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. |
