A First Time For Everything: Animal Man

The very first time I heard of Animal Man was in Crisis of Infinite Earths. He was in something on the order of 4 pages, crammed into panels and just being this dude named Animal Man. That was it.

Oddly it was enough. The name! The name did it for me. Animal Man. He had animal powers, that much was clear. Spider-Man had the powers of a spider, but Batman wasn’t at all bat powered. So either Animal Man had the powers of all animals or he dressed up like different animals to scare people.

Now, based on his costume I leaned toward the whole powers thing, but had to admit that orange was kinda scary. Just not in a “cowardly and superstitious lot” sort of way. More in a “also he directs traffic” way.

But like I said it was enough for me to be interested. There’s a bunch of characters I met in Crisis that I hunted down as they showed up after – Dolphin, Blue Beetle, Human Bomb… all right that may be it. Though probably not. I was just getting into DC right before Crisis, which was a strange time to really get into it, but that’s the way it shakes out.

So when issue one of Animal Man’s series eventually came out, I was all primed for it. And Grant Morrison started what is still one of my favorite comic runs of all time.

Also he added a jacket to the mix and this was right when all super heroes were required to wear jackets for reasons that escape me. Some how only one of two managed to not look like giant tools with their jackets. Animal Man was in that non-tool camp.

As a side note: people seem to love drawing him running at the reader. I don’t get it either.

This is a post in “A First Time For Everything” wherein I look at my first reactions to comic book characters that have been suggested by YOU. You can go here to suggest characters for me to discuss, and to see the master list of who I’ve talked about so far.