In Animal Man #2, Buddy "Animal Man" Baker loses an arm.
I remember the moment, having read the comic when it came out. It was quite shocking, indeed.
In the next issue, however, Buddy got better, as characters often do. Unlike many characters, however, Buddy does so on panel and as a function of his superpower (the power to copy the abilities of nearby animals).
The solution is elegant and simple -- earthworms are everywhere -- and yet demonstrates how absurd and impactful Buddy's powers are (not a lot of heroes can casually REGROW an arm).
But there is loose thread here. One I expected the writer to follow up on at some point (instead of rambling on with post-modernistic talking foxes and the like).
Buddy's arm wasn't atomized; it was separated whole from his torso and is lying nearby.
When Buddy used the earthworm power, it seems possible that THE ARM WOULD START TO REGROW THE REST OF HIM.
Naturally, that would take longer than Buddy "just" regrowing an arm. But it seems quite within the realm of the possibility that a second Animal Man would, at some point, turn up, the result of his severed arm doing the earthworm thing.
And yet it remains an unvisited idea, now buried under multiple universal reboots.
7 comments:
Then one evening he hears a scratching at the door; it's his arm.
Maybe they can do an "Incredible Journey" thing with Buddy's arm, Pantha's head, and Aquaman's hand.
- HJF1
It makes perfect sense. Plus I wouldn't mind another Buddy. If I had to explain it (no-prize it, as we used to say), I'd say since his arm was detached when he triggered earthworm powers (from the morphogenetic field) it didn't get triggered. But you could just as easily argue that the morphogenetic field is connected to every part of Buddy and it would have gotten triggered when he activated earthworm powers.
I'm definitely no expert on Animal Man, but I assumed he had to consciously tap into an animal's abilities, which would prevent his arm from doing so. But if that's incorrect - and it's not like there isn't a long history of superheroes tapping into their powers unconsciously in times of extreme stress - then yeah, that could be a thing.
Or, maybe some scientist collected the arm to try and tap into the morphogenic field some other way. Get the arm to secrete toxins or chemicals animals produce. Can Buddy's arm grow teeth, or a tail, or something else?
"he had to consciously tap into an animal's abilities" I might have thought that too, if the text didn't SPECIFICALLy say "my animal kicked in on their own"! I might also have thought "but the arm is too small a piece to regenerate from", if the text didn't specifically say "you can chop them [earthworms] up". It's as if the text were specifically to set up the scenario I mention... but it never comes about.
If they ever stupidly kill off Animal Man, then here we have a spare Animal Man whenever they need to bring him back. This arm was buried and likely slowly growing into a new Buddy Baker, and the very last thing to grow is his brain's higher processes... because worms don't have those. When one Animal Man "dies" his soul revives in the spare with all his memories.
You know, we can make this as stupid and offensive as Spider-Man's Clone Saga. Worse, if we really work at it.
... actually I can't think of a single idea that's worse than what they did in the Clone Saga.
- HJF1
This is actually a plot early on in the Guyver manga from the mid-'80s (the same series Firestorm plagiarized art from for the Zuggernaut's first appearance around the same time) a couple years before Grant Morrison's Animal Man.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/82cd01ea-23ea-48c8-a156-c3a84a69b7a9/8
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