Women of Marvel: Sue Storm Part 2 - Fade In

WHEN I WAS TEN, back in 1965, girls were just pests. They didn't like playing football or war. They didn't climb trees, or draw on walls or commit other acts of senseless vandalism. They were, well ... kind of annoying. Certainly that's what the DC comics editors seemed to think as well. Just about every DC female supporting character was simply a thorn in the side of their respective superhero. Queen of the bunch was Lois Lane - though Lana Lang  gave her some competition. I think what I liked least about Lois Lane that she was often depicted as, at best, selfish and, at worst, downright spiteful.

Really ... this isn't the kind of behaviour I'd expect from a grown woman. Lois clearly doesn't care about anyone - not Superman, not Lana - except herself. What a completely ghastly human being. No wonder us ten-year-olds didn't like girls much.

In other parts of the DC universe, other supporting females seemed every bit as snoopy and as suspicious as Lois. Even Iris West, Barry (The Flash) Allen's girl friend - also a journalist - sometimes accused Barry of being the Scarlet Speedster.

It's a common comic book trope ... but why would a supporting character, usually female, be so hell-bent on uncovering the identity of a superhero? These guys fight some pretty scary dudes. Knowing such information puts both the supporting character and the hero in genuine danger.

Was this an insight into the minds of the men who created these stories or simply a reflection of the times? Probably a bit of both. So how refreshing it was when Stan Lee's Marvel Comics came along and actively worked to dispel this stereotyped female supporting character. We never saw Betty Brant use an elaborate hoax to blackmail Spider-Man into marrying her, nor Nurse Jane Foster trying to uncover Thor's secret identity to ruin his life. And although Sue Storm and Janet Van Dyne were held hostage by some baddy or other more often than I would like, they still managed to battle in the front line with their male counterparts, giving as good as they got.

As it turns out, in Fantastic Four 12 (Mar 1963), it is, once again, Sue Storm that saves the day during the climactic showdown with the mysterious commie saboteur, The Wrecker, on the missile base where Dr Bruce Banner works. That's right, the same month that The Hulk was battling the Metal Master in the last issue of his own book, The Hulk was guest-starring in Fantastic Four.

That's a terrific bargain for just 36c, right there. The same month that The Hulk's regular title was cancelled, he encountered The Fantastic Four. And they also crossed over into the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. I think I'd happily pay 60c for that trio of issues. 

And once again, Sue Storm was playing a pivotal role. Admittedly, there were a couple of lapses on Stan's part about just what sort of character he saw Sue as being. For example, early in the story, while the Four are being briefed by General Ross about the "menace" of The Hulk, Sue has a nervous episode and involuntarily fades from sight. It's not Sue's finest hour.

We might just about be able to wave it off as a "sign of the times", but really? After all the good work Stan did in issue 11 of Fantastic Four, he gives us this? That's a pretty shoddy way to treat Sue Storm. However, Stan and Jack do try to balance it out later in the story. 

Then, at the end of a testosterone-fuelled bragging session from the rest of the FF, Sue wonders what she can contribute to the battle. General Ross suggests that "a pretty lady can always be of help ... just by keeping the men's morale up." Stan can almost be forgiven for that, because you could infer that it's Ross' personal view. But then Stan ruins it by having Reed agree with him. Dear, oh dear ...

Anyhow, the story rumbles on, Reed Richards and Bruce Banner meet, Rick Jones discovers the saboteur's communist party membership card in his wallet and is captured, and The Thing tests a rocket sled and discovers more of the The Wrecker's handiwork. The FF battle the Hulk for three and a half pages before Ben and Sue stumble across The Wrecker's lair.

Despite their earlier lapses in judgement in this story, Stan and Jack allow Sue Storm to redeem herself by disarming The Wrecker and saving Ben from his "Atomic-Powered Ray".

The tale closes with the Wrecker captured, The Hulk missing again and a hint that Reed Richards may suspect The Hulk's true identity, though I don't think Stan went anywhere with that idea ... there definitely wasn't any mention of it the next time the FF met The Hulk (Fantastic Four 25, Apr 1964).

The next issue, Fantastic Four 13 (Apr 1963), has Sue saving the day again. Battling The Red Ghost and his super-powered apes in the mysterious Blue Area on the Moon, while the equally mysterious Watcher looks on, it's Sue who once again drives most of the plot. Though she's captured by The Red Ghost and imprisoned behind a force field - interesting choice of prisons given what lay ahead for Sue Storm - she uses her own ingenuity rather than her invisibility power to escape. She sabotages the force field device, freeing herself as well as the Red Ghost's super-apes.

It's telling that Sue uses her brain rather than her powers to escape The Red Ghost's force field prison. She also gives an uplifting speech about how the Communist masses are enslaved by their evil leaders. Stan's commie bashing was legendary during this period. But to be fair, I remember being terrified of the Russians when I was a kid.

Then, at the end of the story, she fearlessly walks into a deadly disintegrating ray to save her brother. Johnny explains for the benefit of the readers that the ray doesn't "react against anything which is below the visible spectrum of light", which is lucky, I guess. Finally, it's the super-apes that chase the defeated Red Ghost off, so I suppose it's Sue who's responsible for the villain's ultimate fate.

This is pretty brave of Sue ... she knows it's a trap though she doesn't know that the trap won't affect her ... but she walks into it anyway. As it would later develop, that is the essence of Sue Storm's character. Always ready to sacrifice herself for another.

Were Stan and Jack making a deliberate point here? I think so. By this stage in the Fantastic Four's evolution, I think both creators were looking to move beyond the comic book cliche of having the female character portrayed as either a hostage or an assistant. I don't think they had yet figured out how to do it. Though there's flashes of Sue being portrayed as a strong and non-dependent woman, there are as many instances of the old tropes re-surfacing, with Sue depicted as doing something daft and "typical woman"-ish.

