Animal Man #2

Oct 1988 · DC · 1.25 USD; 1.75 CAD; 0.70 GBP

📊 ~48,089 copies sold its debut month

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“Life in the Concrete Jungle”

★ 1st appearance — T.C.

About this Issue

Animal Man #2 is the second chapter of Grant Morrison's landmark reimagining of Buddy Baker — the run that, more than any other single project, established Morrison as a major voice in American superhero comics and demonstrated that a forgotten, second-tier DC character could anchor a genuinely literary series. The issue's story, 'Life in the Concrete Jungle,' advances the four-issue opening arc that introduced B'wana Beast (Mike Maxwell) to a new generation of readers, recontextualizing a long-dormant Silver Age curiosity as a morally freighted figure whose animal-fusing powers carry real horror when turned loose in an urban environment. Morrison's decision to foreground Buddy Baker's domestic anxieties alongside superheroic action — his wife Ellen and daughter Maxine face danger in a forest while Buddy bleeds out from a rat-man attack — established the grounded family drama that would become the series' emotional spine and influence later 'realistic superhero' books. Published without the Comics Code Authority seal and on DC's premium New Format paper stock, the title signaled that mainstream superhero comics could aspire to something more challenging.

In "Life in the Concrete Jungle," Grant Morrison and Chas Truog launch a surreal, grounded oddity as Animal Man hunts a giant insect for S.T.A.R. Labs—only to face a towering, humanoid rat in the city's hidden corners. Meanwhile, Ellen and Maxine stumble into a tense encounter with two redneck hunters, deepening the mystery of the unnatural creatures emerging in the urban wild. Brian Bolland’s striking cover captures the issue’s eerie, off-kilter tone.

writer Grant Morrison · artist Chas Truog · inker Doug Hazlewood · colorist Tatjana Wood · letterer John Costanza · cover Brian Bolland

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History

Animal Man grew out of editor Karen Berger's deliberate effort — following Alan Moore's success on Saga of the Swamp Thing — to recruit British writers and give them latitude to reimagine obscure DC properties with a more literary sensibility. Morrison, still relatively early in their American career, selected Animal Man precisely because the character was obscure enough to allow radical reinvention. The series was initially conceived as a four-issue miniseries, and issue #2 was therefore written as part of a compact, structured opening arc rather than an open-ended ongoing; strong sales prompted DC to expand it into an ongoing series after the fact. Penciler Chas Truog and inker Doug Hazlewood handled interior art throughout the opening arc, while Brian Bolland provided the series' distinctive painted covers — a division of labor that gave the book a dual visual identity from its earliest issues.

Trivia · 8 facts

Cover-dated October 1988; published on or around June 30, 1988 as part of DC's direct-market New Format line, which meant no Comics Code Authority seal and higher-quality paper stock.
Written by Grant Morrison; interior art by penciler Chas Truog and inker Doug Hazlewood; cover art by Brian Bolland; colored by Tatjana Wood; lettered by John Costanza; edited by Karen Berger and Art Young.
Story title: 'Life in the Concrete Jungle' — Buddy Baker investigates fused test-monkeys at S.T.A.R. Labs in San Diego, tracks a mysterious entity that turns out to be a transformed human-rat chimera, and is nearly killed when the creature tears off his arm.
B'wana Beast (Mike Maxwell) appears as the unseen antagonistic force behind the chimeric fusions in this issue; he is not yet identified by name — his full reveal comes in issue #3, 'The Nature of the Beast,' making #2 his effective in-continuity shadow appearance within the Morrison arc.
Superman (Clark Kent) makes a brief cameo, recognizing Buddy on a rooftop before being called away — a moment that encapsulates Morrison's running theme of Animal Man as a second-tier hero perpetually overshadowed by DC's A-list.
Ellen Baker and Maxine Baker appear in a parallel subplot in which they venture into a forest and are placed in jeopardy by sport hunters, establishing the family's vulnerability as a storytelling device Morrison would return to throughout the run.
The issue has been reprinted in Animal Man Vol. 1 (the first trade paperback collection), Animal Man: Origin of the Species, the Animal Man Omnibus (2013), and the Animal Man by Grant Morrison 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Book One (2018/2019).
The series that this issue belongs to was initially planned as a four-issue miniseries; its expansion into a 26-issue (and beyond) ongoing run was driven by sales performance, meaning these early issues were produced under a fundamentally different editorial mandate than the ambitious metafictional run they eventually became.