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This is the second volume of the Ant-Man/Giant-Man series (d’uh) that was originally printed in Tales To Astonish. Now, I don’t have the first volume but I want to pick these Masterworks volumes as they come out to short up my collection. This series picks up where the first left off, and reprints Tales To Astonish #’s 53-69, which originally were published from March 1964 to July 1965. I figured I would write a few brief notes on all the issues included.
Spoilers Ahead
-Tales to Astonish #53- Giant-Man battles an old foe, the Porcupine. He comes up with a hackneyed scheme where he will impersonate someone in his fan club and then capture the Wasp and use her as bait to find the secret hideout of Giant-Man. Well, it actually works and he shows up, takes a whole bunch of what he thinks are growth pills but actually they are reducint pills and Porcupine disappears (a la Doom did in FF#10) into nothingness. There is a back-up tale of Wasp telling a story to Hank which was probably an old horror story Marvel printed back in the pre-superhero days. This was a decent story, very much in the manner of early, crazy Marvel days.
-Tales to Astonish #54- The US governments sends Giant-Man to Santo Rico to investigate a communist named El Toro who won the democratic election. Giant-Man goes with the Wasp, Wasp gets captured, Giant-Man has to bail her out, saves the day, and finds papers that prove El Toro rigged the election. It’s a win for the US! Yes! Wasp appears in another back-up story telling a tale of ruler who wanted to be loved and so he took over another world which only led to public hatred for him. Nice little message there. This was a cookie-cutter plot but was fine for what it was. The Giant-Man fan club makes another appearance here.
-Tales to Astonish #55- Giant-Man’s fan club shows up again to watch clips of Giant-Man fighting Human Top. What a wonderful piece of irony since Human Top happens to escape at that moment! Human Top manages to follow Giant-Man home after a chance encounter and steals his growth pills, prisons him in a closet then kidnaps Wasp. Giant-Man escapes and has to battle a Human Top who is 12 feet tall like Hank! Giant-Man manages to defeat him with the help of some termites (no joke) and Giant-Man saves Wasp and the day, again. There is a back-up tale of Wasp telling another old original TTA style mystery/alien story that is enjoyable.
-Tales to Astonish #56- Stop me if you have heard this before. A villain (this time The Magician, who is very much like Mr. Miracle from FF #3) kidnaps the Wasp and steals some money, and Giant-Man must set a trap to draw out the Magician and capture him! There’s another back-up where Wasp tells the story of a woman being guarded by a huge Rhino and the lazy lover who wants to pursue her. This is a lot of the same for Giant-Man.
-Tales to Astonish #57- Finally we have a little variety in the book. Egghead shows up (he’s like Lex Luthor, just with a bigger head). He sets up a confrontation between Spider-Man and Giant-Man where the two heroes fight. Eventually they find out that Egghead is behind it all and team-up to capture him. There was an amusing bit at the end where Wasp and Spider-Man don’t get along, like their real life counterparts. This was also the first appearance of Wasp’s sting shooters. The back-up tale features Wasp tackling a criminal alone, and using her wit to stop him. This was a nice change of pace in terms of Giant-Man tales, though it was the standard Marvel heroes fighting each other formula.
-Tales to Astonish #58- Giant-Man and Wasp visit a jungle village where a huge 30-foot being named Colossus is demanding a human sacrifice. Captain America asks Giant-Man to check it out and he does. They have their requisite fight but Giant-Man uses not only his brawn but more importantly his brain to defeat the huge monster (with Wasp’s help, of course) and it turns out this big villain was actually an alien looking for a human speciman for their world. The alien leaves and says Earth is too powerful for them to return. The back-up features the Wasp battling the Magician solo and defeating him. What a weak villain!
-Tales to Astonish #59- This would be a meeting between Giant-Man and Hulk where Giant-Man wants to just talk to Hulk (after seeing him fighting Spider-Man). Of course, this coincides with the Human Top escaping and following Giant-Man to New Mexico and causing a fight between Hulk and Giant-Man and having Thunderbolt Ross firing a nuclear warhead at them. Hulk stops the warhead and transforms back to Banner to end the fight. Giant-Man and Wasp head home without the Hulk and don’t realize that Human Top engineered the whole thing. The final back-up tale in this volume features a behind the scenes look at Giant-Man, his inventions and his home.
-Tales to Astonish #60- This would mark a big turning point in Marvel. Instead of just having one character appear in one of the old-school titles (TTO and TOS), they would split the title up and have two characters (each without their own ongoing title) coappear in the book. This would be the first time that Giant-Man and Hulk shared TTA. Giant-Man heads behind the Curtain Wall solo to save a friend who has been captured by the Russians. It seems his friend has discovered a new weapon that will make apes smart (sounds like Red Ghost to me!) and so Giant-Man saves his friend and destroys the weapon. We also get a glimpse into the past of Giant-Man and his previous marriage! His wife died at the hands of the dirty reds so he has some harboring anger towards them. This was a different tale than the other issues in this collection told.