Fantastic Four 14 (May 1963) begins with the FF returning from the Moon. This is unusual, because other comics of the time rarely - if ever - made any reference to the previous issue at all. FF14 carries straight on from FF13 like they were chapters in a continuing story. They're treated to a heroes' welcome and slightly surprisingly, it's Sue who seems the least unable to cope.

The opening scene from Fantastic Four 14 ... the FF touch down in their mooncraft and are immediately mobbed with well-wishers and opportunists. When you read the dialogue, it doesn't seem as thought Sue's actions match the words in the balloons. Sue's distress continues throughout the scene and manifests itself with the impatient gesture in the final frame.

Now that does seem at odds with what Stan and Jack had been doing with the character up till this point. It does indicate to me an example of perhaps Jack intending one thing with the art and Stan taking the story is a slightly different direction with the dialogue. Take a look at the body language in the above (edited) sequence. A couple of hucksters are trying to get Sue to endorse their products and she holds her head in her hands like she can't cope. Even after The Torch's drastic rescue, Sue still seems stressed and anxious. Her attitude in the final panel of the scene appears more like exasperation than the resignation the dialogue suggests.

I'd love to know what the original intention of the story was. I'm pretty sure it ties in with Sue seeking out the Sub-Mariner in later scenes. Perhaps Namor represents an escape from the pressure of fame and the constant demands on her to be mother to three child-men.

So Reed's finished his report and he's going to get Sue to type it up? Wassamatter, Richards? Your fingers broken? Do it yourself! This again reads to me like Stan was taking the story in a slightly different direction to what Kirby drew.

The very next scene has some pretty insensitive behaviour from Reed, when he goes looking for Sue - not to check she's okay, but to give her some menial, meaningless task. He catches her red-handed, gazing dreamily at the oceans depths, her mind on Prince Namor. Again, all Reed can think about is himself. Then, just as Sue's giving up on ever finding The Sub-Mariner, coincidence takes a hand and The Puppet Master influences Namor to influence a "hypno-fish" to influence Sue to be drawn to a riverside pier.

It's said that you can't be hypnotised to do something that would be against your unhypnotised will, so it's no great surprise that Sue Storm is susceptible to Namor's hypno-fish. What's harder to believe is that the hypno-fish can project an oxygen-filled membrane from its belly and that Sue can be placed inside without tearing the skin ...

Under the control of The Puppet Master, Namor then holds Sue hostage to draw the rest of the FF into a trap. As it pans out, I think The Sub-Mariner treats Sue slightly better than Reed does, as at least by the end of the story, he trusts Sue's own free will to lead her to the right choice - Namor or Reed.

"Et tu, Ben?" The Thing expresses surprise that Sue is "a female who could keep her mouth shut so long." Then adds, "One side, Sue. We got us some mopping up to do." Yet Sue stands her ground and protects Namor because he hasn't been responsible for his actions.

Even as the tale draws to a close, Johnny suspects that the Sub-Mariner wasn't acting of his own free will, while Reed remains broody and silent, probably fretting over Namor's taunt that he should hold on to Sue, if he can.

I'm sure that by the mores of the times, Stan and Jack were doing something quite revolutionary with Sue's character. A world away from the manipulative unpleasantness of Lois lane and the featureless monotony of Flash and Green Lantern's girlfriends, Sue Storm at least had a life beyond Reed Richards. But in retrospect, it still seems a bit clumsy and unfocussed. And reading these stories now, it does seem like Stan and Jack were pulling in slightly different directions, though both were bound by the prevailing contemporary attitudes towards women. 

The following issue, Fantastic Four 15 (Jun 1963), didn't give Sue Storm a great deal to do. In fact, her role was mostly confined to fulfilling her dreams of becoming a famous actress.

Stan and Jack seem uncertain as to whether Sue Storm will be starring on Broadway or going to Hollywood. Either way, Sue never really voiced any ambitions to get into show biz up until Fantastic Four 15 ... so I guess Stan wasn't thinking too much about continuity at this point.

This was a bit of a surprise to many readers. Back in FF9, when the team was broke and the only way to make money was to star in a movie produced by The Sub-Mariner, Sue didn't seem that excited about becoming a famous actress.

Back in Fantastic Four 9 (Dec 1962), Sue and the team were offered the chance to star in a Hollywood movie, playing themselves ... but Sue seemed more interested in the money than the lure of fame.

But by Fantastic Four 15, it's apparently all she's ever wanted to do. It's not Sue's finest hour, and Stan's making her out to be a bit of cliched "vain girl". Worse, that's her sole contribution to the story. OK ... I agree it's not reasonable to expect that Sue Storm should always drive the plot of every FF tale. 

And perhaps Stan, or Jack, or both, were thinking that Sue should be longing to be a regular girl rather than a superhero with an obligation to constantly bail out her teammates and the rest of the human race ... but I don't think they were quite that clear in how they should go about that in these early stories.

The contradictions in Sue's character show up again in the very next issue, Fantastic Four 16 (Jul 1963). For a moment - possibly due to the proximity of Ant-Man (Hank Pym) - Sue Storm turns into Janet Van Dyne, and makes an inappropriate and, frankly, sexist comment ...

So Sue Storm declares Ant-Man innocent of any involvement in their current plight based on how attractive he is? Maybe Stan was trying to lighten the moment, but ascribing Janet Van Dyne style dialogue to Sue Storm doesn't seem appropriate in this context.

