Trapped by the Protecter!/Face-to-face with the Protecter!
Release: August 2, 1962
Cover: November 1962
12 cents
Writers: Stan Lee and Larry Lieber
Penciler: Jack Kirby
Inker: Dick Ayers
13 pages
I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: Ant-Man/Giant-Man vol. 1. I took the credits above from the collection. I see no credits within the story itself.
In his first outing, a difficulty Ant-Man had was that nobody could hear him in ant-size. They haven’t specifically addressed how he overcame that, but he clearly has. Perhaps speakers are built into his helmet.
Again, we see Ant-Man as the most active superhero, using his ants to patrol so he can find his way to crime scenes and help investigate. This will become an increasingly common practice for people in this world, but nobody else is really doing it yet.
As part of a trap, Henry Pym rents a jewelry store. That doesn’t sound cheap, suggesting a certain affluence on Dr. Pym’s part. It seems like it would have been easier to have his ants stake out other jewelry stores.
This story introduces the evil Protecter, who is extorting jewelers by threatening to destroy their merchandise with a disintegrating ray. The story has a lot of beat similarity to the Human Torch tale we recently read. There is a villain, and it ends with an unmasking of the villain, who turns out to be the only other character the story bothered to name. We also learn other secrets of the villain, like in this case he didn’t really have a disintegrating ray. He just created a flash and quickly (and entirely implausibly) gathered up gems and sprinkled sand. (How long is that flash? This is a guy in a big mechanized suit– how fast is he?)
Continue reading “Tales to Astonish #37”
