The Hulk had ceased his homeless wanderings through the Marvel universe just as Giant-Man and the Wasp were about to embark on theirs.
Despite a desperate last-minute costume redesign in Tales to Astonish 65 (Feb. 1965), Dr. Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne would be out in five more issues, their feature replaced by the Sub-Mariner’s. That would turn Tales to Astonish into a title focusing on the exploits of two super-antiheroes.
“Interesting how often this new costume gimmick was employed by Marvel,” Richard Akis said. “You also saw it with Iron Man, Daredevil and the original X-Men. It obviously worked with Iron Man and DD, less so for the X-Men.”
And because writer/editor Stan Lee rarely abandoned a character, he’d find Pym and Van Dyne a new home in the super-team they’d helped found, the Avengers, a year later.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bruce Banner had fallen into the clutches of a Russian submarine. By this time, Lee and artist Steve Ditko had focused on rage as the trigger for his transformations, so Banner was able to use his anger to break free and hurl himself On a Rampage Against the Reds!
“This approach first appeared in the Lee/Ayers Giant-Man/Hulk story just prior to the Ditko run,” Harmony Gates noted. “It was a much handier trigger than the day/night or gamma-machine explanations previously employed. (As an aside, Ditko did write a great article on how he and Lee worked together on the strip and based on that the idea could have come from either).”
The Vietnam war was growing increasingly unpopular, and Lee’s anti-communist crusading — which had seemed timely in the McCarthy era of a decade before — was starting to look shopworn. Lee would soon drop that angle in his stories.
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteThe original Ant-Man costume was far more inspired, and with the transition to Giant-Man, the simplified version was more than adequate for a towering figure. The outfit shown here wasn't very creative, and seemed clunky to me. The later Goliath and Black Goliath costumes weren't very well done either.
The anti-Communist stories formed a springboard for early 1960s Atlas/Marvel, but they would never be viable as a mainstay. They did, however, provide one of the first roots in the real world that would distinguish their comics from DC, which had an ed… See more
Paul Zuckerman wrote:
ReplyDeleteI had not been a regular reader of the Ant Man series and it appears that I only began to regularly pick up the book after the Hulk had joined it. This was a period where I thought both strips were interesting. I was somewhat disappointed by the early Sub-Mariner series at the time because the endless quest series seemed boring to me. Adam Austin's artwork was OK, but it was only on the Iron Man strip did I fully begin to become an Adam Austin fan. Of course, then it was announced that he was really---Gene Colan! I went "who??", not ever having heard of or seen (to my knowledge) his work before. Oh well! That happened a lot when Stan revealed who the artist or writer was behind a pseudonym.
I hated the anti-Communist stories of the period because they were so shallow and simplistic. I much preferred DC's hands-off approach or more friendly take, such as when Kennedy and Khrushchev would appear and seem like buddies. This approach, though, really hurt Blackhawk. Although the Quality issues of Blackhawk rarely if ever used real countries, it was clear that they were constantly fighting Reds during the 50s. Yet it seems to work for that strip especially given the climate of the day. The DC Blackhawks rarely helped "freedom-loving" people and instead focused on super scientists and aliens.
DC had tackled Vietnam in the short-lived Hunter series in Our Fighting Forces. It seems that the readers were just not interested in reading a series about events that were unfolding in their newspapers and on TV every day and night. Again the stories were simplistic though I think the character of Lu-Lin, a waitress that worked with Hunter, was a bit more complex though I don't remember the strip very well. As an early opponent to American involvement in Vietnam, I think the strip incensed me more than anything else.
I read the Superman in Vietnam story once a long time ago a couple of years after it came out and remember it as just being a mess. Andru's art didn't help and Kanigher didn't have a real grasp on Superman, if I recall. Nice cover by Kubert though.
Bob Doncaster wrote:
ReplyDeleteEverything old is new again. If Lee was alive anti Russia stories would again be timely.
Peter Benno Gillis wrote:
ReplyDeleteThat Giant-Man story remains one of my favorites. Great, and I mean GREAT art: Bob Powell finished by Don Heck: a positively great splash, a vastly better new costume.
But the capper is the end. Pym is sitting there, playing either a piano or an organ, and explains the science that created the giant spider. Jan (who never looked better) says “Never mind that: how about taking your little Wasp out dancing?”
And Henry Pym looks right at the camera (also never looking better) and thinks, “Who needs to be romantic? I’m doing fine the way I am!”
That’s still the Hank and Jan I remember. Somebody else called them Marvel’s Nick and Nora Charles, and that’s close enough. No other byplay existed like that in comics anywhere at the time, and very little since.
Johnny Williams wrote:
ReplyDeleteHank and Jan were great characters but Marvel has a history of seeming to not know what to do with them, or, not knowing how to utilize their huge potential. It was hit or miss largely as the earliest days, Ant Man and The Wonderful Wasp were fun, campy, goofy, then came the original Avengers lineup where they were greatly overshadowed. It’s hard to be a tiny hero among a Norse god, an armored titan, and a green behemoth.
They eventually left the team but returned some time later with Hank this time being the primary muscle in a new costume and identity. It worked for a little while until none other than Hercules himself joined the team, and Pym was outclassed again.
It wasn’t until the Thomas - Buscema Avengers run where the two began to regain some steam and traction. Yellowjacket and The Wasp were a hit, oops, unfortunate choice of terms, because Marvel screwed things up again by turning Hank into a paranoid wife beater. This was the lowest point for them both.
I haven’t followed Marvel titles in a while, but it seems that Dr. Pym’s image has somehow been repaired. That’s a good thing.
Andrew Nicholson wrote:
ReplyDeleteA big problem was that Giant Man's new costume was just....awful. Despite an upgrade in the art the costume heralded the demise of Hank and Jan for the time being