Despite the momentary lapse, Sue goes on to distinguish herself during this adventure by once again placing herself in danger and saving the day. However, along the way there are a couple of strange lapses in logic and in Marvel's internal technology.

For example, in this issue we're given to believe that this is the first time Reed Richards and Henry Pym have met, despite both being distinguished scientists.

Reed Richards gives no indication that he's ever met Ant-Man or Hank Pym. Sue Storm even goes so far as to question Ant-Man's existence ... not entirely unbelievable, as this would have taken place a couple of months before the formation of The Avengers.

Yet, back in Tales to Astonish 35 (Sep 1962), an editorial footnote explains that Ant-Man's costume contains unstable molecules. The technology is mentioned in Fantastic Four 6 (also Sep 1962) - but on sale a week later - and Richards is usually credited with inventing, or at least discovering, the phenomenon. So how come Hank Pym's costume is made of the material?

Then, when The FF use Hank Pym's shrinking formula - gas when Ant-Man uses it, liquid when Reed deploys it - the test tubes containing the formula shrink with them. Are the test tubes also made of unstable molecules?

The mystery of the shrinking test tubes. Is the glass made of unstable molecules,
or did Jack just make a mistake that Stan didn't spot?

OK, maybe I am nitpicking a little ... but another interesting thing in this issue is that we get to see Sue in the lab working on a formula to mask her smell from dogs and other animals. We've not had any indication up to this point that Sue is a scientist,  and I don't think it was ever mentioned again, but it's an interesting notion.

Sue Storm quite correctly observes that even while she is invisible dogs can still locate her by her scent, so she's working on a chemical which would mask her presence even from animals with a sharp sense of smell ... it doesn't work, though.

Later in the story, though, Sue comes up with an idea that gets the rest of a the team out of a tight spot. Imprisoned in a capsule beneath a lake of acid, only Sue has the presence of mind to devise an escape plan.

It's Sue's moment ... her plan to escape the acid prison is pretty smart. Then Ben messes it up with some more of Kirby's dodgy science. Taking a deep breath of the available air will do nothing to increase the buoyancy of the acid-proof capsule. Only jettisoning weight would achieve that.

Not only that, but she somehow manages to get ahead of the rest of the FF and free Ant-Man so that she and Dr Pym can defeat Doom, leaving Reed, Johnny and Ben with just mop-up duties.

Not so much the Fantastic Four, more the Fantastic Two ... Ant-Man and the Invisible Girl defeat the deadly Dr Doom, while the rest of the Fantastic Four play catch-up.

Sue pretty much does the same thing in Fantastic Four 17 (Aug 1963) ... the story continues straight on from FF16 and once more, it's Sue's invisibility power that defeats the bad guy. Gaining access to Doom's high-altitude hideaway, the Fantastic Four split up to divide Doom's attention and to free his hostage Alicia. While the other three are defeated and captured one-by-one, Sue finds Alicia, frees her and takes her place. 

In Fantastic Four 17, Stan and Jack once again have Invisible Girl turn out to be the most effective member of the FF, by outsmarting Dr Doom several times before her stronger teammates arrive to give her a hand. Even I'm starting to think by this point, Lee and Kirby are overdoing it ...

For some reason, Doom doesn't realise his hostage's hair has turned from red to blonde - I noticed at least one other instance of someone referring to Alicia's hair as blonde, so it seems both Stan and Jack were still a little confused over this - and is surprised to encounter Sue Storm, instead. The Invisible Girl then makes Doom look like a clumsy clod, evades his ingenious "Invisible Person Trap" and finally tosses him around with her judo moves before the rest of the team shows up. Realising the jig is up, Doom jumps from his airborne stronghold and disappears ... again.

It does seem that both Stan and Jack are trying very hard to counter the early criticisms of some readers that The Invisible Girl is the least interesting member of the team. Issue after issue, they've had Sue disarming baddies and freeing the others from traps. This may partly be because of the nature of her invisibility powers but I think there's also an element of a conscious effort to show a female as a strong and vital member of the team, something that hadn't really been done in comics up till this point.

It's interesting, too, that this was all happening in 1963 - the same year that Betty Friedans' ground-breaking book The Feminine Mystique was released. It's possible that Stan and Jack hadn't actually read the book, but they could hardly have been unaware of it, as it sold over one million copies and would have been endlessly discussed in newspapers and on television.

As the rest of the year unspooled, Lee and Kirby would continue to push a female agenda in the next few issues of "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine", and I'll be looking at the amazing transformation of Sue Storm from the weakest member of the Fantastic Four to the strongest ... 

Next time: The problem that has no name

Ant-Man Antics: More Astonishing Tales

BACK IN 1964, the first Marvel comic I ever saw was Tales to Astonish 51, with Giant man battling The Human Top on the cover. Up until that point, I'd survived on a steady diet of Mort Wiesinger's Superman family comics and Julius Schwartz's Flash and Green Lantern titles. But here was something new and different and within a few months I was working hard to track down every Marvel comic I could get my hands on.

But what I didn't realise until much later was that Giant-Man had quite the back story. He hadn't just suddenly sprung to 2D life that moment I set eyes on him in early 1964. He'd been around for a couple of years, and had originally been smaller. A lot smaller.

ANTS IN YER PANTS

It’s no secret that small boys like creepy-crawlies. When I was a kid, I was endlessly fascinated by ants. I’d often spend time on sunny summer afternoons watching the little critters marching in straight lines from their nests, stopping to talk to each other, or struggling under the weight of a bit of twig twice their own size. And in the comic books of the period, I’d often see ads for ant-farms, a bargain at $2.98.

