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A review by adamcagey
The Animal Man Omnibus by Grant Morrison
3.0
A giant collection of all twenty-six issues of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run, this book is a testament to a kind of comic that may never again exist. DC Comics was willing to take chances with its established characters and to let upstart writers do what they wished with them. Morrison uses a B-list character to explore animal rights issues and to comment on the medium of comics itself, and it’s limitations in telling serious stories. He did similar metatextual things with his run on Doom Patrol and, later, his own The Invisibles.
The results here are a bit clunky, with even Morrison (he appears as a character in the book) admitting that it got silly at times. The art, mostly by Chaz Truog, is workmanlike, but serves the story well, grounding Morrison’s more heady ideas with a solid, action-adventure style.
Morrison couldn’t accomplish everything he set out to do with this comic, but even the attempt is impressive.
The results here are a bit clunky, with even Morrison (he appears as a character in the book) admitting that it got silly at times. The art, mostly by Chaz Truog, is workmanlike, but serves the story well, grounding Morrison’s more heady ideas with a solid, action-adventure style.
Morrison couldn’t accomplish everything he set out to do with this comic, but even the attempt is impressive.