Animal Man #21

Does this cover make sense?

I understand this cover because right now I feel there is no escape from the fucking guitar playing asshole downstairs who thinks this house is a music studio. It's not really his fault. I'm just being irrationally angry because that's what I do in these commentaries. The soundproofing in this old house is shit and I'm way too oversensitive when it comes to sounds. Now sometimes he can get really loud to where it's just not respecting the other people living here. At that time I usually do some fanciful, whirlwind ballet around the living room. I'm thinking about drilling a small hole in the floor and filling his apartment with ticks. But I don't think you can buy ticks anywhere! Plus I don't want to have to look at a tick. If I were Animal Man, I would just channel the revulsion of ticks! Everybody would just run screaming from him as he entered a fight. Except for bug scientists. I think bug scientists have a flip switched in their brain so when everybody feels revulsion and fright from a weird bug, they feel wonder and excitement.

Ticks are actually the only insects that I've encountered face to face that actually freak me out. I'm fine with spiders and actually like a certain amount of them in the house. Of course if they look like they want to poison me with their deadly venom, they wind up in a cup and out the window. Oh! Maybe I'll try to drop one in the neighbor's hair when he goes to do laundry! No, I can't conscript a spider to my own nefarious purposes. But ticks! I'd use those ugly bastards against their will! As my mom says, "We all have to be prejudiced against someone!" I'm prejudiced against ticks. She's prejudiced against Middle Easterners. So her advice might not actually be very wise. Maybe you should just ignore it.

Buddy Baker is still taking my advice on how to deal with Cliff's death: disassociate and drink himself into oblivion. My advice might not actually be very wise either.

Buddy's agent calls to try to get him out to the awards show since he's up for Best Actor in Tights. But Buddy isn't interested in his movie career. He's interested in saving animals! He sees a story in the paper about animals being abducted all around Los Angeles, so he puts on his costume and heads out into the night. Just because he's Animal Man, why is he expected to care about animals? His name doesn't come from loving animals! It's because he can use the natural abilities of animals. I guess that doesn't mean that he can't care about them too. He is vegan after all, isn't he? Maybe he's just a slacker vegan. You know, a vegetarian! I'm a slacker vegetarian. That just means I'll eat meat on occasion.

One of the reasons I continue to try to think of myself as a vegetarian instead of somebody who very rarely eats meat is because if I dropped the "label", I'd probably go back to eating way too much meat. This way, I eat meat maybe once a month. Lately it's been more like once a week since I've been eating a lot of meals and/or pizza slices that are mostly vegetarian but then throw on bacon. I actually ordered a pasta dish a couple of weeks ago because it had artichoke hearts in it and I wanted that. It was a special and listed everything in it and it contained no meat. So it arrived and I began eating it and it had bacon in it. So I let the waitress know that she should probably update the board because somebody is going to have a very bad day if they accidentally eat this swine. Instead of shrugging my shoulders, I should have blamed them on my slipping away from strict vegetarianism! Damn restaurant! They ruined my life!

Maxine doesn't have anything to do with the missing animals in Los Angeles because she has moved to Sacramento with her mom and her grandmother and her Socks. Her mother Ellen thinks that taking Maxine away from Buddy and San Diego will divorce Maxine from the weirdness and danger of Buddy's life. She really has yet to understand that Maxine IS the weirdness and danger in Buddy's life! He's the only person who understands what she's going through and how to protect her, not only from outside forces that would harm her but from the manipulations of the Totems as well. I guess she still has Socks although Socks' loyalties might be a bit divided, being a Totem himself. I'm sure once Ellen sees the freaky crap Maxine gets up to without Buddy around, she might finally begin to understand that Buddy didn't choose or create any of this mystic nonsense.

Late at night, instead of sleeping, Maxine takes a trip with Socks into The Red to speak with the Totems. She wants permission to look for Cliff in The Red and bring him back, much the same way she brought herself back several issues ago.

Feisty!

Meanwhile Buddy Baker has taken the power of investigating feet from the cats in the neighborhood and is on the hunt for the missing pets.

My grandfather's World War II codename was Mr. Whiskerface!

Buddy Baker flies off to find Mr. Whiskerface and the other cats with equally dignified cat names but all he finds are THE SCREAMS FROM THE ANIMAL MADHOUSE! They're apparently really loud and hurt his head something awful. Especially the bunny screams. I mean seriously. Who would ever guess such a horrific scream could come from such a cute widdle fuzzy bwall of fwur!

Maxine meets with The Totems and declares her intention of finding Cliff. If she's going to be Animal Girl, she also needs Socks and Shepherd to help her. Also, she can only train and do Animal Girl stuff at night or she'll be grounded. The Totems agree to her conditions because they think they can control her. Obviously they've never had to deal with a five year old before. They're going to be begging Buddy Baker to come back and take his place as steward of the position until Maxine is older.

Back to Animal Man and his investigation, he discovers a warehouse full of the missing animals, slaughtered and cut up and experimented on. The psychic screams were all the pain and torture these animals experienced in this place. Hopefully Mr. Whiskerface is still okay! The perpetrator of the animal kidnappings and tortures and mutilations is a man-thing that has grafted a little bit of all the animals to his body. I guess he wants the title of Animal Man for himself.

Fuck man. He can have it.

Visceral Animal Man escapes and when Buddy goes after him, he's surrounded by paparazzi that through social media clues and sightings have followed him to the Animal Madhouse.

Animal Man #21 Rating: +1 Ranking. I'm really looking forward to more Maxine and Socks dealing with the Totems in this comic book. It'll feel a little short each month, but I'd welcome half of the comic devoted to Maxine and half of the comic devoted to Buddy right now. I figure whatever they're going through, their quests will become entangled and they'll help save Cliffy and Ellen will happily invite Buddy back into the family when she realizes Maxine needs him because her gifts aren't going anywhere just by denying them. Was that sentence too long? Fuck it. Commentary over!