"It was just a dream."

These words sum up Grant Morrison's dreamlike run on ANIMAL MAN, not that it wasn't close to nightmare-inducing stuff at times. When ANIMAL MAN arrived on the scene in 1989 it seemed at first that Morrison's take on Buddy Baker would be similar to Alan Moore's take on SWAMP THING, with the emphasis on animal rights instead of the environment. But while the book did discuss animal rights, it was never done in a dry fasion and the letters page could be as exciting as the comic itself.

The series started off inauspiciously enough with a four-parter that while better than most of DC's output at that time was not anything that stuck out or gave hints of what was to follow, with its tale of Bwanna Beast seeking a companion who had been kidnapped for experimentation by STAR Labs. It was with issue 5 that the comic started to hit the high gear with a story that told the tale of a Coyote who lived in a universe where everyone was a cartoon character and everyone committed acts of violence against each other.

The parallel that Morrison was drawing between Christianity and the old Warner Brother cartoons was unmistakeable, with the coyote in the story being the representation of the Road Runner enemy Wile E. Coyote. The ANIMAL MAN coyote had made a deal that he would suffer in another reality a number of unspeakable torments as long as the rest of his cartoon people knew peace.

The story is striking in its own right but it also brought in two other elements, both of which have resonated through Morrison's later work. The first being the idea of heroes and what they will sacrifice (even if the person in question does not think themself a hero), and the second being the idea of comics and our reality all being linked as one large meta-fiction.

The rest of the first year saw some excellent one-off stories with Animal Man facing a villian with a terminal illness. The character in question only became a villain because he was given lousy super-powers by a twist of fate, and he only ever really wanted to fly.

After that we have Animal Man losing his powers as part of DC's crossover that year, Invasion, where a bunch of nasty aliens blew up a bomb that robbed a lot of people of their powers.

By now the comic was in 1989 and most writers would have handled this with a lot of angst and hand-wringing at the turn of the decade. Not Morrison. He has our hero under attack by a Scottish version of the Mirror Master with Scottish dialogue that was probably lost on many (including the DC senior management as some of it was risky) that ends with Buddy's wife Ellen having to take the upper hand in the situation and start to sort things out.

This story introduces the concept of someone ­ who appears to be superpowered as they are wearing a costume ­ observing Buddy's family and speaking out their names. Again this was Morrison doing a hefty bit of foreshadowing, showing us the ending of plots that would take more than a year to play out.

We then have the Martian Manhunter make an appearance as Buddy tries to sort out the problems with his powers. The main story is entertaining enough but what makes it is the side-stories of the engineers fitting out the house with very lethal security devices, and Buddy's son getting the Martian Manhunter to resolve his bullying problems.

Then, in comes the origin story which ties up a few things to date and hints at what is coming. Buddy is given his powers back by yellow aliens who claim to work for a higher power. This higher power is only hinted at (though later on we find out that it's Morrison himself) as the aliens destroy people by removing them in reverse to the way they would be drawn, removing the inking, then the outline and the word balloon, until there is only a skeletal sketch remaining and then nothing.

Morrison then kicks off the second year of the series by returning to a character from the first issue ­ B'Wanna Beast ­ as he tells us a tale of apartheid and white supremacy which ties in with the search for a new Beast. In this day and age it seems easy to scoff at stories of animal cruelty and apartheid, but many Americans in 1989 were not online or aware of these things, so Morrison is to be applauded for bringing these concerns to a much wider audeince. It is an excellent story and it is to DC's shame that there has not been an attempt to do anything with the new Beast since.

Issue 14 brings us back to the superhero stalker from earlier issues and the comic is heavy not just with mysteries but also foreboding and doom, especially as Buddy's daughter Maxine reveals that the stranger stalking the family is Buddy himself. But how can that be when Buddy is elsewhere and then later comes face to face with the stalker? Is he some version of Buddy that had escaped the Crisis? Is he a clone? Are there two Animal Men? What is so important about the numbers 9 and 27? This issue also introduced a man by the name of Lennox, who appeared to be a government-type hitman.

Morrison then takes everyone off balance with a tale of Animal Man in the Faroe Islands where a slaughter of Dolphins takes place every year in ANIMAL MAN #15.

The story is partially told by the viewpoint of the dolphin, giving it an added twist, but Morrison also starts to have the reader asking some questions as the Americans are asked if they have the right to interfere with another culture, painting a shade of grey to the whole proceeding. The story has a powerful ending with Animal Man dropping one of the main islanders behind the slaughter into the sea from a great height, intending to kill him. But when the man is below, a dolphin gets him and escorts him to shore. The dolphin notes that this hu-man has killed his family and that he could have revenge, but as the dolphin notes "our way is different".

It is an incredibly moving tale and while there are emotional impacts throughout the series, issue 15 is where Morrison starts to deliver heavy emotional impact on a more regular basis.

This continues into 16 where Buddy takes his wife to Paris to celebrate some family good news. On the way he bumps into the Justice League of Europe and the Time Commander who is reversing time and that's not the only reversal here.

