Animal Man #2

Spoilers!

Before I began to read the new 52 I really didn't get the idea of a horror comic. My mind went to Tales from the Crypt, and then, obviously, to the Tales of the Crypt cartoon from my childhood. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares. I couldn't understand how a comic could be scary.

Then I read Animal Man and now I get it.

Animal Man isn't a scary per se, rather it's just kind of fucked up.

The last page reveal from #1 was a pretty haunting image. It made me begin to reconsider my conception of horror comics. Animal Man #2, however, completes the argument. I see how a comic work within the horror genre. It might not be nails into the chair suspenseful, but it is disturbing. And Animal Man is quite disturbing.

Where Animal Man #1 had a single horrifying depiction, #2 has long list or terrors.

• Feeding the skeleton cat milk because it is hungry.
• Maxine morphing the neighbour's arm into a chicken leg.
• The gigantic tumors on the hippos.
• Some monsters that appear to have open sores for skin.
• The possessed human forms with their swollen cheeks.

And this is without addressing the cover, which is pretty messed up in and of itself. A mass of fleshy gore with a single eye that doesn't stare at the fleeing Animal Man and Little Wing, but straight off the page at the reader.

Forget all the monsters and the possible evil that is entering the world, the most disturbing part of this issue is when Maxine turns the neighbour's arm into a chicken leg. While all the other things are also disturbing, their origins are in some form of threat or evil, presumably Sethe, but this incident is born out of a little girl's fear for her family. She sees this man hurting her brother and so she protects him--a perfectly reasonable and human reaction, but the manifestation of this aid is terrifying. And Maxine isn't disturbed by what she has done to him either. She has to be convinced to change his arm back.

Such horror coming from a place of innocence is truly unsettling, especially as it hints at the cruelty that is bound to that innocence.

Final thought for #2: at first I was a little put off by the art in Animal Man. Even when I was looking at preview pages I assumed they were still in draft form. The art style is not at all what I think of when I think comics and it really took me out of the first issue.

I have come to see, however, how this style really lends itself to the horror genre. It at once keeps "reality" surreal and the fantastical elements like the dream world or the deformations less obviously fantastical.

By destabilizing how we see the real world of the comic, we don't recognize the horrific elements as foreign to that world. Which is sort of creepy and impressive.

And that is what I love about Animal Man. Everything really does work together to create a whole. Instead of separate words and pictures, Animal Man seems to be intentionally constructed as a comic. Real darn impressive.

Also, did you notice when Maxine is gearing up for the journey she has glasses on that kind of look like the old Animal Man goggles? Nice touch, Little Wing.