Essential Iron Man volume 1

Monday sees the release of Iron Man 3 on DVD and Blu-ray. So it's a good time to take a look at his earliest adventures.

Essential Iron Man volume 1 contains the Iron Man strips from Tales of Suspense (another anthology series that later also featured Captain America) #39-72. All but one of the issues are at least plotted by Stan Lee who scripts most of them, with the debut issue scripted by Larry Lieber followed by seven scripted by "R. Burns" (Robert Bernstein) and a couple later on by "N. Korok" (Don Rico). Issue #68 is the Lee-less exception, written by Al Hartley. Most of the art is by Don Heck with three issues by Jack Kirby and two others by Steve Ditko. A bonus feature at the end highlights a couple of earlier versions of covers that were either used on different issues from the ones they seem to have been commissioned for or else which saw the villain's name changed, probably to comply with the Comics Code Authority.

Of all the main early Silver Age Marvel characters, Iron Man has long been one of my least favourites. I only seemed to pick up his series because of various crossovers and the "family" grouping of various titles and it often failed to inspire me. He was also absent from the main Avengers for some years when I started reading it. Perhaps it's because without the tragedy of Tony Stark's heart being kept going by a chestplate - and in those years he'd solved it with a transplant - and with his drinking problems largely conquered, what was left was a successful playboy businessman who had it all but suffered an obnoxious attitude. Now that may be a caricature but we are talking about the era of Force Works and the Crossing (I must have been one of the few readers of that latter saga whose biggest gripe was that Iron Man felt like an intruder on the current Avengers). However there must have been something that made the character popular in the first place and this volume was a revelation in showing what that was.

Who created Iron Man? It seems to be another case of multiple parties involved in coming up with the first issue and cover and most of them having bad memories. Jack Kirby drew the first cover and designed the armour; this seems to have predated the drawing of the actual strip which was entirely by Don Heck. Stan Lee came up with the plot but deadlines prevented him from scripting the issue. But all of that doesn't state for sure where the basic idea came from out of whatever conversations between whichever combination of Heck, Kirby or Lee. However Lee and Heck are the main forces on these early adventures, a rare series from the time without much involvement by Kirby or Steve Ditko. It's common to talk of Kirby and Lee as the Lennon and McCartney of Marvel comics. Does that make Ditko the George Harrison? Martin Goodman the Brian Epstein? (After all both Goodman and Epstein negotiated some terrible deals that paid the artists little.) And if such comparisons hold up, does this make Don Heck the Ringo Starr? Heck's artwork is often overlooked but he brings a clear distinctive style that manages to simultaneously show Iron Man's armour as big and tough but also dynamic enough to move and fight as needs be.

Has any Marvel Silver Age origin dated more than Iron Man's? It's relatively easy to fudge a minor detail in some of the others - the Fantastic Four could have any particular goal in space or the Hulk could be the product of weapons testing for any purpose (although replacing Communist agents with Skrull agents is perhaps not the best solution to one aspect) - whilst others are even more timeless - an arrogant surgeon trying to heal his hands by any means possible or a doctor discovering aliens and a magic weapon whilst on holiday just don't date at all. But Iron Man is different. It's hard to fudge away the jungle war Tony Stark is producing weapons for, or transform the Vietnamese guerrilla leader Wong-Chu into a non-Cold War figure. Later retellings have done what they can, but reading the original story it's much harder to filter out the dated elements. The story itself is straightforward though I do wonder why the North Vietnamese aren't monitoring Tony and Professor Yinsen more closely. It also shows a ruthless side to Iron Man that would be later toned down (give or take certain stories such as the Crossing) when he uses his oil and fire tools to ignite an explosives store and kill Wong-Chu. Now yes there is an armed conflict going on - I'm hesitant to use the term "war" for the United States's role during this period in Vietnam (early 1963) - but here we see the approach of a de facto soldier rather than the more traditional morality of a hero aided by a writer who usually finds some accident to permanently end such a foe.

However Iron Man's portrayal and personality is much more sympathetic than I was expecting. Tony Stark's life shown here focuses very much on his business and scientific concerns, with the playboy element rather sidelined, and the character is much more likable as a result. He may have his moments where he can appear dismissive or cruel to others, but we're never left in any doubt that this is because of his dedication to doing right as Iron Man and preserving his identity. But I do have to wonder if Stan Lee grew up being cruel to women as his well-meaning way of putting them off, as this is yet another series where the hero tries to discourage a woman's interest in him by pretending to be a nasty piece of works. It is repeatedly emphasised that Tony is trapped by the damage to his heart and reliant on his chest plate which could give out at any moment. When the strip began, the world's first heart transplant operation was over four years away and pacemaker technology was in its early stages. So it was credible that Tony had no real option but to rely on his chestplate to support his damaged heart (ignoring the science fiction and magic that meant the Marvel universe contains many healers who could have fixed it, though none appear here). Though the adventures were published in a time when comics were more chaste than now, the problem facing Tony if he ever wants to be intimate with somebody are all too clear.

