The Man in the Ant Hill
Release: September 28, 1961
Cover: January, 1962
10 cents
Story: Stan Lee and Larry Lieber
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
7 pages
I read this in Marvel Masterworks: Ant-Man/Giant-Man vol. 1. The story gives no credits, but the collection does. Some online sources break that down as crediting Stan with the plot and Larry with the scripting.
The opening splash pages serves as a title page and cover for the story.
Marvel stands on the precipice between its era of short sci/fi tales and its era of superheroes. This comic comes out the same day as Fantastic Four #2 and fits squarely in the former category, a short cautionary sci/fi tale about a mad scientist. Not clear what the theme is. Be careful of inventing stuff, I guess.
Henry Pym invents a serum, tests it on himself. It works, but now he’s small. Almost killed by ants. Saved by one friendly ant. Decides the serum is too dangerous and destroys it. Promises to stick to more practical science from now on.
Wait, what? Why did he destroy the serum? Because he was attacked by ants? Was that not anticipated as a possibility? Maybe start with inanimate objects. The chair shrunk fine. The shipping benefits named were clear.
We see a scientist mocked by his peers. “I’ll show you!” he vows. Could this be the makings of a villain? Moleman was mocked and wanted revenge. No, next we see him talk about, “What a boon it will be for all mankind!” Guess we have a hero on our hands after all.
Here’s what Henry Pym looks like in the Ant-Man film.
This was one story in an anthology, the only story from the issue we’ll be reading as part of this endeavor, and only because the character of Henry Pym will return. Other stories in the issue are “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall…”, “The Talking Horse”, “Dead Planet”, and the prose story “Trouble Bubble”.
Let’s drill a little more into themes and that ending; excuse a bit of a rant. It is a common moral of many a science fiction story to warn us of the dangers of science. These warnings have value, but can also be overstated or misapplied. Like many mad scientist characters in fiction, Henry Pym made some basic mistakes: he moved too quickly to human testing, and he used himself as a test subject.
The ability to shrink and grow a chair was a huge find. It was time to publish his findings, patent them, partner with a company to engineer his device for shipping purposes… let the market test out his ideas, and let his peers review them– even if they’d once mocked him. That’s how science works. It was not time to drink the serum.
However, it was also not time to destroy the serum. This idea wasn’t inherently too dangerous, though it could have dangerous consequences. Hence, the need for public debate, government oversight…
The theme that you should be scared of science or progress or innovation is just quite backwards.
All that aside, what really convinced him his serum was too dangerous? Because he couldn’t reach high places? Because some ants attacked him? Ridiculous.
The phrasing of the moral is also odd. That Pym agrees to stick to “practical science” from now on. This was practical, i.e. useful; they even mention the shipping industry and military applications.
Even if they used their language more sensibly, sticking to useful science is perhaps the opposite of a good moral. The famous mathematician G.H. Hardy wrote that, “science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life”.
Rating: ★★½ (out of 5), 48/100
Significance: ★★★★☆
It’s significant for introducing Henry Pym, but that’s barely attributable to the comic. They had a good many sci/fi characters they could have revisited to turn into superheroes. But for chance, this could have been an unremarkable science fiction short, one amongst many.
Characters
- Henry Pym
#3 comic in reading order
Next: Tales to Astonish #28, Story A
Previous: Fantastic Four #2
