Animal Man is one of those superheroes that became legendary as a result of Grant Morrison working his magic and taking the character in a completely new direction. Morrison’s run is one of those collections I’ve always wanted to read but just haven’t had the chance. I didn’t want to miss out on this new story of Animal Man, and so here we are with another #1 with another revamped hero.

A-Man is a simple concept. Buddy Baker has the ability to take on aspects of pretty much every animal out there. That’s it, that’s what he does. On a deeper level, he also has a connection with animals all around him that puts Aquaman’s ability to talk to fish to shame. He feels great empathy for animals and risks forging real bonds if staying too close to a single animal for too long.

More importantly, Buddy Baker is a family man. Unlike a lot of what we’ll be seeing with DC’s superheroes in the next few weeks, Buddy is in a late stage in his career as Animal Man. He’s had his fun, he’s started a youth pro-animal movement, and now he gets by as a result of his fame while still hopping into the (fantastically redesigned) Animal Man suit.

The art team on this book is the best of all the titles I’ve seen in the new DC 52. Yes, that includes Jim Lee’s work on Justice League. There’s something incredibly clean about their work that makes it pop off the page and not feel like a DC Comics book at all. The story pushes this up a notch from a pretty indie looking book to a real horror story. I didn’t expect it, but this book gave me chills. Not a whole lot actually happened in the story, but every page felt deliberately planned and plotted so that the story as a whole gets across everything Lemire could have hoped to communicate. The result is a book that anyone could pick up and feel like they didn’t waste their money or their time.