Last Issue Special # 14: Animal Man

SERIES: Animal Man

DATE: 1995

THOSE RESPONSIBLE: Jerry Prosser (writer), Lou Strathis (Editor)

CATEGORY: ACCEPTANCE

Animal Man was a weird comic. I was trying to think how to describe it, but this quote from Wikipedia pretty much sums it up:

"Although Grant Morrison's issues are the better-known and higher-selling, the title's entire run maintained a general consistency of themes, content, and narrative structures. These included social consciousness, metaphysics, deconstruction of the superhero genre and comic book form, postmodernism, eccentric plot twists, explorations of cosmic spirituality and mysticism, the determination of apparent free will by a higher power, and manipulation of reality including quantum physics, unified field theory, time travel and metafictional technique. The series is well-known for its frequently psychedelic and "off the wall" content."

I tend to think Grant Morrison's run was overrated and the sort of thing that undermines a shared universe, but I guess that's not here nor there. The final issue of the series (# 89) involves pretty much every thing listed in the paragraph above (the big secret: "The divinity is inside you!"), as Animal Man's daughter lies near death, his mistress is giving birth, and some evil psychedelic queen-thing is trying to take over everything. Or something. It's very confusing and not really my cup of tea (why I laboriously assembled all 89 issues is a good question that I really can't answer). Anyway, the letters' page blames cancellation on the recession and editor Lou Strathis feels the current creative team wasn't given enough time to "creatively gel and find its audience" even though it had 10 months to do so. He also takes on the passive-aggressive, "our material is just too good for a mainstream audience" tack favored by douchebags everywhere:

"I did my best, and succeeded, I think, in turning out a book that went hard against expectations, and introduced fictive material rarely seen in the pages of a mainstream American comic. I'm certainly discouraged, but by no means repentant. If we don't keep trying to push into comics stuff most people think doesn't belong here, we're dead as a creative medium and may as well go home and watch TV for the rest of our miserable lives. So, as long as someone gives me the opportunity and ammunition, I'm going to keep trying. I'm convinced the readers exist out there for comics that are ornery enough to be different. We've just got to make sure those readers find us. Right now, we're not doing that. I hope we start before it's too late."

Okay, I just went back to Wikipedia to check out this Strathis guy. Turns out he died of a brain tumor just two years after Animal Man was cancelled. Now I feel like a douchebag too.