This is probably my favourite single issue ever. I don't even own it, except as a trade paperback. It's some of Grant Morrison's first work in the U.S., a revival of an incredibly lame 1960's character. This was the first issue after the originally planned 4 issue miniseries proved successful. It's a bizzare retelling of the Prometheus myth with Wile E. Coyote as a protagonist, hoping to end the abstract violence cartoons inflict on each other and being cursed with real world suffering as a penance, and as his antagonist a gay trucker creating an elaborate deathtrap to catch him after his life spirals out of control. The titular hero only shows up at the end but is unable to read the scripture he's handed as the trucker, dying because of his own elaborate trap, kills the coyote at a crossroads, where he dies metaphorically. Animal man learns nothing and cartoon violence continues. This issue is weird, smart, funny and exciting and pretty much a statement of purpose for the rest of the series. Animals kill each other, human beings kill animals, the hero doesn't understand it, nor does he learn anything, the world is cruel and unjust because whoever runs it cares more about entertaining the audience than the happiness of those who have to live there.
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