After the first several issues feature no real supporting cast at all, issue #45 introduces the first two other significant cast members in the series - "Happy" Hogan and "Pepper" Potts. Happy Hogan is an ex-boxer who saves Tony's life when a racing car crashes, and is given a job as Tony's chauffeur. He rapidly proves quite loyal to Tony and is drawn to Pepper, but at first she has eyes elsewhere. Pepper Potts is another example of the working woman who falls for a man in her office, but is frankly rather cliched. In her first appearance on her first page she tells Happy of her attraction to Tony even though he doesn't know it "but some-day he will ... and then he'll give up all his actresses and debutantes... and I'll become Mrs. Anthony Stark!" By today's standards it's not exactly the best ambition to give the leading female character. It gets silly in one issue when she lies to Tony's date for the evening and pretends he's stood her up, in the hope he will take out Pepper instead. (He doesn't - he instead gives the tickets to Happy to take her.) Issue #50 sees her get a makeover in the hope of getting Tony to notice her. Is the message that a woman is only worth her looks? Pepper is freckled, a trait I share, yet her makeover includes covering them up. Again this is not the best message to send. We get a romance triangle between the three, a not uncommon arrangement, but on this occasion the hero feels he cannot have the woman and does what he can to push her Happy's way, even though it hurts him when he realises how much Happy means to Pepper. The volume ends with the situation reaching a climax when Happy, who has deduced Iron Man's identity, is nearly killed getting a vital weapon to him. Tony's absence and seeming disinterest upset Pepper and it seems she will finally choose Happy. The other main supporting cast member is Senator Byrd, presumably no relation to any real life Senators with that surname. A strong critic of Stark, he feels a playboy is unsuited for essential defence contracts and assumes the sabotage at the plants is the work of Stark himself, who may be a communist spy. A more minor character introduced at the end of the volume is Stephanie, the Countess De La Spiroza, one of Tony's many old flames who is angry at being stood up.

The early issues contain some surprising contradictions from other Marvel titles of the time. We get a character called Dr Strange - but he's a villain and no relation. We discover that Atlantis had sunk into the seabed and become an underground kingdom - rather than existing on the seabed as in the Fantastic Four stories. Maybe Robert Bernstein was Marvel's answer to Bob Haney, never letting continuity get in the way of a good story. Or maybe the concept of the Marvel Universe as an integrated whole didn't come together until a little later, and we're seeing the older pattern, more often associated with DC, of each individual series developing its own continuity and mythology without due regard for the rest of the line. Stan Lee's prolific scripting would have served to limit many of the differences (although he wasn't above forgetting individual points), but other scripters may have not felt bound to match series they weren't writing. The first sign of the wider Marvel Universe comes in issue #49, after Lee has taken over the full scripting, when we get a fight between Iron Man and the Angel of the X-Men with the rest of the team appearing. This is also the fist issue to reference Iron Man's membership of the Avengers. The first villains from another series to appear are the Chameleon and Kraven in the Hunter (both from the Amazing Spider-Man) in issue #58, followed by the Black Knight (from the Giant-Man strip in Tales to Astonish and also the Avengers), Attuma (from the Fantastic Four but also appearing in a number of other titles by now), Count Nefaria (from the Avengers) and the Mad Thinker (from the Fantastic Four).

But the series also debuts many new villains, though quite a few of them have been largely forgotten. Wong-Chu is generally only recalled for his role in the origin and others include Gargantus, the aforementioned Dr Strange, the Red Barbarian, the Actor, Kala Queen of the Netherworld (well actually an underworld), King Hatap the Mad Pharaoh, Mr Doll, the Phantom and Weasel Wills. But there's also the debut of several of Iron Man's better known foes including Jack Frost (although he would later adopt a different codename), the Crimson Dynamo (no less than two incarnations appear here), the Melter, the Mandarin, the Scarecrow, the Unicorn, Morgan Stark and the Titanium Man. We also get the first appearances of two villains who would soon switch sides. The Black Widow starts off as a femme fatale using her wits and looks to secure her objectives rather than an Emma Peel type female action agent, though after a year's worth of issues she undergoes intense training and becomes much closer to her more familiar modus operandi. Meanwhile Hawkeye begins life as an entertainer who is inspired to put his skills to other uses by seeing Iron Man, an origin detail shared with the Scarecrow, but on his first attempt to foil a crime he is mistake for an accomplice by the police and flees, then gets recruited as an ally by the Black Widow.

