Comic Browser: #1 - We Found the Ninth Wonder of the World! #2 - When Aliens Meet! #3 - I Journeyed Back to the 20th Century! #4 - I Was a Prisoner of the Martians! #5 - I Was Trapped by the Things on Easter Island! #6 - I Saw the Invasion of the Stone Men #7 - He Waits For Us in the Glacier! #8 - I Dared Defy the Floating Head! #9 - Return of the Genie! #10 - I Was Trapped By Titano the Monster That Time Forgot! #11 - I Found Monstrom! The Dweller in the Black Swamp! #12 - I Discovered Gorgilla! The Monster of Midnight Mountain! #13 - I Challenged... Groot! The Monster from Planet X! #14 - I Created Krang! The Most Fantastic Monster The World Has Ever Known! (Chapter One) #15 - I Learned the Dread Secret of the Blip! #16 - Here Comes...Thorr the Unbelievable #17 - Vandoom, the Man Who Made a Creature! (Chapter 1) #18 - Gorgilla Strikes Again! #19 - Rommbu! #20 - What Was "X" the Thing That Lived! (Part 1) #21 - Trull! The Inhuman! #22 - I Dared to Battle the Crawling Creature! (Part 1) #23 - The Unbelievable Menace of Moomba (Part 1) #24 - I Found the Abominable Snowman! (Part 1) #25 - I Was Captured by the Creature from Krogarr! #26 - Look Out!! Here Come the...Four-Armed Men! #27 - The Man in the Ant Hill #28 - I Am the... Gorilla-Man #29 - When the Space Beasts Attack!! #30 - The Return of the Gorilla-Man #31 - When the Mummy Walks #32 - Quicksand! #33 - Dead Storage #34 - A Monster at My Window! #35 - Return of the Ant-Man! #36 - The Challenge of Comrade X! #37 - Trapped by the Protecter! #38 - Betrayed by the Ants! #39 - The Vengeance of the Scarlet Beetle! #40 - The Day That Ant-Man Failed! #41 - Prisoner of the Slave-World! #42 - The Voice of Doom! #43 - The Mad Master of Time! #44 - The Creature from Kosmos! #45 - The Terrible Traps of Egghead! #46 - ..When Cyclops Walks the Earth #47 - Music to Scream By #48 - The Porcupine! #49 - The Birth of Giant-Man! #50 - The Human Top! #51 - Showdown with the Human Top #52 - The Black Knight Strikes! #53 - Trapped by the Porcupine! #54 - No Place to Hide! #55 - On the Trail of the Human Top! #56 - The Coming of the Magician! #57 - On the Trail of the Amazing Spider-Man! #58 - The Coming of… Colossus #59 - Enter: The Hulk! #60 - Can A Man With Green Skin And A Petulant Personality Find True Happiness In Today's Status-Seeking S #61 - Captured At Last! #62 - Enter... The Chameleon! #63 - A Titan Rides The Train! #64 - The Horde Of Humanoids! #65 - On The Rampage Against The Reds! #66 - The Power Of Doctor Banner #67 - Where Strikes The Behemoth! #68 - Back From The Dead! #69 - Trapped In The Lair Of The Leader! #70 - To Live Again! #71 - Like A Beast At Bay! #72 - Within The Monster Dwells A Man! #73 - Another World, Another Foe! #74 - The Wisdom Of The Watcher! #75 - Not All My Power Can Save Me! #76 - I Against The World! #77 - Bruce Banner Is The Hulk #78 - The Hulk Must Die! #79 - The Titan And The Torment #80 - They Dwell In The Depths! #81 - The Stage Is Set! #82 - The Power of Iron Man! #83 - Less Than Monster, More Than Man #84 - Rampage in the City! #85 - The Missile And The Monster #86 - The Birth Of The Hulk-Killer #87 - The Humanoid And The Hero! #88 - Boomerang and The Brute #89 - ... Then, There Shall Come A Stranger! #90 - The Abomination! #91 - Whosoever Harms The Hulk..! #92 - Turning Point #93 - He Who Strikes The Silver Surfer #94 - To The Beckoning Stars! #95 - A World He Never Made! #96 - What Have I Created? #97 - The Legions Of Living Lightning #98 - The Puppet And The Power #99 - When The Monster Wakes #100 - Let There Be Battle #101 - Where Walk The Immortals
Review: The Ant-Man/Giant-Man series in TALES TO ASTONISH was probably the silliest superhero saga in early Marvel history (though the Human Torch’s solo series in STRANGE TALES comes close) and this issue may be the most ridiculous. A dumb hero with limited powers faced a series of dumb villains and barely managed to defeat them. At one point in this tale, Hank says that the thirty-foot giant is twice his height of twelve feet, establishing that this physicist can’t do basic arithmetic. Then Ant-Man and Wasp shrink to an inch high to climb the mountain faster? On the other hand, Colossus is an alien stranded on a high rock and can’t figure out how to get down even though he owns a working spaceship. Plus he gets spooked by a man able to change his size. And the African natives are terrified of him, even though he can’t get down from the peak. On the other hand, the natives do seem to be engineering geniuses since they manage to erect a huge statue of Giant-Man on top of an unscalable mountain.
The Wasp story is not quite so dumb though it features Wasp jumping into a toy car that races around a track to get away from the baddie—and a baddie who still can’t catch her. And then he gets his cape caught in the escalator and doesn’t think to unbutton the cape at his neck. Then Wasp hits the emergency release button that not one of the store’s employees appears to have known about and goes home to—in the worst moment of the story—assure Hank Pym that she’s a helpless female so as not to damage his ego. Sad to say, this was a fairly common attitude of the era and probably sowed the seeds of their eventual divorce. But Wasp proves herself not totally incompetent, unlike her story in the last issue—and that’s something.
Comments: Giant-Man story: Wasp has a costume change in this issue. First appearance of Captain America in Ant-Man’s early series. Hank Pym gains the ability to control his size mentally. Wasp story: The Magician made his first appearance in issue #56; this is his final bow though his son would show up in ASTONISHING ANT-MAN #2, in 2015, 49 years later. Hank Pym does not appear as either Ant-Man or Giant-Man in this story. And it is revealed that the Wasp’s sting, which could knock a man down in the previous issue, is not powerful enough to penetrate a silk handkerchief.
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