Ant-Man,
stuck in his miniature form, is trying to return home when he is attacked by a
goshawk in search of prey. He climbs inside a filthy soda can but the bird
tries to pry him out; Hank removes his shirt and ties it around the bird’s beak
and escapes while the goshawk struggles with it. Trying to cross a small stream
via a fishing line, he is snatched by the predator and carried away, far from
his dog Orkie. He removes a long straight bit of metal from his helmet and
stabs the bird in the claw, causing it to drop him in the stream. He comes
ashore in a junkyard where he hears angry voices. It is his archenemy Egghead
trying to force his niece to do his bidding. Hank calls to the villain,
distracting him enough for the girl to kick him and run. Egghead pursues but he
is tripped up by the tiny hero. The baddie has a gun and starts shooting at
Ant-Man but he is distracted long enough for his niece to bash him in the head
with a club. Ant-Man and the girl, Trixie Starr, hide out in the nearby woods.
She explains how her uncle wants to use her as a guinea pig for an experiment;
Ant-Man tells her how he is trapped in his smallest size and fears he will
never grow again. Trixie sews him a tiny new outfit, complete with helmet, a
nail for a sword, and a coil of wire….
But Egghead
sends out his search-and-capture robots. They locate their quarry, one robot
seizing Trixie with metal tentacles, the other unleashing a powerful vacuum to
suck Ant-Man in. But Hank uses a metal spoon to block the intake and escape. As
the vehicle drives away, Ant-Man leaps aboard and enters via a vent. But it’s a
trap, the chamber sealing and filling with his own growth formula; Hank hurls
his helmet at the wall and discovers it is electrified, exposing Egghead’s plot
to make him enlarge until he is electrocuted. But Egghead doesn’t know the
enlarging gas no longer works. So, Egghead finds the helmet and rejoices in the
assumed death of his enemy….
The vehicle
then folds out into a sophisticated scientific device called the Hypno-Kon,
which is intended to drain the weakened Trixie’s strong intellect to power
Egghead’s own brain. Ant-Man crawls into the works and sabotages the wiring so
that when the villain switches it on, the device shorts out, causing a fire.
Hank hustles Trixie out just before the vehicle explodes. She mourns for the
loss of her uncle, a nice man before his intellect cancered within him, turning
him to crime….
Hank and
Trixie ride the bus away, while she tells him that she was a child prodigy who
ran away because of all the demands placed on her, until her uncle tried to use
her in a scheme to take over the country. When they get to Hank’s home, they
part ways. Hank walks in the door and the first thing he sees is his wife
Jan—the Wasp—unconscious on the floor of the wrecked laboratory….