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ANIMAL MAN is a comic I like quite a bit, and I'll always consider the last issue of Morrison's run on it one of the best comic books ever written. But there's always been something that bothered me about it. Always something that didn't feel quite right. For years I assumed it was me, that this was my problem, something shameful I needed to get over. Then I re-read the issues and realized that it wasn't me, it was them.
It was their clothes.
Never in the history of comic books have characters worn such ugly, ugly clothes. You can't just chalk it up to the fact that this was drawn in the late 80's when everyone was wearing ugly clothes, because the ugly clothes of ANIMAL MAN have a timeless quality about them. In any era, most human bodies would burst into flames as soon as these clothes touched them.
Even an issue as touching as the death of Buddy's family is marred by not only some ugly clothes, but as if to add insult to injury, ugly haircuts as well. Ellen is a redhead with the world's worst perm, a perm that went out of style when white girl jheri curls hit the floors of salons all over America, which was back in 1981. But there she is, sporting a disco 'do as if she's inviting death, while wearing one of her standard issue pairs of Jordache jeans, yanked up to above her navel, and a tucked-in yellow t-shirt. I would kill her if I saw that hideous ensemble, just out of self-defense. And the kids...oh, those poor kids. Look at their hair, look at their baggy, ugly clothes. Death was a mercy for them, trust me.
Buddy gets away with murder in ANIMAL MAN. When we first meet him he's wearing one of his wife's pairs of jeans with a tucked in pink t-shirt, but that's as bad as it gets. He wears worse clothes later (let's not even get into the Animal Man body condom) but things never degenerate beyond jeans and a t-shirt for Buddy and while that can be bad, it's not criminal. Ellen, on the other hand, wears a ruffley collared blouse that makes her look like a pirate, a pink sweater with purple jeans, a white tank top with the middle torn away to expose her midriff, and a pair of peeky cheeky cut-offs, all before issue #10. These peeky cheeky cut-offs will re-appear several times, most notably on Buddy (who usually wears a muscle shirt with them) and I think they may be a clue. A way that Grant Morrison lets the reader know that, "Hey, no matter what happens to these people, they deserve it."
I'll say. Lots of people talk about the pioneering narrative work Morrison did on ANIMAL MAN, but what about the pioneering ugly clothes work? There's a lot of talk in his last issue about being a cruel god, and tormenting Buddy and his family for entertainment value. Buddy refused to believe the universe could be so inhumane but dude, really, just look in the mirror. Could the universe be sane with you wearing those clothes? |
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