Animal Man #21

Animal Man #21 

Jeff Lemire: writer
Steve Pugh: artist (1-7, 10-13, 16-20)
Francis Portela: artist (8-9, 14-15)

Solicitation & Preview

Review
What if Twitter attacked a comic book? That is the question you get at the beginning and end of Animal Man. For me, it hit some right notes as well as showed some foreshadowing to the rest of the comic. So, pretty much right on with how Twitter is in real life.

Animal Man's world collide as his agent tries to push a more public profile for him just as he is still recovering from the death of Cliff. It is a nice setup that pushes the story forward ever so slightly, if only in the regard that we are moving away from the crossover elements from Rotworld.

This is a story that I think Lemire is still finding his voice on. I see the steps moving forward, and I am curious as to where it will go. The visual display of the Tweets really do make for an interesting commentary and was nicely done within the art.

My only issue with this comic comes with the art, actually. It is another guest artist coming in to fill in for some pages. While at times it does seem appropriate, such as when Max goes to the Red, the times when Pertela is in the 'real world' are just very off from the rest. Look at the layouts from that one page where Buddy is visiting the crazy cat lady. It is just riddled with world balloons. Things just don't feel as smooth and I bet a different layout could be used for the sequence that would cut down on the exposition or allow another way to make the words fit.

Animal Man survives to live another day on my pull list. I heard that there are rumors to an upcoming artist change for the book, which may serve well enough to give the book back a distinctive art style that is consistent from page one to the end.

Grades
Words: 7/10
Pictures: 7/10
General Feeling After Reading: Intrigued.
Buy Next Issue: Living to be read another issue.