Tales to Astonish #37

Trapped by the Protector

By Stan Lee with Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: The Protector

So, What Happens?

Gerald Marsh, prominent jeweller reports a robbery to the police, and of course unknowingly to the ever present ants who monitor the city for Ant-man.

Ant-Man heads across the city to interview the crime victim and learns that he had been robbed by a masked villain calling himself the Protector who had used a ray gun to turn sections of the shop to dust before robbing Marsh.

Ant-Man leaves, monitored by a mystery figure as he goes. Back at his lab Pym sets his ants to watch all of the cities jewellery stores. He soon hears of the Protector arriving to extort another shop keeper.

Ant-Man throws a necklace worth of pearls on the floor to trip him up but the Protector fights back with a stolen water pistol and attempts to wash Pym down the drain. Pym is rescued by a passing ant but the Protector escapes.

Pym decides to set a trap, renting a shop he waits for the Protector to come around and try to extort money from him. The Protector duly obliges and leaves Pym with a disintegrated counter and a demand for $300 a week.

However the villain leaves with a few ants on board his car and Pym heads off in pursuit, able to follow their electrical signals with his helmet. He follows the signals to a deserted tenement building but when he goes inside to investigate he gets caught up in a vacuum cleaner.

Luckily Pym still has the strength to rip his way out and the foresight to have sent a bunch of ants to the nearest police station where they line themselves up to spell out directions to the Protector’s lair. The police arrive and unmask the Protector as Gerald Marsh.

So is it any good?:

No, I quite like the hulking Protector design which plays to Kirby and Ayers strengths but the whole thing is shot down by the story.

All the other Marvel heroes had quite ambiguous relationships with authority, it was one of the things that set the tone of the books, Ant-Man seems to always rely on the authorities arriving and saving him at the end. This is when he isn’t being saved by his ants from meeting his demise falling down the drain or managing at the last moment to punch his way out of a paper vacuum cleaner bag.

Despite his amazing powers he never fails to give the impression that he is actually less capable than the average person forever in danger from everyday objects.

Pym still doesn’t have any personality and Lee and Leiber are still writing sub-Scooby Doo mysteries that expect you to care about the identity of villains in stories that have only had one speaking part. Amazingly it is a thirteen page story that manages to drag.

Are there any goofy moments?

Ant-Man’s catapult can apparently be programmed to shoot his tiny form to addresses all over the city, he of course has time to summon a big pile of ants to cushion his landing.

It clearly doesn’t always work, the second time he tries it Pym has to land in a baby carriage after the ants fail to make the necessary landing pad.

The Protector stealing a water pistol from a convenient kid and using it to wash Ant-Man towards a drain is pretty funny. As is the sight of him trying to glue shut the vacuum cleaner bag he has trapped Ant-Man in. Does any other hero get stuck in such lame traps?

Or win the day in such lame ways? Turning on a fan to blow vacuum cleaner dirt in the villains (goggled) face so it hurts his eyes?

Trivia:

The Protector never appeared again, probably because the name has been reused a bunch of times. Still it takes something for a villain this old to have escaped the clutches of all the various retro writers over the years.

Is it a landmark?:

No.

Where can I read it?:

In the Essential Ant Man or the first Ant Man/Giant Man Masterwork.