Ant-Man #1: Size-Changing, Self-Deprecating Fun

Some super heroes always seem to land on their feet. Others never seem to have anything go their way, and Scott Lang fits that description better than pretty much any other hero in the Marvel Universe.

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Thus, it’s probably no surprise that Ant-Man #1, by Nick Spencer and Ramon Rosanas, is a throwback Marvel comic if there ever was one. Not in terms of Spencer’s dialogue, which sparkles throughout, or Rosanas’ pictures, which compare favorably to those of Daredevil penciller Chris Samnee.

I’m talking about the feeling you got from reading early Spider-Man issues where Peter Parker was rarely able to forget he had “real” problems when he wasn’t slinging webs. Lang has tons of those: an ex-wife, a lack of money, and difficulty getting people to take him seriously. When he finally gets a line on a sweet new job (even if his boss is a smug jerk), you just know something is going to happen to mess it up.

This debut issue would have been easy to mess up, because Lang has a complicated history for someone who’s always been, in his own words, a C-lister. Maybe very generously a B-lister during his Avengers and Fantastic Four stints. He’s been dead, his daughter Cassie has been dead, there’s really nothing normal about him.

Somehow, Spencer and Rosanas manage to touch on all of that while breezing along with the new story they’re telling. It’s got a humorous tone throughout, and a few moments that are laugh out loud funny. They even make the Superior Iron Man fun to read, and let me assure you, that’s no mean feat.

The best part is that Lang is in on the joke. He’s presented as someone who understands why people don’t take him seriously, in both his personal and professional lives, but still feels he can turn things around if he just persists and catches a few breaks. I’m sure just about anyone who reads this issue can think of a time they felt like that.

The timing of Ant-Man #1 might be an obvious ploy to capitalize on that movie that’s coming up, but it really doesn’t matter as long as it’s good. We’ll see if Spencer and Rosanas can keep the momentum going when our hero actually has to deal with bad guys as well as life, but this is a delightfully entertaining start.

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!

Who wears a super hero costume to a job interview? Ant-Man does! And that’s even in a flashback, because in the present he’s breaking into Tony Stark’s apartment.

As Scott has some skeletons in his closet, the interview doesn’t go well (despite his double-sided resume printed at Kinko’s). It doesn’t matter, as he’s applying to be Head of Security Solutions for Stark Industries, and Tony has already selected the finalists. Lang isn’t one of them, but we discover that even the inverted Iron Man has a soft spot for possible redemption stories, and he invites Ant-Man to compete against the other candidates.

Scott mulls over what that might mean as he walks his no-longer-dead daughter Cassie home from school. Unfortunately, home means to his ex-wife’s house, and a visitation argument ensues. Kind of like real world visitation arguments, except with some cracks about super hero costumes and a discussion about whether shrinking your daughter down to stay the night because your apartment is small is appropriate parenting.

The contest is the next day, and Scott is dismayed that the other participants — Prodigy, Victor Mancha and the new Beetle — are all much younger than him. Tony helpfully points that out as well. All of them make it through Stark’s obstacle course, but the last hurdle, cracking Tony’s password to all Stark computer systems, proves too tough for any of them. So Lang does what anyone would do in that situation: he shrinks just his digestive system and pukes in his own helmet, delaying the last part of the contest until the next day.

Ant-Man has no intention of waiting until then, using his thief skills and powers to break into Tony’s apartment and steal his password. Beetle is in there seducing Iron Man to try for her own advantage, but as it turns out, the competition was merely the beginning, and the real test was stealing the data. So hooray, Scott gets the job! But oh, no, Beetle was really there to kill Stark! Ant-Man disables her weapon, and everything seems right with the world.

Only it’s not all good. Scott goes to give Cassie the good news and finds that his ex has already put her on a flight to Miami. Our hero ends up having to make a choice between the big time of super heroics and fighting with his ex-wife while worrying about messing up Cassie’s life. Guess which one he picks — and without even giving Tony any notice?

We end with Scott buying a toy apartment (an Iron Man one, ironically) for Cassie to stay in when she visits, and they have popcorn together while watching Battle Royale on a phone, which turns out to be a humongous flatscreen when you’re shrunken down.

Favorite moment: Lots of good stuff from which to pick, as a lot of Scott’s internal dialogue is amusing, and Tony’s wisecrack about Rhodey not returning his calls is gold. I have to go with Scott’s solution for stalling for time, though, even if it means he has to shrink down and clean the vomit out of his helmet afterward. The glamorous life of a super hero!

Final thought: There aren’t a ton of Marvel’s new books that you could hand to people curious about upcoming movies, because the comic and film versions of the characters are just different enough to be confusing. I think this one could work since the essence of Lang is bound to be pretty similar, though we won’t know for sure until July.

Next: The best 2 things about the first Ant-Man movie teaser