Amongst these foes there are a number of stock types seen in many other early Silver Age Marvel stories. Gargantus is a robot used by this series's set of aliens seeking to conquer Earth, and as with so many of their counterparts they decide again after assuming the hero they encounter is a typical example of the planet's inhabitants. The Actor is a master of disguise who can fool anybody, although he has more developed powers than the Chameleon did at the time. Kala is the ruler of a civilisation beneath the Earth's surface. Meanwhile the Mandarin conforms to a stereotype from broader fiction - the tall, specially skilled, evil Oriental criminal mastermind - at one point Iron Man even calls him an "imitation Fu Manchu". And he's not the first Marvel supervillain in this mould though I doubt many of the original audience could remember the Yellow Claw who had a very briefly lived series some seven years earlier. Another influence may be the Bond villain Dr No - both he and the Mandarin have half-Chinese, half-European parentage and, in the Bond novel at least, were raised by aunts. And, this time as in the film, the Mandarin is explicitly stated to be an independent operative with little care for the political conflict around him (though he's not adverse to working for hire for the Chinese Communists) so he has the potential to outlast the Cold War. There are indications that the Mandarin will become Iron Man's archenemy but at this stage he has to outlast a surprising competitor.

The origin story may have dated badly but so too has another aspect of this story. There is a lot of anti-Communism, on a scale far greater than just about any other Marvel series. Both the Soviet Union and China are behind a number of villains and there are many attempts made to neutralise either Tony and/or Iron Man. Maybe it was natural that a hero who is a successful businessman and weapons manufacturer would be the automatic counterpoint, but there's very little actual explanation as to what Communism actually is beyond a banner unifying the Soviets and Chinese. Occasionally the words "freedom" and "democracies" are used to describe the West but otherwise the Communists could frankly be just about any state declared the enemy of the day. Khruschev himself appears in the strip from time to time, although he's not explicitly named when appearing on panel but sometimes referred to or called "Comrade K" or "the 'Mr. Big' of the Iron Curtin". Was this a way of sidestepping legal action? Whatever the reason, the leading Communist is shown personally ordering actions against Stark and/or Iron Man, threatening the Black Widow's parents in order to bring her loyalties back in mind and worrying about any agents growing in popularity. Issue #64 demonstrates one danger of this approach as it appears to have been drawn before Khruschev's fall but was scripted afterwards and has to establish that the Black Widow was given her training and orders before the change in the Soviet leadership. Wisely Brezhnev is never shown after this.

How come almost nobody figures out Iron Man's identity? It isn't until issue #56 that it's established he has the role of Tony Stark's bodyguard. Before then Iron Man is presented as a friend of Tony's but he shows up all too quickly whenever the factory is attacked. Iron Man is very free with first person pronouns when speaking about Tony's property, but nobody picks up on this. Happy eventually guesses why Iron Man and Tony are never seen at the same time, a coincidence that eludes everyone else, but is wounded before he can explain just how he spotted it.

Overall I was surprised at how enjoyable this series is. It may be heavily dated with all the Communists and references to Vietnam, and I'd be fascinated to see how latter day retcons and reimaginings have tackled that problem, but the central character is a much more sympathetic and likeable person than he's been portrayed at times in later years. Nor does he come across like a Batman clone - they may both be rich playboy businessmen but very different aspects are emphasised and so Iron Man feels like a legitimate alternate take on the archetype rather than a knock-off. Don Heck has been unfairly neglected but this volume shows how good his work was and together with the writing the series holds up quite well today.

Essential Rawhide Kid volume 1

I originally prepared this post to appear a little later but here in London today it's Pride. In honour of that I thought I'd take a look at an Essential starring an LGBT character. However there haven't been that many with their own series, and none with runs that have been Essentialised so far, but there is one featuring the early days of a character who in recent years has been depicted as gay. And without further ado...

Marvel hasn't always published just superheroes. Indeed there were times when they published no superheroes at all. They have long put out titles in many other genres and up until the early 1960s the company tended to follow the contemporary trends in the comics industry and wider American society. And one of those long running trends was the Western.

The company had previously published many Western titles as part of a large and diverse set of books until distribution problems in 1957 forced a massive scaling back of the line. Amongst the books was one called The Rawhide Kid which lasted just sixteen issues. Then in 1959 a new TV series began called simply Rawhide. The chanced to have a comic with that word in the name was too good an opportunity to miss and so the title was revived in 1960 with issue #17 - in those days the market had a very different attitude to numbering and preferred to continue existing sequences rather than have new issue #1s all the time. This was in spite of the series featuring a new and younger character (although in later years there would be attempts to make the previous Rawhide Kid an older version of this one to expand the supply of material for reprints).