-Tales to Astonish #61- Giant-Man has to battle Egghead again, and this time Egghead has created a huge, powerful android that Egghead controls via his brainwaves. Giant-Man dispatches of the android pretty effortlessly. This was the weakest of the bunch so far. This also marks the art of Steve Ditko on the title.
-Tales to Astonish #62- Giant-Man is chilling in his lab (making a crazy out of control plant) and ends up knocking himself out when a thief happens upon him. The thief steals his costume and all and starts stealing. Wasp realizes this and fights the foe but is imprisoned. Giant-Man eventually wakes up, puts his costume back on, finishes the threat of the crazy plant he had created and in a single panel we learn that the thief had his memory wiped with some memory loss serum. How convenient! This tale was nothing to shout home about.
-Tales to Astonish #63- Giant-Man battles a hooded villain (looking like Cobra Commander, actually) named the Wrecker who wrecks stores of people who don’t pay for his protection. Hank and Janet buy and open a store for the express reason to ensnare Wrecker in a trap, which works. Wrecker is given to the police.
-Tales to Astonish #64- Hank pisses off Wasp who runs out on him. She takes a flight and ends up getting captured by Attuma. Hank finds out thanks to Janet and sending an ant to Hank to relay the message. Hank shows up, and guess what, yep, saves the day. This is the same formula they’ve used a ton of times already in this volume.
-Tales to Astonish #65- This is the first art of Golden Age legend Bob Powell in the book. Hank gives himself a new costume, experiments with a new shrinking and growth device and manages to enlarge a spider. Hank and Wasp must now deal with a huge spider. Shelob it ain’t. This was definitely a silly story that was told in lieu of anything else more substantial being available.
-Tales to Astonish #66- This is the first appearance of Madam Macabre, a villainous who can enlarge and shrink metal objects. She meets with Giant-Man to try and strike a partnership to rule the world. Hank refuses of course so Madam decides to strike where Hank is weakest (don’t guess), the Wasp. She plants a trap and Wasp is captured, Hank shows up to try to save the day but gets captured himself. Wasp manages to free herself and save the day! Well, that was a slight change of pace at the end!
-Tales to Astonish #67- Hank comes into contact with a villain who uses a green ray to steal ideas and powers in order to rule the world. He tries to steal Giant-Man’s growth but it doesn’t work. He eventually catches up to Hank again and steals his shrinking powers! Hank has to battle him as Giant-Man and manages to grab the victory after it is revealed the villain is an alien who is brought back home because the other race thought it was a bad idea to take over a primitive world. They say everything is back to normal and Hank can’t even tell anyone what happened since no one will believe him!
-Tales to Astonish #68- Remember last issue when everything was back to normal? Well, I guess not since Hank can’t shrink. One of Hank’s old enemies shows up, The Human Top, and tries to beat Hank by crashing a plane into him. That fails so he creates a new suit which enables him to fly. He impersonates a reporter and breaks into Hank’s home, and kidnaps the Wasp. Looks like a cliffhanger!
-Tales to Astonish #69- We pick up with Hank looking for Janet and Top telling Janet of his super plan, to trap Hank and freeze him to death! Well Wasp sends a wasp to get Hank who shows up, and gets trapped. Wasp ends up in the cell with them and they both end up frozen solid! Hank uses his powers of growth and shrinking (even going Ant size which he couldn’t do last issue and was never explained how he could do it) and breaking free. Top gets frozen himself and jailed and Hank mull retirement. It is a sad end to a once-great character.
-The Bottom Line- This volume is unique because it shows a major shift in the Tales to Astonish series. The first few issues (#’s 53-59) featured a Giant-Man story and a Wasp back-up story. Now, whether this was ani ssue with low sales on TTA or just ingenuity on Marvel’s part, #60 featured a split in TTA, where Giant-Man and Hulk co-starred on the title. This was a great shift where a fan can pick up a tale featuring two Marvel heroes for a dime and two pennies. This worked well with Tales of Suspense (Iron Man and Captain America) as well. Now honestly, I was never a huge fan of Giant-Man (any of them) since the stories always seemed the same. I felt he was a weak link in the early Avengers tales, too. I actually prefer the Ant-Man stuff though that is just a minimal part of the volume. In fact, this is really like watching the death of a friend. The stories started out pretty well but about halfway through the title you can tell that the Giant-Man stories had run their course. The character was getting stale, he started sharing his title with someone else and it was only a matter of time. It is kind of sad to see the character dying like this. The stories started getting sillier and sillier, and actually shorter, to the point where you really couldn’t even do anything productive with them. The last half of the book (after Hulk joined) was especially brutal. Introduce a villain, have Wasp kidnapped, then Hank saves the day. That is the basic story for almost all of them. TTA #69 finally finished Ant-Man’s run in the book as Sub-Mariner would take over after that. These stories were not essential reading and there wasn’t a blowaway tale that would make me recommend picking this up, unless you are a die-hard Hank Pym fan. Recommendation to Avoid.
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