Comic Books - Antman (who?)
In this article we're going to briefly discuss one of the more
obscure comic book characters ever to hit the medium, Antman.
Unless you were a total comic book fanatic and bought everything
that hit the comic stands, and also unless you're pretty old
too, you probably never heard of Antman. He was as obscure as he
was weird. Nevertheless, he did exist.
Antman first saw life in Marvel Comic's "Tales To Astonish" in
1961. He was created by the same person who gave us such classic
characters as Spiderman and the X-Men, Stan Lee. The artwork was
done by a gentleman named Jack Kirby.
Antman's beginnings were actually quite low key. At first he was
just a character in Tales, which was a science fiction thriller.
It was pretty typical of the kind of stuff Marvel Comics churned
out in those days. But the comic just happened to be published
at a time when super heroes were coming back in style. Eight
months after the release of Tales, Antman came back wearing a
skin tight costume with the ability to shrink to the size of an
ant. That was his big weapon against the war on crime.
Antman's real name was Henry Pym, who was a scientist who
created and used the size changing ability. He also added a
cybernetic helmet to his arsenal. This helmet could communicate
with ants. No, that isn't a misprint. Okay, so it was a little
corny. This is an ability he didn't have in the first story. If
he had, that story itself (especially the part on the anthill)
wouldn't have been as exciting.
As the Antman he fought such evil villains as Egghead, The
Scarlet Beetle, and The Man with the Voice of Doom. He did this
all on his own until finally in June 1963 he teamed up with a
female super hero called The Wasp. Later that year they met some
soon to be pretty famous characters such as The Hulk, Iron Man
and The Avengers.
Antman himself didn't last very long. Later in his career Pym
started to change his size in reverse and became Giant Man. A
couple of years later he lost his spot in the Tales comic book
to The Sub-Mariner. Since that time Pym has used two other super
hero names, Goliath and Yellowjacket. But this was only as a
supporting character to the Avengers. In 1969 he married the
Wasp but they have since divorced.
In 1979 however, Antman tried to come back. Scott Lang, who was
an employee of Pym's borrowed the technology for the Antman
costume for a personal emergency. He then used it to become the
new Antman. Pym eventually gave him the costume to keep in order
to keep the Antman legacy alive. Unfortunately the resurrection
of Antman lasted even shorter than the original series. Today he
is seen occasionally as a supporting character to the Fantastic
4 and even became a temporary member of the group when Mr.
Fantastic was missing.
Antman never made a splash outside of the comics. Quite
honestly, the character would probably be long forgotten if it
weren't for his role in founding The Avengers and his
association with the Wasp who was a much stronger character. But
for those of us who do remember, he was certainly one of a kind.