Prisoner of the Slave World!
Featuring: Ant-Man
Release: December 3, 1962
Cover: March 1963
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: L.D. Lieber
Art: Don Heck
10 pages
I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: Ant-Man/Giant-Man vol. 1.
This is a pretty momentous issue. We’ve read a variety of Marvel comics together here. We’ve taken peeks into the past and the future, and checked out some of Marvel’s “weird tales” books with tangential connections to our superhero comics. But we’ve mostly been reading superhero series of the early ’60s. We’ve followed the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Human Torch, Thor, and Ant-Man. What have all these series had in common? They’d all been drawn by Jack Kirby.
Now, for the first time, Jack is going to take a break from drawing several comics a month and draw one less. This issue of Ant-Man will be drawn by Don Heck. We’ve met Heck once before. He drew a Medusa story we checked out in Tales to Astonish. A great artist in his own right. He’d been associated with the company that will become Marvel off and on for almost a decade at this point, drawing westerns, war stories, and sci-fi/fantasy tales.
Now he’s ready to step into the superhero game with two big comics this month. He’s taking over the Ant-Man adventures from Jack Kirby. And next week he’ll be drawing the adventures of a brand new addition to the ranks of Marvel heroes.
He has a different style than Kirby. Kirby puts more effort into the dynamism of his characters than their facial features. And so I don’t feel I yet have a good sense of what Hank Pym really looks like. There’s been a certain inconsistency and genericness to Kirby’s rendering. Heck puts in more facial detail than we’ve yet seen for the character, effectively sculpting a particular face for the character.
The story bears some similarity to Human Torch’s battle against Zemu; our hero finds himself in another dimension facing a warlord he helps the people overthrow.
One notable aspect of this story is that we see Ant-Man able to take control of different insects for the first time, in this case interdimensional bugs. It’s a bit strange because it’s been established that Ant-Man doesn’t actually control ants– he communicates with them and asks nicely for favors.
Rating: ★★★☆☆, 53/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
Characters:
- Dr. Henry Pym/Ant-Man
- Kulla
Minor characters:
- Paul (fellow scientist known to Dr. Pym)
- Ben Carter (other kidnapped scientist)
Story notes:
- Dr. Pym uses himself as bait; not the first time.
- Kulla wants scientists to build electro-death ray.
- Ant-Man modifies frequency to control interdimensional bugs
- Kulla killed
- Kulla had dimension transporter
#46 story in reading order
Next: Fantastic Four #12
Previous: Journey Into Mystery #89
