Since it’s not that long ago that I
wrote two pieces on “The Care and Esteeming of Little Myths,” it’s entirely
appropriate that I should focus now upon a literally little myth-figure, that of the Silver Age
Ant-Man,. With this character I plan to show a practical application of my demihero-concept—though
the actual application will appear in Part 2.
This essay I’ll devote only to charting the transformation of Henry Pym
from demihero to superhero.
I’ll begin with a quick summation
of “The Man in the Ant Hill,” from TALES TO ASTONISH #27 (January 1962).
Henry Pym begins his fictive life
as a Frankenstein manqué. When his
colleagues criticize him for “ridiculous theories” that “never work,” and tell
him to “stick to practical projects,” he boasts that he’ll soon prove himself
“a greater scientist than any of you.”
This inflated ego leads the scientist to invent two serums: one that can
shrink anything to insect-sized proportions, and another that can restore the
object to normal. He’s already made it
work with a chair, but because one of his hypothetical uses involves shrinking
people (as in transporting troops to war), he tests it on himself.
He somehow forgets to put the enlarging serum
within reach, runs out of his house in a panic, and falls afoul of a troop of
hostile ants. He improbably seeks
shelter in the ants’ own hill, and almost drowns in the ants’ supply of
honey. One kindly (?) ant saves him, but
the other ants attack again. He drives
them off with a lighted match and outwrestles one hostile ant with a judo
move.
He escapes the anthill and tries
to get back to his house. Providentially
the one friendly ant helps him again, so that he reaches the enlarging
serum. Restored to normalcy, he throws
away the serums and tells his colleagues that from now on he will “stick to
practical projects.” The story ends on a
note of humility, as a caption says that he’ll never “knowingly step upon an
ant hill,” because of the “one small ant to whom he owned his very life.”
Eight months later, within a week
of Spider-Man’s debut in AMAZING FANTASY #15, “The Return of the Ant Man”
appeared in TALES TO ASTONISH #35 (September 1962).
The story recapitulates in a few
panels what happened in the earlier story.
Then Pym changes his mind: having destroyed the original serums, he
decides to concoct them again and then hide them away for safekeeping. His experiences in the ant hill bring about a
growing fascination with ants. He
devises a cybernetic helmet that will allow him to communicate with them, as
well as a “protective costume” to shield him when he shrinks again to meet the
creatures on their level. However, the
U.S. government comes calling, casually asking this expert in diverse technologies
to come up with “a gas to make people immune to radioactivity,” which will
supposedly be an immense advantage in a nuclear conflict. The agents of “a nation on the other side of
the world” learn of the research and agree that this gas would be a great
asset. Though Pym’s laboratory is
guarded by FBI agents, the foreign agents overpower them and demand the
anti-radiation formula. Pym
patriotically refuses to give it up. The
spies lock everyone up while they search the lab for Pym’s notes, after which
they plan to blow up the lab and everyone in it. Pym luckily is confined to a place where he
can get to both his costume and his shrinking serum. Once he “gets small,” he returns to the
anthill in his yard. He dominates most
of the ants with his helmet because “my wavelength is stronger than theirs,”
except one big ant whom he must conquer with his human-sized strength and yet
more judo.
He has one more quick
conflict with a beetle which is “the size of a dinosaur” at this level. Then Ant-Man leads his troop of obedient ants
into the house. With their help he frees
the bound FBI agents and inconveniences the spies until the good agents
overcome them. He returns to his lab and
enlarges, having concealed himself so that neither the spies nor the agents are
aware of his role in the dramatic upset.
He concludes the adventure by wondering whether he will become Ant-Man
again, though an enthusiastic final caption confirms that he will do so by “the
next issue of TALES TO ASTONISH.”
On a side note, Ant-Man apparently
makes some more public deeds of heroism before the story in TTA #36, for that
story begins with the populace celebrating Ant-Man as a “living legend.” It may be of some interest that in this
respect the Ant-Man feature followed the same trajectory as the first two
issues of the FANTASTIC FOUR series, which also started out with the heroes
performing their first deed without officially revealing themselves to humanity
at large, while their second adventure began with them already celebrated as
great heroes by the entire free world.
It’s interesting that “Man in the
Ant Hill” partakes of a pattern well used by the “Atlas” suspense/horror tales
of the late 1950s and early 1960s: what might best be called the “hubris
avoided” pattern. Pym is not a bad man,
but he pursues science in the name of fanciful dreams. When this causes his practical-minded
colleagues to sneer at him, he overcompensates by wanting to be considered
greater than all of them. Yet
perversely, he tests his shrinking serum on himself, which has the effect of
“cutting him down to size.” He even
conveniently forgets to place the enlarging serum where he can reach it, and
makes his situation worse by panicking and running out where the hostile ants
pursue him. Only one ant—the equivalent
of a “friendly native” in a jungle-story—enables Pym to survive his foolish
endeavor, and to put aside his hubristic ways.
In contrast, since “Return of the
Ant Man” is meant to launch a continuing superhero, the Pym of this tale is
almost without any inappropriate ego: not only does he patriotically agree to
help the government on a project he doesn’t even come up with (and which works
only in terms of comic-book logic), he doesn’t even announce his presence to
the FBI agents. Of course, by the next
issue Ant-Man has found that becoming a fulltime superhero has its ego-building
perks as well, though in keeping with the superheroes of the period, it’s never
asserted that this is his primary motive.
More in Part 2.
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