The Ant-Farm was a common mail order item in the American comic books of the 1950s and 1960s. If only I'd been able to lay my hands on $2.98, something that was bit hard to come by in the South-East London of the early 1960s.

The ant farm wasn’t a new idea. Invented in 1932 by French entomologist Charles Janet, but popularised by Milton Levine, the “Ant Farm” was a familiar toy sold by mail order in the comics of the 1950s and 1960s. Levine had been an engineer with the US military during WWII. On returning to civilian life, he formed a company with his brother-in-law and began selling “100 toy soldiers for $1” through mail order ads in the comic books of the period. In the mid-1950s, Levine had the idea to manufacture and sell plastic antariums under the name “Ant Farm”. For (originally) $1.98, the customer got just the ant farm. Ants were extra …

Ant-Man's beginnings were a bit more convoluted. Over the decades a legend has evolved that Marvel editor Stan Lee was casting around for a follow-up super-character to his successful Fantastic Four comic and his slightly less-successful Incredible Hulk book. The official version goes that Stan tried out two insect heroes in his anthology titles Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense to see which the readers reacted to better. However, looking at the timings of the issues that "Man in the Anthill" and "Man in the Beehive" were published in, I seriously doubt that story.

The "Man in the Beehive" story appeared nine months after Henry Pym's debut in Tales to Astonish. The stories were quite different and it's hard to see how the premise of the Tales of Suspense story could have translated into a superhero concept, though it does contain one of Stan's earliest uses of the term "mutant".

Fantastic Four 1 was cover dated November 1961 and was on the newsstands three months earlier in August. The “Man in the Anthill” story in Tales to Astonish appeared in issue 27 (Jan 1962). The vaguely similar “Man in the Beehive” seven-pager was published in Tales of Suspense 32 (Aug 1962, on sale May 1962). And the debut of Ant-Man in costume was in Tales to Astonish 35 (Sep 1962), on sale just a month after the Beehive story. If Stan really was trying out insect heroes, why would he leave publishing the Beehive story until after the decision to go with Ant-Man had already been made?

Quality's Doll Man was the first of the vertically challenged superheroes. The character was a hit and ran for six years in Feature Comics and was awarded his own book. The Atom debuted in Showcase 34 (Sep 1961) and went on to be one of the mainstays of DC's stable of B-team characters.

There has also been speculation that Stan rushed Ant-Man into Astonish to cash in on the success of DC's similar small hero, The Atom, another theory that I don't think holds water. Besides, The Atom wasn't the first height-challenged hero in comics. Will Eisner's creation for Quality Comics, Doll-Man appeared in December 1939 in issue 27 of Feature Comics and enjoyed a long and successful run, eventually getting his own title in the autumn of 1941.

It's doubtful either Stan or Jack thought of "The Man in the ant hill" as anything other than a throwaway fantasy filler for their most successful anthology title. Jack's artwork looks as though it's had less attention than Kirby normally lavished on the giant monster tales like Fin-Fang Foom and Groot.

The story in Tales to Astonish 27 that established Dr Henry Pym and his ability to shrink to insect size was similar to the standard O Henry style fantasy tales Stan had been filling out his anthology titles with. Plotted by Stan, pencilled by Jack Kirby and scripted by Stan’s brother Larry Lieber, the story was never intended as anything other than a throwaway filler, despite its cover-feature status. The art by Kirby looks rushed and certainly couldn’t be held up as a stellar example of his work during that period.

In the story, Henry Pym is working on a chemical that can reduce the size of objects. In time-honoured mad-scientist tradition, he tests it on himself. He shrinks to the size of an insect, then manages to fall out a window into the garden, where he’s chased around by a bunch of ants. One ant inexplicably takes a shine to our hero, and helps him get back to his lab, where he’s able to restore himself to normal size. Pym destroys his formula as it’s “far too dangerous to ever be used by any human again.”

And with that, the story was forgotten for the next few months.

THE RETURN OF ANT-MAN

But with the strong reader reaction to the Fantastic Four comic, and The Thing being singled out as a fan favourite, Stan and Jack Kirby came up with a story about scientist Bruce Banner being accidentally irradiated by gamma rays and transforming into a massively strong anti-hero, The Hulk, and put the character out in his own comic Incredible Hulk 1 (May 1962), on sale in February. Then, without waiting to see how either FF or The Hulk were faring sales-wise, Stan pressed on with two new heroes, The Mighty Thor and Ant-Man.

Stan Lee's brother, Larry Lieber.

Already busy with his scripting work on much of the Marvel line, Stan drafted his brother Larry in to write the dialogue for the new characters over his plots and Jack Kirby’s pencils. Though many have made a case for attributing Jack Kirby as the main author on these early superhero stories, Lieber described a different scenario in a 1999 interview for Alter Ego magazine: “Stan made up the plot, and then he'd give it to me, and I'd write the script. Tudor City had a park, and when it was nice I'd sit there and break the story down picture by picture. I was unsure of myself just sitting down to write a script. Since I knew how to draw, I'd think, 'Oh, this shot will have a guy coming this way ... this shot will have a guy looking down on him,' and later I'd sit at the typewriter and type it up. After a while, I'd just go to the typewriter ... These were all scripts in advance … Jack I always had to send a full script to. Also, what Stan liked was that I made up names. As a matter of fact, I made up the name ‘Henry Pym’.”

Stan has been quoted many times as saying that he liked to give his characters alliterative names as that made them easier for him to remember. So The Fantastic Four had Reed Richards and Sue Storm and the Hulk’s human identity was Bruce Banner. It wasn’t foolproof, however, as Stan referred to Banner as “Bob” in Avengers 3. Larry Lieber evidently didn’t need that trick. His characters’ civilian names were Don Blake, Tony Stark and Henry Pym.

