Friday Night Pym!
Dec. 12th, 2008 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkcarrierIt's your weekly dose of funnybook mayhem, courtesy of Spacebooger!
A little different format this week; I'm going to run a whole sequence, and talk about it a bit. Apologies to those of you on dial-up.
Perennial second-stringer Ant-Man had a short-lived series in the 1970s. It ran in MARVEL FEATURE #4-10 (July 1972-July 1973), written by Mike Friedrich and (mostly) drawn by a very young P. Craig Russell. There were a number of different inkers during the run; this sequence from MF #10 was inked by Frank Chiaramonte.
Friedrich took an interesting approach in this series: Early on, Hank and Janet Pym, a.k.a. Ant-Man and the Wasp are injected with mysterious chemicals by a bad guy. As a result, their powers go haywire and they become stuck at insect-size. Trapped in the wilderness, they spend several issues trying to make their way back to civilization, fighting everything from rats and hawks to crazed robots. Complications ensue when Jan mutates further, becoming a berserk wasp-monster. Intense stuff, that really kept 8-year old me on the edge of my seat.
Finally, the two are rescued. But their "savior" turns out to be a criminal scientist named Doctor Nemesis. Nemesis (who has duplicated Hank's size-changing powers in himself) promises to cure them, but only if Hank will help him break into Avengers' Mansion. Hank plays along...just long enough to trick Nemesis into turning off his protective force-field. And then, baby, it's on like Donkey Kong:
Russell's work is largely "1970s Marvel House Style" at this stage, but you can see some hints of his future development, especially in the faces. He really started to come into his own with the "Killraven" series in AMAZING ADVENTURES a couple of years later, but even this early stuff is very strong.
The first-person narrative captions are a common technique today, but were unusual at the time. Normally this kind of musing would take place in thought balloons. It works out well here; certainly, it makes more sense for Ant-Man to say something like "My mind was in a fog" in the past tense, rather than think "Ugh, my mind is in a fog!" at the same time it's happening.
Note the little text ads stuck at the bottom of each page, another '70s "innovation" that didn't last long. The precursor of pop-up ads on the web, or those annoying crawlers you see during tv shows.
After several issues of Hank and Jan being underdogs, with the stories having a real "survival horror" vibe, it was really cathartic to see Ant-Man get his mojo back and cut loose in a pure superhero slugfest. Even the captions lighten up, with the footnote winking to the audience: "Yes, we know this is physically impossible, just go with it, ok?"
And all's well that ends well. Janet, sadly, doesn't get much to do in this series, other than be either a monster or a victim in need of rescue. But I do love this cute epilogue. And we even get an in-story explanation for those narrative captions: the lines Hank is recording are the opening captions from the first issue. Sigh. Remember when Hank and Jan were a happy couple? Remember when anyone in superhero comics were a happy couple?
In any event, it was a pretty cool series. I don't think it's ever been reprinted, but if you run across the back issues, it's worth checking out.
A little different format this week; I'm going to run a whole sequence, and talk about it a bit. Apologies to those of you on dial-up.
Perennial second-stringer Ant-Man had a short-lived series in the 1970s. It ran in MARVEL FEATURE #4-10 (July 1972-July 1973), written by Mike Friedrich and (mostly) drawn by a very young P. Craig Russell. There were a number of different inkers during the run; this sequence from MF #10 was inked by Frank Chiaramonte.
Friedrich took an interesting approach in this series: Early on, Hank and Janet Pym, a.k.a. Ant-Man and the Wasp are injected with mysterious chemicals by a bad guy. As a result, their powers go haywire and they become stuck at insect-size. Trapped in the wilderness, they spend several issues trying to make their way back to civilization, fighting everything from rats and hawks to crazed robots. Complications ensue when Jan mutates further, becoming a berserk wasp-monster. Intense stuff, that really kept 8-year old me on the edge of my seat.
Finally, the two are rescued. But their "savior" turns out to be a criminal scientist named Doctor Nemesis. Nemesis (who has duplicated Hank's size-changing powers in himself) promises to cure them, but only if Hank will help him break into Avengers' Mansion. Hank plays along...just long enough to trick Nemesis into turning off his protective force-field. And then, baby, it's on like Donkey Kong:
Russell's work is largely "1970s Marvel House Style" at this stage, but you can see some hints of his future development, especially in the faces. He really started to come into his own with the "Killraven" series in AMAZING ADVENTURES a couple of years later, but even this early stuff is very strong.
The first-person narrative captions are a common technique today, but were unusual at the time. Normally this kind of musing would take place in thought balloons. It works out well here; certainly, it makes more sense for Ant-Man to say something like "My mind was in a fog" in the past tense, rather than think "Ugh, my mind is in a fog!" at the same time it's happening.
Note the little text ads stuck at the bottom of each page, another '70s "innovation" that didn't last long. The precursor of pop-up ads on the web, or those annoying crawlers you see during tv shows.
After several issues of Hank and Jan being underdogs, with the stories having a real "survival horror" vibe, it was really cathartic to see Ant-Man get his mojo back and cut loose in a pure superhero slugfest. Even the captions lighten up, with the footnote winking to the audience: "Yes, we know this is physically impossible, just go with it, ok?"
And all's well that ends well. Janet, sadly, doesn't get much to do in this series, other than be either a monster or a victim in need of rescue. But I do love this cute epilogue. And we even get an in-story explanation for those narrative captions: the lines Hank is recording are the opening captions from the first issue. Sigh. Remember when Hank and Jan were a happy couple? Remember when anyone in superhero comics were a happy couple?
In any event, it was a pretty cool series. I don't think it's ever been reprinted, but if you run across the back issues, it's worth checking out.
