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Appearing in "Ant-Man: Larger Than Life"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • A centipede

Races and Species:

  • Humans
  • Ants
    • Fire Ants
    • Carpenter Ants
    • Bullet Ants
  • Centipedes

Locations:

Items:

Synopsis for "Ant-Man: Larger Than Life"

  • Synopsis not yet written

Appearing in "The Man in the Ant Hill!"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Tales to Astonish #27

Featured Characters:

  • Henry Pym (First appearance) (Origin revealed) (Main story and flashback)

Supporting Characters:

  • Ants (First appearance)

Other Characters:

  • Various unnamed scientists (Main story and flashback)

Races and Species:

Locations:

Items:

Synopsis for "The Man in the Ant Hill!"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Tales to Astonish #27
Tales to Astonish Vol 1 27 Title

Doctor Henry Pym declares success! He has successfully used his reducing serum to shrink a chair to doll size and used his enlarging serum to return it to normal size. Pym had been ridiculed months ago by his peers for his outlandish theories but has now perfected a pair of serums capable of changing the size of any object. Confident that his serums work, Pym tests them on himself.

Henry Pym (Earth-616) from Tales to Astonish Vol 1 27 0001

Placing a few drops of reducing serum on his arm, Henry Pym quickly shrinks. Now ant-sized, he realizes that he left the enlarging serum on the window sill; it might as well be on the moon. He goes out into the yard. Ants sense his presence and move toward him. Pym, still not thinking clearly, runs into an ant hill. Fleeing blindly through the tunnels, he falls into a shaft and lands in a pool of honey. Hopelessly trapped, he spots an ant crawling towards him. To Pym’s surprise, the ant pulls him free from the honey and lets him go unharmed. More ants appear. Pym notices a matchstick set in the ground and, hoping to create a diversion, throws a pebble at it. His aim is true, and the match lights.

Henry Pym (Earth-616) from Tales to Astonish Vol 1 27 0002

Pym fashions a lasso and climbs up to a ledge. There, another ant grabs him in its mandibles. Pym uses judo to flip the ant over the ledge and scrambles upward. Once out of the ant hill, with the colony in hot pursuit, he sees the friendly ant who saved him earlier. He points upward to tell the ant where he needs to go. The ant climbs the wall with Pym aboard. He wades into the test tube with the serum and immediately returns to normal. Convinced that his invention is dangerous, he dumps his serums down the drain.

Appearing in "Return of the Ant-Man"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Tales to Astonish #35

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

Other Characters:

  • Tom (First appearance) (Pym's lab assistant)

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Items:

Synopsis for "Return of the Ant-Man"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Tales to Astonish #35

Doctor Henry Pym is a scientist who had invented two incredible serums, one to reduce objects, and the other to enlarge them back to their natural size. The reducing potion proved more powerful than he anticipated. It reduced him to the size of an insect and led him to the most frightening encounter of his life within a teeming ant hill. Frantically, Pym escaped from the ants and reached his enlarging serum. After he was restored to normal size, Pym destroyed his serums, which he felt were too dangerous to exist on Earth. However, weeks later he decided that such a great discovery should not melt into nothingness and concocted his serums again, this time locking them safely away in his safe.

After his experience in the ant hill, Henry Pym developed a growing interest in ants. Secretly, he made a thorough study of the ant world and determined that ants communicate electronically through their antennae. After long months of grueling work, he finally developed a helmet that would enable him to communicate with the ants by tuning into their specific wave length. Pym also designed a protective costume to shield him from accidental ant-sting or bite.

On the same day that he completed work on his helmet, the government gives Henry Pym a top secret scientific assignment to develop a gas to make people immune to radiation and provides him with four research assistants. Weeks later, the communists have learned of Pym’s work and have dispatched agents to steal the almost-completed formula.

Communist agents burst into Henry Pym’s laboratory and hold him and his research assistants at gun point, demanding the anti-radiation formula. When Pym refuses to divulge the formula, the agents decide to search the lab and find the information themselves. Trapped in his lab, Pym decides that the only way to prevent the communists from getting the anti-radiation gas is to use his reducing serum. Donning his newly completed helmet and costume, Pym uses his reducing serum to shrink to insect size.

Now ant-sized, Ant-Man uses a rubber band as a slingshot to hurl himself to a nearby window ledge, where he slips through the window crack and uses a piece of thread to lower himself to the ground.

Part 2: An Army of Ants!

His destination is the ant hill, where he learns that his cybernetic helmet actually works, allowing him to communicate with and command the ants. He is attacked by a large worker ant. As he fights the ant, he learns that somehow, he retains the strength of a full-grown man at his diminished size. After defeating the worker ant, Ant-Man adjusts his cybernetic helmet and sends a command through the ant hill, forming a small army of ants.

As Ant-Man exits the ant hill, his colorful costume attracts the attention of a beetle. Using his full-size strength, he quickly digs a deep hole, uses himself as bait to lure the beetle into it and then fills in the hole, trapping the beetle.

Ant-Man then mounts the largest of the worker ants and leads his army up the wall and onto the window ledge near his lab.

Part 3: The Ant-Man's Revenge!

After observing the communist agents, Ant-Man slips into the lab and with the help of the ants, unties his assistants. He then commands the ants to attack the agents, distracting them long enough for Pym’s assistants to overpower them.

With the communist agents defeated, Ant-Man heads for his laboratory, where he uses his enlarging serum to return to normal size and rejoin the others in the lab. Pym is left wondering if he will ever be forced to become the Ant-Man again?

Solicit Synopsis

• Join Hank Pym, a.k.a. ANT-MAN, as he learns that a little experiment can land him in BIG trouble!

• Can Ant-Man tame something as painfully formidable as the Bullet Ant before it’s too late?! Find out!

• PLUS: Reprinting Tales to Astonish Vol 1 27 (the first appearance of Hank Pym) and Tales to Astonish Vol 1 35 (the first of appearance of Ant-Man in costume)!

See Also

Links and References

References

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