In this first adventure, Henry Pym shrank and grew by sloshing his formula all over himself. Over the next few years this would change to gas, then pills and finally he was able to change size just by thinking about it.

Ant-Man returned, fully costumed, in Tales to Astonish 35 (Sep 1962), which hit the newsstands in June 1962, the same month as Journey into Mystery 83. Ant-Man’s costume featured a cleverly rendered stylised ant silhouette as a chest emblem and a really cool helmet, with antennae and ant mandibles, all of which was made of “unstable molecules”. Where Henry Pym gets his hands on proprietary technology invented by The Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards isn’t revealed.

Over and above his shrinking ability, Ant-Man’s Unique Selling Point was that he could communicate and work with the ants as allies in his fight against communism and other forms of injustice. So when a gang of commie agents tries to steal an anti-radiation formula that Henry Pym is working on, he turns into Ant-Man once again and battles to save his colleagues from the dastardly foreign agents.

As with the story in Tales to Astonish 27, “The Return of The Ant-Man” is not one of Jack Kirby’s more inspired art jobs. Kirby has often said on record that he always strived to come up with the best ideas and artwork in order to “make sales” and guarantee his continued employment, yet his work on Ant-Man was decidedly lacklustre compared to what he was doing on The Fantastic Four at the same time … as though he didn’t much care for the character and was just knocking out the pencils for the page rate.

Once the series was off and running, it seemed to lack a clear sense direction that The Fantastic Four had, and that we’d also see in later creations like Spider-Man. The biggest problem that Ant-Man had as a feature was that there wasn’t a single iconic villain. Villains help define the heroes in the minds of the fans. Batman wasn’t a massive success until he battled The Joker. The Fantastic Four already had The Skrulls, Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom in their first five issues. While, without a defining villain, The Hulk struggled to establish himself.

These earliest Ant-Man tales lacked a clear sense of direction. And Jack Kirby would often as not, struggle with finding interesting ways to frame a cover to make the most of the tiny hero.

So the earliest stories in the Ant-Man run were largely unmemorable, with the hero battling more communists in his second adventure, a local protection racket crook in his third and the mediocre Egghead in his fourth outing.

The second proper Ant-Man adventure also gave us an insight into how a diminutive character is able to exit and enter his regular-sized laboratory and how he doesn't get smeared on the pavement after being fired out of a catapult.

Tales to Astonish 36 was cover-dated October 1962 and gave us the menace of Comrade X. The surprise denouement of the tale has the villain being revealed to be female. No adequate reason is given for this drag act, and it may be that it’s more of a reflection of the times, where women were mostly viewed as mothers and home-makers rather than as real people with their own ambitions for either good or ill. However, there is a neat explanation of Ant-Man’s “human cannonball” catapult device he uses to get across the city quickly and quite a nice schematic of the secret exit/entrance to his laboratory.

Finding traces of machine oil where The Protector had been standing earlier, Ant-Man is able to deduce that he's using a mechanical exoskeleton to appear larger and stronger than he actually is.

Issue 37 was a little more prosaic, and had Ant-Man battling a criminal who’s been extorting money from neighbourhood jewellery businesses. In the end, Ant-Man deduces that the Protector is actually one of the jewellers who’s being extorted and turns the culprit over to the police. The adventure ends with a single panel ad for the rest of the Growing line of Marvel superhero comics.

One interesting aspect of Kirby's art on Ant-Man is the use of these forced perspective shots to put the reader down at Ant-Man's eye level. Really not sure about the spring-loaded boots, though.

Astonish 38 (Dec 1962) had the first proper “super-villain” for Ant-Man to fight. Egghead is an unnamed, disgruntled crooked scientist who’s fired from government employment for allegedly selling secrets to rival nations. The scientist joins forces with some gangsters and attempts to carry out a plot to turn the ants against Ant-Man. The plan backfires when it’s revealed that the ants are willing allies of Ant-Man in his battle against crime rather than helpless slaves, and Egghead is left a mumbling basketcase at the shock of learning that the ants are smarter than he is.

Although Egghead is the first recurring villain of the Ant-Man series, he’s just not a very good one. There were better villains ahead, unfortunately, the readers had to wait just a little too long for them to show up.

My views on Tales to Astonish 39 (Jan 1963) are documented in one of the first blog entries in this series. It was the first Ant-Man comic I ever saw back in the day, and it is one of the most popular of the early Ant-Man stories. It does use a variation on the old “hero’s doppelganger” plotline so commonly seen in DC comics of the Silver Age (Green Lantern’s Sinestro and Flash’s Professor Zoom), but this one had a twist. Stan pits his insect-sized human against a human-size insect, and I think it’s that aspect that resonated with so many fans. Unfortunately, Stan failed to capitalise on the idea and by the next issue, we were back to run-of-the-mill adversaries.

Despite some changes in personnel, these early Ant-Man stories still struggled to find a distinctive style. The problem was lack-lustre villains and no clear rhythm to the writing.

Tales to Astonish 40 (Feb 1963) had Ant-Man try to solve the mystery of a spate of armoured truck hijackings, where the trucks vanish and the guards have no memory of what happened. As with the earlier Protector story, Ant-Man uses his powers of deduction to uncover the villain, rather than his powers of ant-ness, which might go some way to explaining why the wider readership was failing to connect with the character.

There's quite a different feel to this Kirby artwork, inked by Sol Brodsky. This would be the last Ant-Man story in Astonish to be pencilled by Kirby.

Unusually, the Kirby pencils were inked by Sol Brodsky, who usually confined himself to production duties in the early Marvell Bullpen. The result is markedly different to the finish frequent Kirby collaborator Dick Ayers had been doing on the title, but I really like Brodsky’s inks on Kirby’s art.