The Time Commander is reversing time so that those who are alive can spend time with the dead. In effect he is wiping out death and taking us back to the Garden of Eden. Of course, the JLE stop him, though Animal Man doesn't want to throw a punch, showing how the character has evolved as he knows the futility of violence, but the JLE stopping him poses the question of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in the story.

The story ends on an ominous note with someone ­ it appears to be the mysterious Lennox ­ watching the happy couple in a restaurant as Buddy points out that things are getting better in life.

Issue 17 ties up the animal rights thread that has been woven through the work by having Buddy face up to what he is doing, and it is a powerful story (but not as powerful as the Bolland cover where Animal Man is holding up a monkey that has had its eyes taken out and the eyelids sewn up).

Seventeen ends with the kick-off for the last plotline as we meet Physicist James Highwater, who has appeared occasionally over the series, asking Animal Man for help. What makes the plea so unusual is that Highwater has only been half-drawn. His legs are only sketched out.

Eighteen starts off ominously with Buddy's neighbours trying to look after him as Morrison starts to drop hints about what has happened. We then go back two days as Highwater and Buddy discuss how to sort out the weirdness in their lives and they go on a peyote trip where Buddy learns there is to be a second Crisis event.

This is overshadowed though as we cut back to the Baker household, where a calender informs us that it is September 27 and a man called Lennox is at the door…

Issue 19 continues with Morrison taking Baker on a trip of discovery, meeting the pre-crisis version of himself and then discovering that he is a comic character, as he realises when he turns round and, in a full page splash, says :"I can see you!"

From here Buddy starts to question his reality and learns about its true nature though when the peyote wears off he wonders if he truly saw God (us) or if it was hallucination. The issue ends with Buddy flying home to reunite with his family, only to discover they have been gunned down, presumably by Lennox. We then see Buddy driven to almost attempting suicide because he cannot live without his family as the Mirror Master returns offering information that might lead to the killers of his family.

Issue 20 has Animal Man exact his revenge on his family's killers in a chilling way. As he notes to one of them, "You'll never understand what you've done."

Issue 21 is the flip-side to issue 14 as we see who the stalker was. The stalker really is Buddy, and it's Buddy from after his family has been killed as he tries to go back in time to change what has taken place. Unfortunately he finds that he can hardly interact with the past, until he meets the DC immortals like the Phantom Stranger, Jason Blood and others and he starts to learn how to accept his grief.

He returns to the present only to discover that the second Crisis is about to take place with all the characters who were removed from continuity coming back. Through an act of self-sacrafice Highwater saves the day, leaving Buddy to wonder what his role in everything has been, and if he is just a character in a story then who is writing the story?

The Yellow Aliens make another appearance and leave Buddy with a quote from Shakespeare, and then Morrison himself takes over the dialogue, "Time for the last adventure!", which sees Buddy returned to comic book limbo. Morrison's second last issue is interesting from a fanboy point of view as Morrison takes Buddy through limbo, meeting old characters and delivering an interesting aside on the state of comics at that time and by the end of the story Buddy has literally nothing left to lose as he discovers a key to a door that leads him to another doorway.

The door is opened and the man at the other side says: "I'm Grant. You coming in?"

As noted above, Morrison has been keen on meta-fictional texts and this was his first attempt at bringing himself into comics.

The final issue of ANIMAL MAN is little more than a 26 page conversation as Morrison explains to Buddy how awful this reality is and the power he has over him, though that does not mean Buddy takes it lying down (He says to Morrison at one point, "We expect real stories. I'm sick of this pseudo-existentialist narrative."). Morrison also makes points about animal rights and what it means to be a writer before Animal Man asks him if he cannot bring his family back as if everything was a dream, to which Morrison replies "that old cop-out went with the ark".

By the end Morrison and Buddy have disagreed about things to the point where Morrison tells him to go home and forget they ever met and we fade to the Baker living room and a page later we discover that his family is alive and that Buddy did indeed have the most terrible dream.

That is not the end of the story though, as Morrison then goes on in the letters column to complete some autobiographical detail that he had presented to readers during his run, bringing the book to a powerful emotional close.

Animal Man is a classic in many ways and deserves to be in print today. Unfortunately DC only ever published the first nine issues in a hard-to-find trade paperback. Like Grant's run on the Doom Patrol, it's one that has to be hunted down and found. It's worth the work and effort to find Morrison's ANIMAL MAN run though, as a lot of it is still relevant today and it had that rarest of things in comics ­ an interesting letters page. It also sets up a lot of the staples of Morrison's work today – "What is reality?", "What does a writer go through to get their work on the page?", What makes a superhero?" and much more. Even a casual fan of Morrison's work owes it to themselves to hunt down these comics, and here's to hoping that DC will begin to make these issues availible in a collected format.

Craig McGill is a writer for SFX Magazine and author of the books FOOTBALL INC and DO NO HARM.

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