Animal Man #19

This cover is a dick.

Animal Man, a recap:

Issues #1-17: Foreshadow Cliff's Death.
Issue #18: Cliff Dies.
Issue #19: I haven't fucking read it yet. Hold on to your horses!

For the first year and a half of DC Comics Reboot, The Suicide Squad has successfully managed to kill one person. In the last two months, people have been dropping all over the place! Damian Wayne. Matu Ba. Cliff Baker. Umm. Okay, maybe not ALL over the place. But that's a whole lot more than Suicide Squad and none of these other comic books have "suicide" in the title! Adam Glass, you are a failure! Get with the keeping people dead already! I'm tired of your plot revolving around Amanda Waller creating a resurrection serum so that she never has to deal with a dead teammate ever again. The whole point of the Suicide Squad is to kill people and thus keep an entertaining, ever-shifting group of B Grade Super Villains! You have failed at Suicide Squad 101. I guess it is a reboot though and you decided to take it in a different direction. Well, whatever direction you headed in, all it did was get you lost.

Animal Man begins with six depressing panels. I imagine the rest of the panels are also going to be depressing. I think I've had enough funerals and graveside chats in my comic books the last couple of months.

If life doesn't suck enough for anyone right now, let me help make it more horrible with the following cavalcade of sadness.

That's probably enough sadness for one commentary. I very much doubt it's all the sadness that this issue can dish out though. Buddy Baker has always been about family and now his family is gone. How long will it last? Will Ellen's mom convince her to get back with Buddy? Will Buddy simply turn into a squirrel and go live in a park, eventually forgetting that he was ever human? Will Maxine and Socks bring Cliff back to life as a zombified, monstrous horror? I suppose the most probable thing will be Buddy going crazy, trying to figure out a way to bring Cliff back so Ellen will take him back, and completely screwing it up in that zombified monstrous horror way I mentioned last sentence.

Come on, Socks! A dog would help Maxine bring back Cliff.

While Maxine ponders blasphemy, Buddy heads into the Red to fix his family. Since Ellen wants to be normal and have a normal life, perhaps Buddy is going to ask the Parliament of the Red if there is a way to take on the burden of the Avatar of the Red himself so that Maxine can be normal. It's possible he'll first want the powers taken away from both of them. But DC isn't going to let that happen. I don't think Animal Man is a good enough character to support his own comic book. This book is all about Buddy Baker.

As he enters The Red, his first thought is to try to convince the Totems to find a new Animal Man. As I just said, I believe that won't happen so he'll have to modify his request to somehow take the burden off of Maxine, letting Ellen and Maxine have a normal life even if he can't be with them. So he barges in and tells them what's what and how it's going to be!

That doesn't work out very well for him.

Buddy Baker is sent packing from The Red and isn't welcome back until the Totems call him. He's banished and he loses his link to The Red. He's now lost his family but worst of all, he's lost his connection to every other living thing. What must such a loss feel like? Cut off from everything just like everybody else. Except Buddy isn't used to it. It's like immediately losing your sense of smell. Eventually he'll hardly notice a difference. But right now, he's probably overwhelmed by the loss. Now he's simply a cross between Vixen and Beast Boy. Just another super hero and just another lonely human being.

Animal Man #19 Rating: No change. Here's what I would do with this comic book now. I'd send Buddy Baker off into a downward spiral, living in a motel, drinking constantly, ignoring the world entirely. Change the name of the comic book to "Animal Girl and Socks" and concentrate on their small, neighborhood adventures where Maxine learns to use her powers while fixing problems for local animals like Squirrels and Raccoons. Socks will use this time to train her and Maxine will constantly be hiding her powers from her mom. Have Maxine experiment with bringing Cliff back and have him come back as a worm or a goldfish but with the ability to think and speak like old Cliff. Maxine has to hide Cliff from her mom but she takes him with her to school and on adventures. Every few months, Maxine will try to help return Cliff to being a boy and he'll become a larger creature. Maybe he'll go from fish to small bird to gerbil to hamster to guinea pig to whatever. Ellen might still be in mourning but she'd be a background character that Maxine is mostly just trying to avoid since Maxine knows she has a responsibility to the world as the Avatar of the Red. Perhaps Ellen's mom could discover the secret of Cliff and she'd see how important Maxine's role is and how serious Maxine is taking it. So Ellen's mom will begin looking for Buddy to bring him back to the family and make everything all right again. There would be no more tragedy. Fuck tragedy. I'm tired of tragedy. I want silliness and whimsy and fun and I think Maxine and Socks would be great as title characters of their own comic book.