Incoming penciller Don Heck brought a different feel to the Ant-Man strip. Heck's lightness of touch works better for me that Kirby's sometimes bombastic pencil art.

Astonish 41 (Mar 1963) featured the first change in personnel … Jack Kirby was replaced on pencils by Don Heck. Some commentators have tried to paint this as a negative – in a particularly spiteful interview, even for The Comics Journal, Harlan Ellison once called Don Heck "the worst artist in the field” – but I strongly disagree. Heck, especially when he inked his own pencils, was a subtle and delicate artist. If you’re not sure, then take a minute to look back at some of the work he did on earlier Marvel fantasy stories. And of course, he was the signature artist on The Avengers from issues 9-40, a career defining run.

In this page from the fantasy backup story in Tales to Astonish 38, "I Found the Impossible World", Don Heck demonstrates how he makes even a talking page interesting. Perhaps some fans found his superhero art unsatisfying because Heck himself preferred fantasy tales to action yarns.

WHO THE HECK IS DON HECK?

Donald L. Heck began his comics career in 1949, when he joined the staff of Harvey Comics, re-arranging the panels of of Milton Caniff newspaper strips into comic book pages, a process we would call "bodging" in the UK. While there, Heck became friends with Pete Morisi, who would later create Thunderbolt for Charlton Comics. When Morisi left Harvey to join a comics startup, Comic Media, he took Heck with him.

Don Heck did many covers for Comic Media and even designed the cover logo for Horrific. Later in the 1950s, Heck drew the tv-tie-in comic for Captain Gallant, a book that was very common in the back issue bins of 1970s comic marts, after a warehouse find.

At Comic Media, Heck began drawing early horror comics like Weird Terror as well as romance and war stories. But in 1954, Morisi had been showing art samples to Atlas editor Stan Lee. In Morisi's portfolio were a couple of Heck's pages. Lee pointed to the Heck samples and said, "This is the way you should have drawn it." Morisi testily suggested that if Stan wanted Heck's style he should hire Heck. Lee said that if he saw Heck he might have a story for him. "So I went up there on a Wednesday afternoon" Heck later recalled. "Stan never saw anybody on Wednesdays, and he never saw anybody in the afternoon. But he came out. He looked at the first two pages and said, 'Aw, hell, I know what your stuff looks like. Come on in. I got a story for you'." Heck joined the staff of Atlas and worked on a variety of titles until the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, when he and just about every other artist was let go.

Heck drew one of the rare non-Kirby Marvel covers of the late 1950s/early 1960s, Tales of Suspense 1. It must've been an omen, as Heck would later pencil a long run on Suspense's signature superhero, Iron Man.

Within a couple of years, though, Heck was back at Atlas, which was in the process of transforming into Marvel Comics. Unusually, Heck drew the cover for Tales of Suspense 1 (Jan 1963), as a time when just about every Marvel cover was drawn by Kirby or Ditko. Later in the series run, Heck provided the art for the first (and subsequent) instalments of Iron Man. Legend had it that Kirby did pencil breakdowns for the origin story, but "that's not true," Heck said in a 1985 interview for Comics Feature. "I did it all. They just didn't bother to call me up and find out when they wrote up the credits. It doesn't really matter. Jack Kirby created the costume, and he did the cover for the issue. In fact the second costume, the red and yellow one, was designed by Steve Ditko. I found it easier than drawing that bulky old thing. The earlier design, the robot-looking one, was more Kirbyish."

As Marvel developed, Heck was one of the mainstay artists, pencilling (and often inking) runs on top Marvel titles: Tales of Suspense 39-72, designing Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts, Black Widow, Hawkeye and The Mandarin, and missing only a couple of issues; The Avengers 9-40, co-creating The Swordsman and Power-Man; and of course, his run on Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish.

Towards the end of the 1960s Heck was getting less work from Marvel as tastes - and editors - changed. But he landed a lucrative gig, ghosting art for Lee Falk's The Phantom from 1966 to 1971, and provided a lot of pencil art for DC strips like Batgirl and Rose and Thorn, probably because he drew especially glamorous girls.

The great Don Heck at his drawing board, during his 1960s heyday.

Don Heck died of lung cancer on 23 February 1995.

AND BACK TO ANT-MAN ...

The same month he drew the Ant-Man story in Tales to Astonish 41, Heck also provided pencils and inks for the “Iron Man is Born” story in Tales of Suspense 39. If I have any criticism of Heck's art on Ant-Man it’s that he didn’t seem as engaged with the character as he did with Iron Man. But it’s still better quality work than Kirby was turning in on the strip.

The Ant-Man uniform in the interior of Astonish 35 shows a stylised ant, the mandibles around Henry Pym's throat, the antennae across his shoulders and the mid-legs around Pym's waist. On the cover, usually drawn after the interior, the antennae have disappeared and Kirby would continue to draw the uniform this way from Astonish 36 on. When Heck began drawing the character, he went back to a design similar to that in Kirby's original version.

What is interesting is that Don Heck’s version of the Ant-Man uniform is very similar to the one Kirby drew in Astonish 35. With Astonish 36, Kirby had revised the design slightly (this is also the version that appears on Astonish 35’s cover). And the revised version was the one Kirby drew until his last Ant-Man story in Astonish 40. Heck must have been given Astonish 35 for reference, because that’s the version of the uniform he drew through his entire run, even while Kirby was drawing the revised version on the covers.

“Prisoner of the Slave World” has Henry Pym investigating the disappearances of fellow scientists. He discovers that a small-time crook is working with aliens from another dimension to abduct the technicians. So Pym arranges to have himself kidnapped then changes to Ant-Man to defeat the baddies. And the traitorous human ends up in jail in the alien dimension.

