Animal Man by Grant Morrison — Book Two

We return to our coverage of DC’s 1989 Animal Man series—Grant Morrison’s first ongoing for the U.S. comics market—with a look at issues #10 through #17 (commonly collected in trade as “Origin of the Species”). Now that we’ve met Buddy Baker and seen him join the Justice League, we’ll follow his investigation into the mysteries of his secret origin (which, as it turns out, no longer fits into post-Crisis continuity). This leads us to discuss Iron Age DC’s haphazard approach to its own canon while also wading into more serious territory, as this is the part of the run that most directly and explicitly confronts real-world animal rights and other political issues. These stories force Buddy—and the reader—to consider some difficult problems without easy solutions, but we’ll also see how the series’ letters page became a forum for lively debate among a community of correspondents searching for answers together.