Tales To Astonish #44

Tales To Astonish #44 (1963)
plot by Stan Lee
script by H.E.Huntley
pencils and cover by Jack Kirby

Nine issues after the debut of his serial, Ant-Man gets  a partner.

The script is by H.E.Huntley (pseudonym of Ernest Huntley Hart), a Golden Age veteran who mostly worked on “funny animals” books.
He did very few superhero comics in the Silver Age (including some Human Torch stories); the Wasp is by far his most important contribution to the Marvel Universe.

Well, until someone finds a way to put “The Adventures of Pussycat” in continuity, because he worked on that too.
Yes, this was published by Marvel Comics.
No, I will not elaborate.

In addition to introducing Wasp, this is ALSO the first mention of Hank Pym’s deceased wife Maria.

She died after going back to her native Hungary in their honeymoon… despite the fact that she had to flee the country because her father was a political prisoner.
I see that there was only one genius in this relationship.

Surprisingly considering that we never see the body, Maria really does die in this flashback.
There was a fakout in the 80s on West Coast Avengers, but Maria has remained dead.
We will learn in 2016 that Maria was pregnant when she was kidnapped, entually giving birth to their daughter Nadia… who is ALSO going to use the Wasp codename.

This is retroactively the reason why Pym becomes Ant-Man in the first place… and because Maria’s father had a weird saying about ants.
I’ve never heard about it before researching for this review but that’s from the Bible (Proverbs 6:6).

Good thing that Pym didn’t try to use “Go to the ants, thou sluggard!” as a battle cry.

Did Pym develop Unstable Molecules™ independently from Mister Fantastic? He’s definitely smart enough to do it… but it’s more likely Stan Lee mixing them up.

All this has made Pym worried about who would carry on his legacy in case of his death.
Kind of funny considering ALL of his superhero identities have become legacy names.

Conveniently after his flashback, Pym is visited by a scientist whose daughter looks a lot like his dead wife. And he considers her young enough to think she’s “not much more than a child”.
We’ll discuss that can of worms ants later.

Marvel is absolutely filled with super-scientist that are experts on wildly different fields, so why WOULDN’T this guy believe a biologist can help perfect a space beam?

I can see why Pym can’t help. He’s too busy to find emergencies he can ignore.

Without his help, the scientist uses his machine to contact an alien. The story talks about it being from space, but it will be retconned to being another dimension.

Whatever its origin, the monster kills the scientist.

Those silly girls, screaming in terror when their parents are murdered.

Pym decides to intervene as Ant-Man, demonstrating one of the most disgusting ways to travel I have ever seen… catapulting himself on a bunch of ants.

The scientist’s daughter vows that she will do anything to avenge her father, even if she and Ant-Man have to become… some kind of avenge-themed people, the term eludes me.

The father, who was working on a device intended to talk to aliens, was found dead in front of the completely destroyed device, which we are told would have taken superhuman strength.
So of course “woman’s intuition” was the only way to make the connection.

Despite portraying herself as a ditzy socialite, Janet demonstrates she has hidden depth and strength. You can definitely see shades of what will be her character development.

In later years, whenever Ant-Man talks to ants they don’t respond verbally. So it’s incredibly weird to see them straight up TALK BACK TO HIM, even identifying that the alien secretes formic acid.

Janet does go back to Pym, asking him to help her AVENGE her father. He doesn’t reveal hi secret identity…

…until two panels later, where he offers to give her superpowers to AVENGE her father.
I’m sensing a theme here.

You would expect Pym to just give her access to the same technolgy that he uses… but it’s much crazier: he implants some wasp cells into her body, thanks to some Kirby Tech™.

And just in time, because the alien has grown to immense size and is now attacking the city.

Wasp intially has to rely on the same growth and reducing gas that Ant-Man uses; she will eventually get the power to do it herself.

The fact that she grows antennae when she shrinks will eventually be dropped.
It is kind of weird that Pym doesn’t give HIMSELF the power to grow wings.

While she mentioned she found Pym attractive in their first meeting, there’s something to say about the fact that she falls for him while she’s still mourning her father.

Especially when Pym repeatedly calls her a child.

He says he’s not interested, but he does introduce her to his ants.

Since this is now a monster story, the trope of the military being useless comes into effect.

The solution is science. And still guns because this is still an action story.

I’m sure there is a super-scientific reason for why the gun has to be carried by ants and not either one of the humans at full-size, but it escapes me at this moment.

A lot of comics, from this era and later, completely forget that both Ant-Man and Wasp should teoretically keep their regular-sized strength.

Missed opportunity to have Wasp be the one to fire the gun.

That takes care of the monster…

…and now Ant-Man has a new partner, who insists on finding a way to make him fall in love.
Too bad they no longer have anyone to AVENGE after this.

---

Bonus: this is still an anthology book, so we have a story set in faraway future of the year 2000.
It’s about a guy who is being hunted by the whole planet…

…because he stole the last gun in existence.

