Animal Man #29

When will The Bakers be allowed to live happily ever after?

I'm tired of death and the destruction of the universe being the bars by which we judge the tribulations in a super hero's life. Why can't they battle and rage against the daily downturns which make life truly difficult for the rest of us? Like when I hit the McDonald's drive-thru at three in the morning for a one dollar iced tea and they're out of iced tea because they're assholes? And what do I do when I find out that information but now I'm stuck behind other cars in the drive-thru!? Even if I could get out of this entanglement, where do I go to get cheap, shitty tea now?! At least McDonald's Ice Tea is just $1 for a giant tankard of it. Every place else charges over two dollars! For tea that was probably brewed hours ago, sitting and steeping in an atmosphere thick with meat particles and the disdain and contempt of fast food employees! I can accept tea that tastes like the bottom of a 1970s car ashtray or the horse's side of a leather saddle if it cost one dollar and is nice and cold. But anything more than a dollar is an outrageous affront to usury laws! I think. Probably not. But it might as well be! So change the definition of usury until my complaint makes sense, you assholes in Washington! Always keeping me down with proper definitions of usury laws.

That may have turned into an inconsequential rant about the inability to find drinkable iced tea at three in the morning and distracted you from the original point, so let me get back to the crux of that point: why does DC feel everything has to be so grim to be interesting? Let's look at last week's comics as examples.

Justice League of America: Stargirl dealing with the death of her brother while her cohorts are trapped inside a Slash Fiction Matrix. I think the message was supposed to be a bit uplifting in that Stargirl is full of hope and youthful passion and how her parents accepted her choice to become a super hero because they believe in her goodness. But it's still kind of a downer seeing as how her brother died and the world is falling apart.

Green Lantern Corps: The entire universe is once again threatened as the Corps has been misrepresented, leading to a universal uprising against them. So, once again, the Lanterns are teetering on universal destruction. Although this cosmic crisis might be more of an "I can't get good iced tea in the wee hours" level of crisis for these assholes.

Batgirl: A little girl was murdered and turned into a vampire and then murdered again as a vampire. Fun!

Nightwing: This issue was a great, uplifting, kind of seriously revisionist look at Nightwing and who he is. Great stuff! But it centered around a little girl's parents being murdered by Zsasz. Sad face reverse smiley smoking gun. Hmm, Gina from Brooklyn 99 is right! Speaking in emojis really improves language!

Constantine: While the world falls apart around his ears, Constantine kills an old friend and lover just before plummeting into Hell. Good times!

Superboy: Joke-El, the new Superboy, is recruiting a new Twisted Legion of Super Knock-offs to kill all super humans and enslave all of space and time. Full of super warm fuzzies! On a good note, he's looking to kill Harvest. I'd say that's a shining city on a hill positive beacon of special hugs.

Batman: A story about the beginning of The Riddler's career and how he may have amassed a larger body count in his opening gambits than The Joker has across his entire career. Lots of death and destruction and Batman weeping into his Grimdark Cereal with Marshmallow Bats.

Justice League 3000: This comic definitely has an upbeat, goofy vibe to it but let me provide a closer examination to what's really going on in this thing: civilians' identities are being erased so that Justice League 3000 members can be created and recreated. So it's basically a comic book about eugenics experiments during a backdrop of war and universal rebellion.

Ms. Marvel: Okay, this isn't a DC Comic book. But guess what? That's why it's not dealing with death and destruction! This is just the story of a teenaged girl trying to figure out who she is as she's caught in a tug of war between her private life of her parents' traditional values and her public life amid the devil-may-care American culture she's surrounded by. So far no death and destruction although that Terigen Fog was kind of weird.

Suicide Squad: The entire story revolves around the toilet. It also has "suicide" in its name. Two characters apparently die while the rest are once again subjugated and forced into service by Amanda Waller. Also the world is still falling apart over here! But really, I'd be an idiot to expect anything less than death and destruction in a series called Suicide Squad! Although Giffen did attempt that over a decade ago. People didn't respond well. I liked it though!

Harley Quinn: Harley has a bit of trouble fitting in to her two new jobs as she gets caught up in murder, kidnapping, and a serious hit and run. Even with all that violence, this one has a fun attitude and isn't grim at all! Go figure!

Pandora: More end of the world shenanigans. Nobody whining about iced tea or blisters on their toes. Lots of mystical mumbo jumbo. It wasn't really grim but it wasn't really much of anything. Just a lot of Felix Faust screaming about the length of his dick.

Maybe I should just do mini-reviews like these and stop with all the lengthy commentaries! Holy fuck! I could get my life back! I'll think about it. Until then, on to Animal Man!

Just as Ellen was beginning to accept this crazy, wacky family, Buddy changes it all up again!

I'm sad that Maxine won't get to be Animal Girl anymore. I bet she'll be sad too! Her father just brokered a deal to remove her powers and take her friend Socks away from her! He'd better not return home empty handed. He needs to find a gift for her and that gift had better be Cliffy! Although I was just coming to terms with his death so that my throw my emotional equilibrium out of whack if he suddenly gets to live again.

Ellen seems happy with the deal. Her daughter is safe now. Buddy can still be a superhero but he's got to go back to their original agreement that he keeps the crazy, dangerous stuff away from the family. Because he had so much control over keeping up his end of that deal before! Maxine seems okay with not having any more Animal Powers. At least for now. When her father comes in to check on her, she seems worried about him and decides to tell him a story about a princess and her father in Lemireland.

Maxine's story about working her way through the grief over the loss of her brother.

Maxine's story is that bullshit story parents tell their children so they don't have to actually explain the horror of the brevity of existence. Cliff may be dead but he's happy somewhere else. And one day when Maxine is lucky enough to die, she'll finally get to see him again in the happiest place ever! Hooray for the greatest fable of all: the continuance of the ego! It makes grief palatable!

After the story, Buddy says goodnight to Ellen and Maxine and a spider. He also catches and releases a spider which is the most important lesson of all here! You don't have to be afraid and death does not have to be the response to fear even if you do! I won't pretend that the spider might somehow be Cliff because that's too easy a response to how this ends. Death and fear are far more complicated than believing that your personality somehow transcends the limit of your organic shell, either by becoming an incorporeal being that resides in paradise or resurrects as another life form here on Earth. Seeing those as answers is merely looking at the question through a desire to retain ones sense of self. The true power in Buddy's freeing the spider from the home and setting it free is in his acceptance of letting Cliff go. He's releasing him from the confines of the family's need for him. The freeing of the spider is a symbolic act which shows one does not have to be ruled by death and fear. It is also respect for the existence of ego, no matter how small that ego may be. Crushing a spider ends the universe. At least from the spider's point of view. To do so out of carelessness and fear is to disrespect that which the great gift we have in common with it: a spectacularly brief existence. Who are we to make that existence any briefer?

Animal Man #29 Rating: +1 Ranking. It's always nice to see Lemire put on the penciller's cap. And it was nice to see the family come together in acceptance of all that has come before rather than trying to deny any part of it. Maxine tells a nice story, even if I don't buy into the idea that Cliff still exists somehow, somewhere. I also don't believe in elves but I can still enjoy Middle Earth.