In one of the interviews he gave to either CBR or Newsarama or one of those sites prior to the series coming out. He basically said he pitched DC a story about a super-hero with a family having a mid-life crisis (or something like that) but not with Animal Man in mind. DC then basically said he could use Buddy (one of the few true family men in the DCU) in an out-of-continuity story that takes place in the future (so it can be ignored by future writers) and Conway went with it. The main thrust was that Conway had the idea for this story he wanted to do which had nothing to do with Animal Man and they just shoe-horned him into it.