Tales to Astonish #35

Return of the Ant-Man

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

Villains: Communist Agents

So, What Happens?

Having previously decided to throw away his shrinking potions Hank Pym has had a change of heart and created a new batch which he keeps under lock and key in his office. His dangerous encounter with ants has led to an interest in insects and he has brought an ant colony into his office so he can study how they communicate.

He has built himself a helmet that can use electrical frequencies to communicate with them and a protective suit to safe himself from ant bites.

Hank has to leave his ant research for a while when the government comes to him to work on an anti-radiation gas. The Communists soon learn of this and send a team of spies to his lab to get his secrets. Locked in his room while the spies tackle his assistants Hank turns to his shrinking potions and ant-suit and makes his way at tiny size to the garden. Once there he recruits a swarm of ants with his communicator helmet and heads back to his lab, besting a beetle on the way due to retaining his regular strength at a tiny size.

The ants swarm up the commie agents’ trouser legs and gum up their pistols with honey while Hank manages to secretly untie his assistants. With the commies now weapon less the American lab assistants make easy work of them and Hank sneaks back to the locked room to wait to be freed with his secret safe.

So is it any good?:

It’s readable and the creators seem to be having some fun with some of the insect related stuff. However it’s quite clearly on a different, lower, level than the other Marvel features.

Hank doesn’t really have anyone to talk to throughout; his interaction is largely limited to ordering a bunch of ants to make a nuisance of themselves so his lab assistants can take on the commie spies. Some of this is quite ingenious but it is hardly inspiring or heroic.

He seems to want to be a super hero more than the other marvel characters so far. Designing a costume to go with his invention of Pym particles and, as yet, not having any down side to his heroic identity, but even this counts against him as he isn’t really overcoming much by playing hero and isn't particularly heroic when he does.

In the preceding issues of Hulk we have seen Banner use his scientific genius to save the day despite his being cursed with becoming the Hulk, here Pym seems to be a similar level of genius but he is reduced to asking ants and lab assistants to do his dirty work. Despite effectively having super strength in relation to ants and beetles, he in effect becomes less impressive at the tiny size and is left freeing prisoners under the noses of the commies and then heading back to his locked office.

It is of course possible for a less impressive hero to still be interesting but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case here. A shame because I have liked stories featuring Hank over the years and remember liking a few from this run but this one isn't that good

Are there any goofy moments?

While ants can undoubtedly carry impressively large objects relative to their size Kirby goes way over-board in his depiction of a single ant carrying what appears to be an ostrich egg.

To be honest almost every interaction with ants in the story should count. But the same is probably true for all the following issues as well. I think we just have to accept that the silver age ant-man stories are pretty stupid.

Trivia:

It was eventually revealed in issue 44 that the murder of Hank Pym’s wife by communists had led to him wanting to make a difference and fight the reds. Unfortunately none of that had been decided prior to this story and his clash with communists here doesn’t seem particularly special to him. A pity as this might have actually given Hank some more, or indeed some, personality.

Hank announces that his special shrinking ant-suit is made of unstable molecules. While these would eventually be considered a Reed Richards invention there is no mention of that here. His regular clothes in issue 27 had shrunk down perfectly well and in fact the Pym particles in that story were shown as being able to shrink and grow all sorts of non-living items so there wasn’t really much need for the unstable molecules explanation.

The wide range of Hank’s scientific abilities is often mocked, especially the idea that he was essentially an entomologist. This story shows that actually he wasn’t and that ants were a side interest prompted by his own encounter with them the first time he shrank. In his first appearance he seems like a typical crackpot scientist, here the government seem to be looking to him as a radiation expert.

Is it a landmark?:

Yes, Hank Pym would obviously take on a lot of costumed identities over the year so you could possibly see Astonish 27 as more important but this is his first costumed appearance.