When stunt man Buddy Blake became irradiated with emissions from an unidentified flying object, he suddenly acquired the ability to absorb ambient attributes of animals around him. If a winged creature was nearby, he could fly. If a bestial behemoth was close at hand he gained its superhuman strength. While this transpired on Earth-One, a parallel even happened on Earth-Two when the heir to the title of Immortal Man himself gained superhuman strength, flight and other powers due to a meteor fragment from outer space. With Blake becoming Animal Man and his counterpart becoming Samar the Jungle Man, this pair defended two different continents from threats to nature, usually derived from that of selfish mankind. After five cases each, these two heroes retired only to reappear sparingly later.
Both men found true love in the form of Ellen Frazier for Blake and Helen Phelps for his cosmic twin. And each were tied to the Immortal Man, who himself journeyed from Earth-Two to Earth-One in order to recruit Animal Man into his team the Forgotten Heroes. This group only had a couple of adventures prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And while Buddy and Ellen wed and had children, Jungle Man's true love Helen would be separated from him after his passing.
Perhaps the most tenacious adversary that the Immortal Man/Jungle Man faced was the plunderer known only as Karat who steals a mysterious helmet allowing him to create fantastic mutated animals and other materialized objects in Africa and later in England. Karat's counterpart on Earth-One was Atom-Master, who like Karat possessed a helmet of his own design granting him the power to create various monsters and weaponry from solidified dust molecules. He initially battled the World's Finest team of Superman, Batman and Robin of Earth-One and later as a member of the Forgotten Villains battled Animal Man and his allies in the Forgotten Heroes, as well as having a rematch with Superman. Despite their awesome abilities neither Atom-Master nor Karat succeeded in their two appearances and, like their creations, eventually faded away from public sight.
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