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.
But, wait. Suppose I accept that he has giant-strength when he’s giant-sized. We know for sure that shrinking doesn’t reduce strength. So shouldn’t he retain that giant-strength when he shrinks to human-size? I’m very confused.
Now that he’s perfected the growing formula, when will he share it with Wasp?
Dr. Pym is famous for being the superhero who goes through a lot of code names. He didn’t even adopt the Ant-Man identity until his second appearance. Giant-Man is his second superhero name. There will be more.
Giant-Man’s first battle will be against the Eraser.
No, not that guy.
The Eraser has the power to erase people as though they were just pencil drawings on paper. Get it? Stan was making a joke with the whole concept. He figured an eraser would be the greatest threat to a comic book character. This is decades before Morrison wrote Animal Man.
Eraser is actually transporting his victims to another dimension, Dimension Z. This is not the first time Dr. Pym has been transported to another dimension. Johnny Storm has also found his way to the 5th dimension. So there are lots of alternate dimensions pretty easily within our reach. There’s also the Dream Dimension of Nightmare that Dr. Strange visited. But I figure that’s a different type of thing, a mystical realm.
Let’s try to do the 5th-dimensional math on how many victims Eraser kidnapped. First, we see him erase a hot dog vendor. He notes this was not part of the plan. The plan was to erase 5 people. He’d already erased 3. The fourth was to be Professor Ebbhart and the 5th Henry Pym. On the next page, he names all of his victims: Ebbhart, Pym, and Dr. Lewis Stemm. That’s only 3 total. What happened to 5? When he greets his leader, he describes Dr. Pym as the 3rd and final scientist requested. We then see there are 7 total prisoners, including the hot dog vendor. Best guess is that he misspoke when he said 5. He meant 3. And the other 4 were accidental victims.
Also notable in this issue is that the shrinking/enlarging gas is put into capsule form. Different capsules for different sizes. Color-coded. I’ll note the colors in the visible part of the chart. But be wary. Colors often vary across reprints. These colors are taken from the Marvel Masterworks. The picture is from the digital version, and they seem to align.
- Purple — 1″
- Green– 6″
- Orange–1′
- Blue–2′
- Red–4′
We also finally learn where Dr. Pym lives: The New Jersey Palisades overlooking the Hudson River. At first, they didn’t name the city he operated in. Then we learned it was Center City. Then we learned it was near enough to Manhattan that he could get there easily.
This is a bit of slang I am not familiar with outside of the DC character B’wana Beast. It is a respectful address in some African nations. I’m not aware of its connotations in 1960s American parlance.
Rating: ★★½, 47/100
Significance: ★★★★★
I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: Ant-Man/Giant-Man vol. 1. You can also find it in Ant-Man/Giant-Man Epic Collection vol. 1: The Man in the Ant Hill. Or on Kindle.
Characters:
- Dr. Henry Pym/Ant-man/Giant-Man
- Janet van Dyne/Wasp
- The (Living) Eraser
- Professor Ebbhart
- Supreme leader of Dimension Z
Minor characters:
- Dr. Pym’s gardener
- Dr. Lewis Stemm
Story notes:
- Dr. Pym moves reducing/enlarging gas into capsule form. Color of capsule corresponds to height it will shrink them to.
- New suit and name for giant-size persona.
- Dr. Pym can’t support his own weight at more than 12 feet. Past that height, he is unable to move.
- Cover refers to villain as Living Eraser. Issue just calls him Eraser.
- Dr. Pym lives in New Jersey Palisades, overlooking the Hudson River.
- Wasp will now wear belt with capsules for her costume.
- Eraser’s targets were all atomic scientists: Pofessor Ebbhart, Dr. Lewis Stemm, and Dr. Pym. This implies Dr. Pym is an atomic scientist, which is a new revelation.
- Erased victims sent to Dimension Z.
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