I really like Heck's page design in Tales to Astonish 42. He really gets across the sense of scale from Ant-Man's perspective and contrary to what some fans think, I rate his action art pretty highly.

The Ant-Man adventure in Tales to Astonish 42 (Apr 1963) also resembled one of the fantasy yarns Stan was turning out that the time. Radio announcer Jason Cragg is involved in a freak microphone accident that gives him a fantastically persuasive voice so he decides to use his new ability to turn the general population against Ant-Man. There’s no rationale given in the tale as to why he would use such an awesome power for such a mundane ambition – and this is also symptomatic of why these early Ant-Man tales weren’t more successful. In the end, Ant-Man defeats Cragg by giving him laryngitis which causes him to lose his powers of persuasion.

Tales to Astonish 43 has one of the earlier instances of Stan Lee's abiding crusades - the battle against discrimination in all its forms. Here he makes a very good case against the then-common practice of age discrimination, which elevates an otherwise-mundane tale.

“The Mad Master of Time” in Astonish 43 (May 1963) is unfortunately another fantasy tale masquerading as a superhero story. In this one, elderly scientist Prof Elias Weems is fired from his job for the simple sin of being too old. Seeking revenge, he concocts an aging ray and begins firing it indiscriminately at members of the public. Ant-Man investigates and discovers the cause of the mysterious aging malady afflicting random citizens.

Once the misguided man is captured, Ant-Man pleads on his behalf in court. The one interesting aspect of this story is that Stan and Larry – this would be his last scripting job on Ant-Man – mount an effective case against age discrimination at a time when this sort of thing was the standard way of doing business. These days we have laws against this type of practice, but back in the early 1960s, workers were routinely discriminated against for their age.

In Tales to Astonish 44 we learn about a major event in Henry Pym's past - the death of his wife Maria, depicted here as a beautiful mature woman with fetching iron-grey hair. On first seeing Janet van Dyne, Pym is struck by how much she resembles a much younger version of his dead wife.

Tales to Astonish 44 (Jun 1963) ushers in some more changes – both in the creative team and in the Ant-Man concept. Stan must have felt that there was something lacking in the scripting and replaced his brother Larry with old-time Atlas editor Ernie Hart, who was credited as “H. E. Huntley”. In a 2007 interview, Leiber said that Stan “wasn't always the most patient person and I had problems [writing] the dialogue and he said, 'Why did you say that? You could have said it this way, or this way or that way,' and I’m realizing, yeah, I don't think of it that way or this way. So at any rate finally I think at one point he got a little exasperated and he said, 'I’m going to hire some of the old pros’.”

Hart had been a staff editor at Timely Comics during the 1940s, sharing an office with Al Jaffee. He remained on staff through the Atlas years, and was brought on as a scripter on the Human Torch strip in Strange Tales and the Ant-Man series, presumably to give it a shot in the arm.

That shot in the arm was the introduction of a partner for Ant-Man. “The Creature from Kosmos” opens with Henry Pym musing about his long-dead wife, Maria Trovaya, a Hungarian national. On a trip back to Mrs Pym’s mother country, she’s arrested by communist secret police and is later found murdered. This incident might go some way to explaining why Pym fought so many communists during his formative years as Ant-Man. Back in the present, Pym is visited by fellow scientist Vernon van Dyne who is experimenting with gamma ray beams to detect signals from other planets. Van Dyne has brought his daughter Janet along, though she seems more interested in taking in the city nightlife than listening to scientific theory. Pym is struck by the uncanny resemblance of Janet to his dead wife, but is also aware of how much younger she is. In the flashback, Maria is shown with grey hair and could conceivably be in her mid-to late thirties, so it’s likely that Pym is supposed to be about 40 here. Perhaps Janet van Dyne is supposed to be about 20.

Pym is unable to help, so Van Dyne continues with his work alone, only to unwittingly unleash a criminal alien on Earth, whose first act is to murder Doctor van Dyne. Pym investigates as Ant-Man and learns the truth. Then in his guise as Pym, reveals his secret identity to Janet, offers her super-powers and asks her to join him in the hunt for her father’s killer.

Rather than simply enabling her to shrink and grow, Pym implants – somewhat recklessly – wasp cells in Janet’s back, so that she’ll grow natural wings when she reduces in size. Putting on a uniform of unstable molecules, Janet shrinks to insect size and sets out with Ant-Man to defeat the alien.

As they battle with the creature, Pym is thinking that Janet is so like Maria, but also that he must avoid falling in love with her as she’s too young. The adventure closes with Wasp gazing at Pym and thinking that, “someday I will make you realise that you love me as I love you.” Later in the series, Stan would play down the age difference. Even here, it sounds a little creepy.

Tales to Astonish 45 featured the return of an old villain, Egghead, the first such repeat appearance in the series so far. It also had The Wasp use a needle to mimic a wasp's sting. She would't get her compressed air Wasp's Sting until much later in the series, in Tales to Astonish 57.

Tales to Astonish 45 (Jul 1963) featured the return of Egghead, Ant-Man’s first recurring villain. This time, Egghead plans to use The Wasp as bait to trap Ant-Man. But far from being the helpless victim, it’s The Wasp who saves the day, using a needle to sting Egghead and his henchmen into submission.

Ant-Man shows up as a guest star in Fantastic Four 16, a quite clever piece of plotting that follows up on Doctor Doom's disappearance into the microworld at the conclusion of Fantastic Four 10.

