Animal Man by Grant Morrison — Book One

Riding the wave of comics’ “British Invasion” of the 1980s, Grant Morrison made their mark on U.S. superhero comics with the unlikely reinvention of an obscure DC Comics do-gooder. In time, Morrison and penciller Chas Truog would elevate Animal Man’s consciousness to a state of awareness about his own fictional nature, but in the early part of their run, the book is mostly concerned with a middle-class family man balancing a passion for animal-rights activism with his attempts to “make it” in the superhero biz. We look at the first nine-issue arc (collected in the first Animal Man trade), an often-overlooked part of this groundbreaking series.