Animal Man, Vol. 3: Rotworld: The Red Kingdom (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
I think the best compliment that I can pay Jeff Lemire for his work on this title is the following.The best, and maybe as good, a run on this title since Grant Morrison wrote the character. I haven't cared about Buddy Baker and his family since the Morrison days regardless of who was writing the book, or what crossover he appeared in.Lemire made me care. About, Buddy, and even his son Cliff. Tweaking the avatar concept, Buddy represents animals, life, the Red. The Swamp Thing the Green (plants, etc.). There are no more earth, air, water and fire elementals (yes that's you Firestorm I'm pointing at I remember when you were the fire elemental). The Rot is the dead and the decaying.Old Swamp Thing villain Arcane is now the Rot's avatar and the balance has been thrown out of whack. I do not want to give big spoilers, but Maxine Baker, the youngest of the children, is more important to maintaining the balance than Buddy is.The title crosses over with Swamp Thing, and really I would have liked Rotworld all as one volume with the issues in a proper chronology. The Swamp Thing volumes are at the top of the comics TBR pile.The title may no longer be part of the Vertigo line, but I think these first three volumes would have fit into that line. Reprints Animal Man (2) #12-19 and Swamp Thing (5) #12 and #17 (October 2012-June 2013). Animal Man and Swamp Thing take their battle directly to the Rot. Unfortunately, Swamp Thing and Animal Man discover they’ve walked into a trap and that Arcane has won. Now, the world is under the Rot’s control and Animal Man finds himself in a desperate attempt to reunite with Swamp Thing and stop Arcane. If Animal Man can succeed in freeing the world, his life could still be changed forever!Written by Jeff Lemire with help by Scott Snyder, Animal Man 3: Rotworld—The Red Kingdom is the New 52 relaunch of the Animal Man series. Following Animal Man 2: Animal vs. Man, Animal Man 3: Rotworld—The Red Kingdom is a tie-in with Swamp Thing 3: Rotworld—The Green Kingdom and wraps up the Rot storyline.The Rot was a good idea to give Animal Man some punch when the series kicked off with the New 52. The concepts of the different worlds Red, Green, Gray, Black, and others tied in with the whole spectrum of the Green Lanterns and added some direction to series. I liked this as it started, but it did carry on a bit too long.Fortunately, the series did not end everything quickly and anticlimactic. This volume shows a real battle (on two fronts if you read Swamp Thing) and the ending fight was a good conclusion. The series has a bittersweet coda much like Swamp Thing in that everything didn’t turn out well. The death of Cliff (and his nasty mullet) echoes Grant Morrison’s run which killed Animal Man’s whole family…which leads to a quest to resurrect Cliff in the final issues of the series.The art for the series is pretty traditional comic book art which is a bit of a disappointment from the early days of this series. Travel Foreman provided a really unique view of Animal Man and I wish he had stuck with the book to keep it moving. I tried to imagine how he would have portrayed this volume and found myself wishing he had done the art (though it wouldn’t have mixed well with Swamp Thing’s art).Animal Man is a good book that got a bit too bogged down in the story. It is kind of like how X-Files needed to mix in an occasional monster-of-the-week to make the story alien mythos stories less oppressive. I do think they did a good job wrapping up the Rot story, but wish Animal Man was allowed to have some fun. Animal Man 3: Rotworld—The Red Kingdom was followed by Animal Man 4: Splinter Species.
What do You think about Animal Man, Vol. 3: Rotworld: The Red Kingdom (2013)?
You can really tell when Scott Snyder gets involved. In that it gets more monologuy and repetitive.
—DanielMatthew
