Animal Man Annual #2

No wonder my life is in shambles! I can't stop my impulse to photoshop no matter how much time it's going to waste!

Just to keep my nerd cred highly polished, I feel I must point out that that is my Queen of the Demonweb Pits I scanned. One owner. Probably purchased at Kiddie World in San Jose many, many years ago. I bet that toy store had no idea they were turning kids on to Satan! The first time I played Dungeons and Dragons was in my Gifted and Talented Education class in fifth grade in Haman Elementary. My cousin had received the Basic Boxed Set for Christmas but nobody wanted to read the rules to figure out how to play. So once I experienced the game as a player, I was convinced I knew how to play! I was the Dungeon Master for many long years as we slowly learned how to play instead of making up most of the rules. Once we mostly learned how to play, we lost interest in Dungeons and Dragons. We moved on to Boot Hill and Top Secret and Gamma World for a few years before settling down mostly with Warhammer.

Now I'm going to resist reading Dungeon Module Q1 and pretending it's Animal Man Annual #2 and simply read Animal Man #2! I'm taking back control of my life right here and now, whether it's entertaining or not!

The Animal Man Annual begins by telling the story I was hoping Lemire would tell. Buddy Baker depressed and lonely and drinking himself into oblivion in a seedy motel. It's super cheerful and just the kind of shit I love to read in comic books! I'm not sure DC should be allowed to call their products "comic books" anymore. I'm going to sue them so that they have to switch to the term "tragic books." And they can't call them "funny books" anymore either! They'll have to call them "Not Funny Ha-ha but Funny Sad Books."

Once Buddy gets too drunk and too sad, he flashes back to four years previously when he was battling a Cyber Werewolf.

Oh great. It looks like Green Arrow is here too.

Detective Krenshaw (this was before he got eaten by The Three Hunters) fills Animal Man in on the situation. The creature's name is Biowulf because he's super clever and shit. The arrow in his back seems to be left over from his battle with Green Arrow earlier in the week. Which, it may not surprise anybody, he won! But he obviously didn't kill Green Arrow because he wound up taking my New 52 innocence by teaching me that some of DC's Comic Books were going to suck super big time. Especially when they were written by J.T. Krul! I long for my younger days when J.T. Krul's inability to keep himself and his stupid opinions out of his characterization were the only things causing me to flip the fuck out. Long before I discovered my true nemesis, Scott Lobdell. J.T. Krul was just the minor boss villain, easily defeated. I took him down and kicked him out of the DC Universe with my bad ass name calling skills! But Scott Lobdell has proven to be a worthy foe. He enjoys his Superman money far too much to be driven out as easily as Krul was. I'll have to think up some new tactics during The New 52's third year.

Biowulf winds up being Animal Man's J.T. Krul because he puts him down in just a few panels. Biowulf isn't why Animal Man decided to do some remembering anyway after he saw a spider. I don't know what those two things have to do with each other but that's what happened! He's remembering this day because of the time he spent with Cliff. And maybe because on this day four years in the past, he and Cliff battled the Spider Queen! Maybe they just played some Dungeons and Dragons and battled Lolth!

"Make a shaving Throw Vershush Poishon or be enshnared forever in the Abysh ash a tashty morshel for Lolsh!"

On the way home, Buddy and Cliff run into a neighborhood filled with spider webs. While Buddy takes a moment to hallucinate, Cliff and all of the police officers are taken by the spiders. As he heads into the sewers to rescue his boy, he gets a call from Ellen that she's about to give birth to Maxine.

Maybe I was too quick to judge this comic book as a tragedy! It's got all the hallmarks of sitcom! The immature father figure that loses one of the children while playing super hero. The working and responsible wife whose water has just broken and is about to have a baby. The hilarious chaos of trying to get the mother-to-be to the hospital without her finding out that the husband lost their other child. DC should have inserted one of those chips that makes music when you turn the page except filled it with different versions of laugh tracks.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!

The next scene is pretty funny too because Animal Man tries to channel a shark's power and then his head almost explodes from some psychic energy blasting away at him. He should be channeling spider power so he can speak with them and find out what they want. He spoke to a rat earlier. But I guess Buddy is just like all the other heroes. Punch first, engage in intellectually stimulating debate never.

The spiders manage to convince Buddy to follow them and they lead him to The Pregnant Spider Queen! Uh oh! How is Buddy going to explain to his wife that he was off helping another woman deliver her baby? Whoops! I think this issue will end with a "WAH WAH" sound effect with Buddy raising his hands in a "What could I do?" gesture and Ellen saying, "That's our Animal Man!"

Once Buddy sees the Spider Queen is pregnant, he realizes he can't win this battle like he usually does. Because you can't be a super hero and have the headline read, "Animal Man Beats the Shit Out of Pregnant Woman and Steals Her Food." That's the type of true story the media love! One where they never actually lie but they suck the inherent truthfulness out of the story completely. Fuck you, media! You want to know why people trust bloggers and the internet more than newspapers and television news channels? Because you all suck corporate and government dick, that's why! Out here in the Borderlands of the Blogosphere, we don't owe anybody anything! Except maybe hilariously captioned pictures of rabbits in business attire. Or ferrets in Victorian dresses. And even if the local news is always trying to steal the internet's thunder by showing viral videos and cute pictures, they always do so on their own terms at the end of the night. Nobody is going to sit through your awful banter just to get to the internet stuff. You know why? Because we all have the internet! Besides, the local news are always weeks behind the current memes!

So Buddy talks the Spider Queen into leaving people and their dreams alone. She's allowed to keep the dreams she collected today but after that, she can only catch the dreams of cats and rats and horses and other animals. She's very reasonable. Although I find it extremely creepy that Buddy just leaves these giant spiders and their dream sucking mother in the city's sewer system.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!

After Buddy meets his new baby girl, he heads back to move Anansa out of the sewers or else he'd never get another restful night of sleep knowing a giant pregnant spider lady was roaming the sewers underneath his suburb. And back to the future or present or whatever, he decides to pay Anansa and her children a visit. Probably to learn what Cliff's dream was that he found so exciting but he couldn't remember because Buddy let Anansa keep it.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!

And so... he dreamed the dream again... for one last time. It didn't matter that there was no flying ... or Dungeons and Dragons Modules ... or Cliff. The Spider Queen saw Cliff. He did not. He saw nothing but the death of hope. And the loss of his son. And so he dreamed the dream until the sun began to set... and all the monsters were dead.

Animal Man Annual #2 Rating: The Great Hall gives it three birds that say, "Birds can't talk!"