---

Historical significance: 10/10
She might not have started as a big player (pun intended), but the Wasp will become a cornerstone of the Marvel Universe.

Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Between the talking ants, the ant-catapult and the space monster, this is top Marvel Silver Age-ness.

Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
More solid than the previous Ant-Man stories. Wasp has an excellent start, proving that she has more determination than she lets on… and then she becomes a walking (flying?) stereotype, something that will haunt her for QUITE some time.
However the monster is quite forgettable, the solution is way too convenient (the one alien species based on formic acid ends up fighting Ant-Man by sheer coincidence), and Pym’s insistence of Janed being “little more than a child” has a… different vibe in the present.

---

How close is this to the modern character? 5/10
Tracking Wasp’s career would take forever, because it’s essentially the story of the Avengers.
She was actually the one to pick up the name, not so surprising considering her first story.

She definitely has a talent for picking up names: she’s the one who names Vision.

Rather than focusing on her history, it’s interesting to note how her powers developed.
She gains her trademark stinger in Tales To Astonish #57.

It’s initially just a glorified air gun.

Much like the power to shrink, this will also eventually become a proper superpower instead of a piece of technology, with Wasp becoming able to fire “bio-stingers”.
Their power fluctuates WILDLY; sometimes her stings are completely ineffective, sometimes they’re devastating.

Also inconsistent: how strong she is when she shrinks. She was eventually powered up to become stronger when she shrinks, but MOST writers completely forget it.
I never forget it thanks to an awesome sequence in Stern’s run on Avengers.

She’s also not restrained at being the size of a wasp. Although she can’t grow wings when she’s at full size.

Something else that annoys me: artists drawing Wasp as tall as everyone else. She’s supposed to be short even at full size!!!

Well, with one exception… she CAN grow giant-size if she wants. It would take until the 2000s before she tried, and she uses this power very rarely.

Wasp was transformed into this thing for a while in the 90s.
We don’t talk about it.

That wasn’t even the first time she was transformed into a more monstrous form; it already happened in the 70s, in the brief serial Ant-Man and Wasp had on Marvel Feature.

Despite Pym repeatedly calling her a child in her first story, she can’t have been too young because Wasp is an extremely rare case: we CAN identify how old she was at a specific point.
Specifically, she turns 23 years old in Avengers #43, in 1967.
If the stories were supposed to take place in real time, Wasp would have been 19 years old in her first story. But that’s WAY too generous… it’s more likely that one or two years passed for her, making her around 21.
Still young, especially since Pym is definitely older, but not “a child”.

This is important because, at 23 years old, Janet inherits the entire family fortune of 3 million dollars… after living on just 25,000 dollars a year.
With 2026 dollars, she just inherited about 29,350,000 dollars after lifing off 244,600 per year.

Technically speaking, today Janet is not the only Wasp around.
The new one (who we briefly saw in the Doom retrospective) is Hank’s secret daughter Nadia; and the moment the two Wasps IMMEDIATELY hit it off.

Janet has officially adopted Nadia by now, and their relationship is one of the most wholesome things to come out of Marvel in the past decade.
Seriously, Janet Van Dyne as the coolest stepmother ever is amazing.

I also think that Wasp is the best leader the Avengers have ever had.

When it comes to being a leader in the field, Captain America is the best you can ask for.
But overall? Wasp is the only one who can be both the badass leader taking charge…

…but more importanly, Wasp is undoubtedly the best at managing the team as people AND is great at using the team’s “soft power” in ways that Captain America or even Iron Man can’t manage.

There’s a reason why Wasp came up in fourth place in my Avengers ranking, right behind the Cap / Iron Man / Thor trinity.
The Wasp is the heart of the Avengers: she’s not the strongest, she’s not the smartest, she’s not the richest (although she comes close)… but she has the utmost respect of living legends and gods for a reason.
I can’t remember where I read it, but if the Avengers could rank themselves in-universe, there’s a good chance they would rate the Wasp #1.

Also, because I couldn’t figure out another place to say it, a shout-out to Wasp in the “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” cartoon, voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessey.
She stands out in a series that is already a masterpiece.

---

Like I did with Iron Man and his armors, I should probably attempt a ranking of my favorite Wasp costumes.
After all, one of her claims to fame is having a ridiculous amount of costumes, something that started to be noticeable in the issues penciled by George Perez but that carried on for decades.

It became a joke. In the case of the Wasp, I noticed that she has so many costumes that eventually I said “Why not?” I think I was on the book long enough what was once just a little bit of idiosyncrasy about the character became fully part of the character’s persona.
GEORGE PEREZ

I might eventualyl do a Random Thought about that, but it would be a project on its own.
Just to give you an idea: this celebratory “all costumes” cover shows about 50 different costumes.
It’s not even CLOSE to how many variations there are.