marvel scientist – Coke & Comics

Tales to Astonish #49

The Birth of Giant-Man!

Featuring: Ant-Man and the Wasp
Release: August 1, 1963
Cover: November 1963
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Jack Kirby
Inking: Don Heck
18 pages

Ant-Man gets a new identity, and there’s a new little corner box to go with it.

The story is this. Ant-Man and Wasp joined a superhero team. Their teammates are Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor. All extremely powerful. Ant-Man is very small and controls ants. Perhaps this situation would have been tenable if Wasp didn’t keep commenting on how handsome Thor was. But she did. And Dr. Pym’s ego could not take this feeling of inferiority anymore. He needed to measure up.

So he thought and thought. He had a gas which shrunk him to ant-size. And a gas which allowed him to grow back to normal size. He had a routine. Reduce to ant-size. Grow to normal size. Now remember, he’s a genius. And it finally occurred to him: what if he skips a step in that cycle? What if he takes the growing gas when already normal-sized?

It worked! If he simply doesn’t take the reducing gas, he is no longer Ant-Man: he is now Giant-Man. And has strength that is at least closer to par with his Avengers teammates.

I have a science question about that, though. When he shrinks to ant-size, he retains human strength. They are very clear on that point. So he is the size of an ant but can punch as hard as an ordinary human. So why does his strength increase when he grows if it doesn’t decrease when it shrinks? Ah, never mind. I’m sure it would make sense if I knew science better.

Tales to Astonish #48

Ant-Man and the Wasp Defy the Porcupine!

Featuring: Ant-Man and the Wasp
Release: July 2, 1963
Cover: October 1963
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script: H.E. Huntley
Art: Don Heck
13 pages

Something of an odd cover. It makes no attempt to showcase the Porcupine’s powers. Instead, it just has Porcupine standing in his own panel while the main cover focuses on Ant-Man drowning in a bath tub. Drowning in a bathtub is indeed a scene from this issue. Were it not, I would wonder if they just took any old Ant-Man cover they had and inserted that image of the Porcupine. Either way, spectacularly unimpressive work by Jack Kirby.

This issue has two “weird tale” backups. Grayson’s Gorilla by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber. And “The Little Green Man” by Lee and Ditko. The era of these little sci/fi shorts is fast coming to an end.

In her very first issue, they tried to motivate Wasp’s character around her father’s death and a passion for justice. We’ve seen no real hints of that since. Her character has since been dominated entirely by swooning over random men, when not trying to convince Hank Pym to settle down with her.

I think she’s just trying to make him jealous. It doesn’t appear to be working.

As a side note, she does call Ant-Man “Hank” in both this issue and the last one. I think she’s the only one to call him that. He’d always been “Henry” before.

Journey Into Mystery #95

The Demon Duplicators!

Featuring: Thor
Release: June 4, 1963
Cover: August 1963
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script: R. Berns
Art: Joe Sinnott
13 pages

I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol. 1.

In going through the results of a recent poll on favorite Marvel/DC characters, my friend Brian Cronin talked about the idea of a “MARVEL science” degrees for his entry on Beast. He notes that Beast is a MARVEL scientist, and

From Brian:

Marvel Universe science is a lot more diverse than regular science. You see, Hank eventually gained a PhD (done while the rest of the X-Men were vainly trying to complete their GEDs) in biophysics and genetics. However, he achieved these PhDs in MARVEL science, so this made him an expert in engineering, medicine, time travel (yes, time travel), etc. It is like how one of the most highly-developed robots of all time, Ultron, was built by Hank Pym, a biologist. It is because Hank is a MARVEL biologist. Very different than normal biology. It’s like “How would you best describe a cell membrane? Also, how would you build a device that could negate Magneto’s powers?” All in the same class!!!! And MARVEL scientists always have multiple doctorates by the time they’re 22. It’s a rule.

Now, we’ve seen a pretty clear counterexample to that. Dr. Pym turned down a request for help from Wasp’s father because it was outside his area of specialty. He claimed he was only an expert in “molecular cell transition” (i.e. making people shrink) and “cell specialization” (i.e. making people grow wings). As of where we are in our reading, he has not yet built any robots.

Dr. Don Blake is a surgeon and a very good one. Surgery is a hard thing to master. It takes a lot of time to study. It’s a demanding job, always being on call. He’s also always on call as a superhero.

Yet somehow he built an android in his spare time.