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Marvel Feature #6

Nov 1972
Mike Friedrich, Herb Trimpe

Marvel Feature #6 cover

Story Name:

HellStorm!


Synopsis

Marvel Feature #6 synopsis by Peter Silvestro
Rating: 4 stars

Ant-Man, trapped in his smallest size, returns home to find his lab wrecked and his wife Jan—the Wasp—unconscious on the floor. The skylight above them begins to shatter so Hank speedily opens an umbrella over Jan and jumps into a floor vent. He hears Jan start to wake up but realizes he is trapped in the vent. Jan’s chauffeur Charles enters the house to check on her and assures her he will always be there to care for her, barely concealing his desire for her money. His oily insinuating manner enrages Hank, listening from below the floor. But Jan brushes him off, offended by the implications and Charles departs, barely concealing a threat….

Hank calls out to Jan but she can’t hear him so he throws together a slingshot from a bobby pin and a rubber band and shoots his helmet where Jan can see it. She looks in the vents and sees him. Relieved that he’s not dead, she shrinks and joins him for a happy reunion….

Hank and Jan get to work searching for an antidote to the chemical which trapped Hank at ant size and soon, Hank believes he has isolated the relevant factor but they are interrupted by the entrance of Whirlwind. The villain squirts Jan with knockout gas, putting her out so he can carry her off but Hank hurriedly throws the switches sealing the door and shutting off the lights. Whirlwind turns on a flashlight and is surprised to see Hank, who was thought to be dead. Hank uses an air hose to fire a projectile, breaking the villain’s flashlight. He strikes a match and Hank turns on a gas jet, causing a minor explosion. After he recovers, WW manages to turn on the lights to find Hank and Janet gone so he leaves.…

Hank and Jan are in hiding, Jan having shrunk to Wasp-size. Hank suggests that Whirlwind and Charles may be working together as their greed sounds similar but Jan rejects the notion. They continue to work on isolating the size-trap factor. The stress of the project starts to divide them so to show her commitment to Hank, Jan drinks the “trap factor,” causing her to suddenly grow into a giant before returning to Wasp-size, leaving her stuck at that size. So they go back to researching (with Hank still wondering why Whirlwind sounded like Charles) an antidote with the added burden of having to rework all the lab equipment so that it can be used by tiny people. There’s a knock at the door and Hank goes to answer it with Orkie; they are blasted by an oxygen-destroying weapon and Whirlwind enters, wielding a gun stolen from the Avengers. He fills the room with oxygen-eating bubbles to force Wasp to return to her normal size. But Jan dons one of Ant-Man’s helmets which has a beathing unit and avoids the baddie. Unable to find her, Whirlwind contents himself with killing Ant-Man by setting fire to the lab and departing. Wasp revives Hank and he turns on a water hose, creating a stream though the flames and they jump in a box and travel across the room where the stream ends. Hank begs Jan to fly out and save herself but she reveals her wings are soaked and can’t fly. Hank and Jan struggle to fill a balloon with helium and float toward the broken skylight but the balloon snags on a sharp edge and bursts. The heroes manage to hang on to a fragment caught on the glass and they climb up to the roof and out onto a tree branch. Jan slips and Hank panics but she reveals there was nothing wrong with her wings and she flies back to safety. Hank wants to wring her neck. They make their way down the tree trunk and fall asleep at the base….

They awaken the next morning to see the lab destroyed and the headline on the day’s newspaper announced their deaths….


 

Review / Commentaries


Marvel Feature #6 Review by (November 8, 2023)

Review: So Dave Cannon is now the Whirlwind, with an armored suit and mutant powers and all that. I’m going to miss that ridiculous spinning Human Top. And apparently Hank and Jan have already forgotten him. Why? Well, they have both seen the Human Top without his original mask and they should both instantly recognize that Charles the Chauffeur is Dave Cannon. Looks like Mike Friedrich, in order not to confuse the reader, has included one dumb moment in each of his issues so far as a reminder of Ant-Man’s goofy origins. The adventure as a whole is a nice one, battling a villain in an enclosed area with the diminutive heroes using what they can to defeat the baddie.

Meanwhile, Hank and Jan are struggling to cure Hank so Jan puts herself in the same bind as Hank and to be honest, I have read the relevant pages multiple times and I still don’t understand why Jan did that so we’ll just move on.

Oh—they never explain what wrecked the lab at the beginning of the story.

Comments: Whirlwind was introduced in TALES TO ASTONISH #50 as the Human Top, Ant-Man’s silliest villain; he adopted the identity of Whirlwind in AVENGERS #46-47, making him a more formidable foe. Final appearance of Orkie, apparently dead at the hands of Whirlwind. The letters page includes one by future Marvel writer Mike W. Barr.



> Marvel Feature comic book info and issue index

Elektra

Excelsioring your collection:
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Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Herb Trimpe
Mike Trimpe
Unknown
Herb Trimpe (Cover Penciler)
Herb Trimpe (Cover Inker)
Unknown (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Sam Rosen.

Characters

Listed in alphabetical order. All stories.

Ant-Man
Ant-Man

(Hank Pym)
Wasp
Wasp

(Janet Van Dyne)
Whirlwind
Whirlwind

(David Cannon)


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