Animal Man #28

Jeff Lemire - Writer

Rafael Albuquerque - Artist

Dave McCaig - Colors

Jared K. Fletcher - Letters

 

It’s no secret that Animal Man has had a shaky couple month following Rotworld, in my not so humble opinion. Even with the Baker family in ruin, and this story doing everything that I hate Animal Man writers doing, Lemire still manages to pry through my cold dead heart and get some sentiment stirring from my emotions. I will say it before and I will likely say it again; killing the Baker is not the way to script this series. The reason why Buddy Baker is interesting, is because he is the Superhero with an established family. Ripping that away from his character is taking the only special thing away from Animal Man. I am of course, talking about the sudden death of the son of the eldest Baker child Cliff. His involvement in the series was always minimal, but ripping him away so suddenly is absolutely juvenile. Since then, the Baker family have been in ruin, fighting through hell to get their son back. The past 15 or so installments of this title have been interesting, but they have also managed to get a cheap rise out of something that is just too easy to mine from Animal Man.

 

This final showdown with Brother Blood is very effective. The new version of the old villain has been seeded in advance for a large amount of time, and his coming out party over the last few books has been very entertaining. The last few stops on the way to this final journey has also started hitting some of the right notes for the character. After examining what this issue had, and what some of the previous installments were missing; the answer here is the jaw dropping artwork of the one and only Rafael Albuquerque. The artist is one of the best in the business, and this issue shows off his impressionistic pencils in a hugely bombastic fight scene. The best part about the artist, by far is his clean line work that allows the craziness to feel firmly steeped within reality. The violence in this installment is horrific, yet under no circumstance feels excessive or in poor taste.

 

Blurry lines permeating the background are a stylistic choice, showing off the fact that readers are in a really strange place within the red. The pirate animals in particular have just the right amount of weird and realistic elements to look insanely cool. This title is constantly going through a balancing act of seeming too silly with other artists, but this never becomes an issue with the deft hand of Albuquerque. The only thing that may detract from the reader’s sense of place is the bizarre face that the artist gives to Ellen Baker. The engrossing image on the last page more than makes up for the slight blemish though, as this could be one of the coolest pages Rafael has ever pencilled for the series.

Regardless of your feelings towards the larger scope of Lemire’s Animal run, issue #28 is one of the finest moments of this series. It also gives me hope that Lemire and friends can really knock out the last couple issues of this series.