The same month (though actually on sale a week later on 9 Apr 1963), Ant-Man appears, drawn once again by Jack Kirby, as a guest star in Fantastic Four 16. At the end of Fantastic Four 10, Doctor Doom was cast into a microworld, the very fate he intended for the FF. Still there six months later, Doom devises a way to shrink his arch-enemies to his size. After a couple of random shrinking incidents, Reed Richards contacts Ant-Man for help. The tiny hero gives Mr Fantastic a few drops of his shrinking/growing gas so the FF can counteract any further attempts to shrink them. However, The Fantastic Four still find themselves in Doom’s microworld and have to rely on Ant-Man’s help to defeat Doom.

Clearly this was an attempt on Stan’s part to boost the visibility of Ant-Man with fans of other, more popular Marvel comics. Yet, when you look at the sales of Tales to Astonish, it wasn’t faring any worse than its companion title Tales of Suspense and was actually doing better than Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales.

The sales figures for 1962 show Suspense at an average monthly sale of 126,000 with Astonish at 140,000. Strange Tales is at 136,000 and Journey into Mystery is selling an average of 132,000.

The following year, Suspense has risen to 188,000 with Astonish at 189,000, with Strange Tales also at 189,000 and Journey into Mystery average at 188,000. Did Stan think that Astonish should be doing better than the rest? He wasn’t guest-starring Iron Man or Thor in FF during 1963, so I can’t see what he was worrying about.

The last couple of Ant-Man adventures aren't a huge improvement over what had come before. Stan Lee was very obviously dissatisfied with how the character was turning out and planned some really big changes right after this trio of issues.

For all that, the next three issues of Astonish continued in a similar vein. In issue 46 (Aug 1963), Ant-Man and the Wasp battle a giant Cyclops monster while on holiday in Greece. The monster turns out to be a giant robot, constructed by invading aliens to scare away the locals, which does, admittedly, sound a bit like a Scooby-Doo plot.

Tales to Astonish 47 had a villain called Trago (Spanish for "drink" by the way), a sort of bargain basement Ringmaster, who hypnotises his audiences and robs them. Ant-Man and The Wasp make short work of him.

Tales to Astonish 47 (Sep 1963) has Ant-Man and The Wasp fight against a musician called Trago, who is able to use his trumpet music to mesmerise his audience so he can rob them. Scripter Ernie Hart does introduce a bit of banter into Janet's relationship with Henry, calling him "Hank" and teasing him for not wanting to relax and for not knowing anything about jazz music. That aspect would be developed more fully later in the series.

The Porcupine in Tales to Astonish 48 was probably the most memorable Ant-Man villain to date - though that's not really saying very much.

Astonish 48 (Oct 1963) introduces another villain who would return to plague Henry Pym and Janet van Dyne at a later date – The Porcupine. When I first read this story, as a kid, I thought The Porcupine was quite sinister. His mask is very creepy, and it’s a tribute to Don Heck’s skill that he’s able to render a credible villain out of such a ridiculous idea. Scientist Alex Huntley constructs a porcupine costume loaded with ingenious weapons and uses it to rob a bank. But Ant-Man and The Wasp devise a way to neutralise his weapons. While The Wasp distracts the villain by stinging him with a pin, Ant-Man sprays him with quick-drying cement. Though the controls of his suit are useless, Porcupine manages to escape to fight another day.

Avengers 1: Scripted by Stan Lee and pencilled by Jack Kirby, Ant-Man and the Wasp's characterisations here foreshadowed the chemistry they would have in the yet-to-debut Giant-Man series over in Tales to Astonish.

The same day that Tales to Astonish 48 hit the newsstands, Ant-Man and the Wasp made their debut as charter members of The Avengers. Martin Goodman had long wanted a team comic, starring Captain America, Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch, to rival DC's Justice League of America. Stan Lee had ducked that one and given him The Fantastic Four instead. But at last, with a larger roster of superheroes to draw on, Lee was finally able to field a team that matched the JLA in power, if not in sales.

The plot involves Thor's long-time enemy Loki trying to manufacture a battle between The Thunder God and The Incredible Hulk. When Rick Jones tries to contact The Fantastic Four for help with an apparently out-of-control Hulk, Loki diverts the radio message to Dr Don Blake's radio instead. Unknown to Loki, the SOS message is also received by Henry Pym and Tony Stark, and the four heroes converge on the Teen Brigade HQ. One of Ant-Man's ants sights The Hulk, hiding out with a travelling circus and the superheroes set off to track him down. Ant-Man and The Wasp play a decisive role in the battle, first undermining (with the help of ants) the ground on which The Hulk stands then, when the fighting's done, suggesting they team up regularly to battle large-scale menaces ... and it's The Wasp who gives them their name: The Avengers. But this would be Ant-Man's only appearance with the team. By issue 2, he would have a change of name and powers and by issue 16 left The Avengers, both team and comic.

While Ant-Man was never a fan-favourite with hardcore Marvel readers, at least he managed a longer run than The Hulk. The weakest aspect to the character was that the dialogue wasn't written by Stan Lee, and thus lacked the light touch and banter between characters that was very much Lee's trademark. Larry Lieber admitted that this style wasn't for him in that 1999 Alter Ego interview with Roy Thomas: "I didn't do enough of the superheroes to know whether I'd like them. What I didn't prefer was the style that was developing. It didn't appeal to me. ... Maybe there was just too much humor in it, or too much something ... I remember, at the time, I wanted to make everything serious. I didn't want to give a light tone to it."

Still, for whatever reason, Stan was dissatisfied with how the Tales to Astonish stories had been shaping up and began preparing a Really Big change for Ant-Man. He was going to take over scripting and add two letters to Ant-Man's name.


Next: Big things ahead for Ant-Man.