Tales to Astonish #54

No Place to Hide!

Featuring: Giant-Man and Wasp
Release: January 3, 1964
Cover: April 1964
12 cents
Daringly written by: Stan Lee
Dramatically drawn by: Don Heck
Deftly lettered by: Art Simek
13 pages

The placement of this story is tricky. Where we have it, Hulk and Namor are still on the loose, so this is no time for Wasp to be talking about a vacation. Doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be. Hank does note they don’t have time for a vacation. I choose to treat this as a veiled reference to the whole Hulk/Namor situation, whether intended or not.

On the subject of chronological concerns, notice Giant-Man is in his older outfit, last seen in issue 51. This indicates to me that he alternates between the outfits. In reality, the outfit seems to correspond to the artist. Ayers drew the issues with the thick suspenders. Kirby and Heck seem to be drawing Giant-Man with the lighter stripes. They will all eventually converge on thicker suspenders.

We see some pretty rough play between Giant-Man and Wasp. It seems to be all in good fun, but may be early warnings of an abusive relationship forming.

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