal Man # 10-17 and includes a story from the book Secret Origins # 39)
• Animal Man Book 3 -. Deus Ex Machina Animal Man, New York, 2003 (contains Animal Man # 18-26)