In this article we are going to briefly discuss one of the darkest comic book characters to ever come across the medium, Antman.
Unless you were a total comic book fan and bought everything that made it to comic book stalls, and also unless you’re pretty old, you’ve probably never heard of Antman. It was as dark as it was strange. However, it existed.
Antman first came to life in Marvel Comic’s “Tales To Astonish” in 1961. It was created by the same person who gave us such classic characters as Spiderman and the X-Men, Stan Lee. The artwork was made by a gentleman named Jack Kirby.
Antman’s beginnings were actually quite low-key. At first, it was just a character from Tales, which was a sci-fi thriller. It was pretty typical of the kind of thing Marvel Comics produced in those days. But the comic was published at a time when superheroes were back in fashion. Eight months after the release of Tales, Antman returned in a skin-tight suit with the ability to shrink down to the size of an ant. That was his great weapon against the war on crime.
Antman’s real name was Henry Pym, who was a scientist who created and used the ability to change size. He also added a cyber helmet to his arsenal. This helmet could communicate with ants. No, that is not a misprint. Okay, it was a bit cheesy. This is an ability that he did not have in the first story. If I had, that story itself (especially the anthill part) wouldn’t have been as exciting.
As Antman, he fought such evil villains as Egghead, The Scarlet Beetle, and The Man with the Voice of Doom. He did all of this on his own until finally in June 1963 he teamed up with a superhero named The Wasp. Later that year they put in some characters that would soon be quite famous like The Hulk, Iron Man and The Avengers.
Antman himself did not last long. Later in his career, Pym began to change his size backwards and became Giant Man. A couple of years later he lost his place in the Tales comic by The Sub-Mariner. Since then, Pym has used two other superhero names, Goliath and Yellowjacket. But this was only as a supporting character in the Avengers. In 1969 he married Wasp, but they have since divorced.
However, in 1979, Antman tried to return. Scott Lang, who was an employee of Pym, borrowed the technology for Antman’s disguise for a personal emergency. He then used it to become the new Antman. Pym eventually gave him the costume to keep Antman’s legacy alive. Unfortunately, Antman’s resurrection lasted even shorter than the original series. Today he is occasionally seen as a minor character in Fantastic 4 and even became a temporary member of the group when Mr. Fantastic was away.
Antman never made a splash outside of the comics. Honestly, the character would probably be long forgotten if it weren’t for his role in founding The Avengers and his association with Wasp, who was a much stronger character. But for those of us who remember it, it was certainly one of a kind.