History ComicBook / AnimalMan

* CanonDiscontinuity: A lot of the events from the 1988 comic's Vertigo era have been discarded after Animal Man was restored to the main DC Universe, particularly Buddy's time as a beaked chimera and his falling out with his wife Ellen that resulted in him getting another woman pregnant.

%%* HowDoIShotWeb: Almost every arc involves Buddy learning something new about the way his powers work and/or struggling to control them.

* AssholeVictim: In the alternate future miniseries ''The Last Days of Animal Man'', Buddy laments that he permanently loses his powers before he can cure Prismatik and Bloodrage of their bubonic plague infection and prevent them from being crippled for life, but the fact remains that the villains deserve their fate for threatening lives and extorting a fortune from the world by holding the League of Titans hostage.

* AnimalWrongsGroup: Subverted in Morrison's run. Although Buddy Baker devotes his career to collaborating with like-minded individuals in disrupting fox hunts and freeing laboratory animals, he himself avoids the use of violence (except against a whaler and dolphin-hunter who dared him to do so). When one of his collaborators on a lab rescue mission blows it up with an incendiary bomb, putting a firefighter in critical condition in the process, Buddy hangs up his costume and resigns from the Franchise/{{Justice League|of America}}. Conversely, Animal Man's [[CorruptCorporateExecutive big-business enemies]], far from being the put-upon victims normally found in this trope, are ''far'' more brutal and lawless.

** In ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'', Buddy realizes Anansi is affecting him when he ''eats chicken''.

* PowerLossMakesYouStrong: The miniseries ''The Last Days of Animal Man'' depicts a [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture near future]] where middle-aged Buddy, now a full-time member of the [[Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica Justice League]], sees his powers slowly fade out to nothing. Nearly powerless, he finds a way to defeat two extremely AxCrazy supervillains with sheer guts, resourcefulness, and the very last, tiny drop of superpowers he has left.

* RedHerring: In Dwayne [=McDuffie's=] run on ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'', Anansi (the spirit who gave similarly powered hero Vixen her powers) tried to state that Buddy got his powers from ''it'', saying that it was always the yellow aliens. However, not only is Anansi an UnreliableNarrator, he retroactively rewrites himself out of the event, restoring Buddy's connection with the '''real''' yellow aliens. As well, the yellow aliens have stated that ''they'' posed as Anansi to make the totem that gives Vixen her power. Which means that either the yellow aliens impersonated Anansi, Anansi impersonated the yellow aliens... [[NoFourthWall or there is simply a man with a typewriter in a room]].

** Tom Veitch's run features a potshot at Franchise/SpiderMan in issue 37 when Buddy copies the abilities of a spider to scale buildings and remarks in his internal narration that he'd be a third-rate superhero if he had ''only'' spider powers.

* EvilUncle: Ellen's paternal uncle, Dudley, is a SnuffFilm director who is crazy as an outhouse rat and worships death, and tries to bring Cliff under his wing, purposely running over Buddy and temporarily killing him to keep him from interfering, then bringing Cliff to his subterranean murder pit and leaving him for dead as a twisted rite of passage.

** The Rot is pretty much BodyHorror incarnate (being represented by legions of undead, decaying creatures), and the Comicbook/{{New 52}} series dives straight into the scare factor in that regard, ''especially'' when the art done by Travel Foreman.

* MundaneSolution: During ''[[Comicbook/InvasionDCComics Invasion!]]'', Animal Man has no idea how to stop a Thanagarian bomb before it explodes. Hawkman shows up, pushes a button on the bomb, and tells Animal Man that all he had to do was turn it off.

%%* MindScrew: Both the Morrison and Milligan runs, each in their own way.

* AnimalWrongsGroup: Subverted in Morrison's run. Although Buddy Baker devotes his career to collaborating with like-minded individuals in disrupting fox hunts and freeing laboratory animals, he himself avoids the use of violence (except against a whaler and dolphin-hunter who dared him to do so). When one of his collaborators on a lab rescue mission blows it up with an incendiary bomb, killing a firefighter in the process, Buddy hangs up his costume and resigns from the Franchise/{{Justice League|of America}}. Conversely, Animal Man's [[CorruptCorporateExecutive big-business enemies]], far from being the put-upon victims normally found in this trope, are ''far'' more brutal and lawless.

In 1988, Creator/GrantMorrison was given the chance to write Buddy's new series, and rewrote his personality into a passionate animal rights activist. There was also [[FamilyExtermination the drama of his family]], who fully knew he was a superhero and tried to support it. And ''then'' things took a turn for the weird, as its second half delved into MetaFiction, specifically the continuity problems that originated from the ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'' reboot. Morrison left after issue #26, and the series continued for another sixty-odd issues, eventually coming under the [[Creator/VertigoComics Vertigo]] imprint.

* EndOfSeriesAwareness: [[spoiler:The conclusion of Grant Morrison's run features their AuthorAvatar addressing that a new writer will take over by the next issue and that their successor will likely take Buddy in different directions than what they did with the character.]]

* CorruptedCharacterCopy: Tom Veitch's run features an [[ShowWithinAShow in-universe comic]] titled ''The Penalizer'', the title character a blatant pastiche of ComicBook/ThePunisher, but while Frank Castle only kills ruthless criminals and does so in an attempt to avenge the deaths of his wife and kids, the Penalizer has no tragic backstory to justify his actions and is a full-on reactionary lunatic who takes sadistic enjoyment in his killings to the point that he'll find any excuse to blow people away indiscriminately and seems incapable of handling ''any'' threat without resorting to lethal force.

* CorruptedCharacterCopy: Tom Veitch's run features an [[ShowWithinAShow in-universe comic]] titled ''The Penalizer'', the title character a blatant pastiche of ComicBook/ThePunisher, but while Frank Castle only kills ruthless criminals and does so in an attempt to avenge the deaths of his wife and kids, the Penalizer has no tragic backstory to justify his actions and is a full-on reactionary lunatic who takes sadistic enjoyment in his killings to the point that he'll find any excuse to blow people away indiscriminately.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: "Hour of the Beast" has Mr. Van de Voort, a racist who takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting Dominic Mndawe after holding him prisoner.

* TakeThat: Tom Veitch was apparently not fond of Grant Morrison's run on the series. When he took over, his first story began with an old shaman smashing clay dolls to pieces. One of them looked identical to Morrison as they had appeared in the comic. Veitch then proceeded to retcon many of Morrison's storylines, giving a new explanation for Buddy's powers which directly contradicts their explanation. Veitch's changes were mostly ignored by later writers.