Essential Rawhide Kid volume 1 contains issues #17 to #35. As bonus material we get a cover gallery of the first twenty-eight issues of the reprint series Mighty Marvel Western which featured the Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, the Two-Gun Kid and Matt Slade. All the issues are written by Stan Lee and drawn by a mix of Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan, Paul Reinman, Al Hartley, Jack Davis and Sol Brodsky. At least that's what the credits on the contents pages say, as this was still an era when crediting creators was far from standard, though a number of the stories are signed by the writer and the artist. However some other stories don't give away the name of their artists and so we're reliant on ancient files that may not always be complete and/or the assessment of latter day experts looking at the artwork and deducing who produced it.

The format of all these issues is pretty straightforward - about eighteen pages of the Rawhide Kid, divided into two or three stories with the longer tales sometimes divided into separate chapters. About five pages are given over to a non-Rawhide Kid story. And finally each issue carries a two-page text story. Annoyingly these were often spread across each issue and this volume doesn't always take the opportunity to reunite them. These tales again don't feature the Rawhide Kid and instead tell of the problems of a succession of one-off characters spread across the west, dealing with everything from water supply disputes to hunting on Indian lands to preventing the theft of gold. Going by the production numbers printed on them they appear to be reprints but I'm not sure where from. If I understand correctly they were included in order to qualify the comic book for a particular status by having some text pages (was it to do with discounted mailing for subscriptions?) but they don't add a great deal. It's easy to see why many readers, both of the original comics and of the Masterworks and Essential editions, have largely dismissed them. I'm guessing that by the time the Marvel Silver Age superheroes were launched either the rules were relaxed or things like the Bullpen Bulletins and letters pages qualified instead.

The issues also contain a non-Rawhide Kid strip story. Such stories could no doubt be prepared for and reprinted in any of Marvel's western titles, allowing for some flexibility. The stories are more general tales of the Old West but several feature a remarkable figure who is revealed at the end to be a famous real person. We meet the likes of Wild Bill Hickok, Kit Carson and Doc Holliday. The trick is also deployed in some Rawhide Kid stories such as one where he discovers his fellow stagecoach traveller is the local sheriff Pat Garrett or another sees him cross paths with Jesse James. The historic accuracy of these stories is suspect - for example Hickok is shown as the old sheriff of a town, whereas the real Hickok died aged 39. The Rawhide Kid's year of birth is normally given as 1850 and the tales start just after his eighteenth birthday, thus his adventures seen here take place in at most a few years from 1868 onwards, but Garrett didn't become a sheriff until 1880. And Doc Holliday never became a sheriff at all. But these stories weren't meant to be a history lesson, though I wonder if any children back in the day reproduced some of the dodgey history in their schoolwork. Not all the non-Rawhide Kid stories feature historic characters, with others featuring one-off characters in general western tales.

But as for the Rawhide Kid himself, his adventures offer an interesting glimpse at the earliest Marvel Silver Age. The first eight or so issues of the title are the oldest continuous Marvel material yet reprinted in the Essential programme, predating even the start of the Fantastic Four. We get some prototypes of what would become familiar concepts. The Rawhide Kid himself is Johnny Bart, an orphan raised by his uncle Ben, and the first story sees Ben's murder and the hero avenging him, then opting to use his skills to help others. Later in the first issue the Kid helps solve a cattle rustling affair, but when he outdraws the criminal an arriving sheriff accuses him of not giving a victim a chance and the Kid flees, to become an outlaw. Like Spider-Man it's his own haste and fear that lead him to flee mistaken authority rather than stay and clear his name (there's even a witness to the shooting who offers to help), but in subsequent stories his actions convince a number of sheriffs, bounty hunters and others that he's no killer.

But why doesn't this lead to his name being cleared? The first issue makes it clear that the Kid would be wandering the west helping fight crooks regardless of his own status so it's not as if being cleared or pardoned would have meant the series would have to end there and then. Of course it's one thing for a local lawman to decide the Kid is no criminal to spend time taking in, and another to go through the process of clearing up the charges. The prospect of a pardon does come up a few times though. In issue #20 a bogus marshal tells the Kid the governor has granted a pardon on the condition he hang up his guns, but later on the fakery is exposed. Issue #29 does see one sheriff offer to lobby the state governor for a pardon if the Kid can capture a particularly nasty outlaw. Unfortunately when he brings the outlaw in he learns the sheriff has died and left no record of the offer. Later in issue #33 a sheriff comes up to him but the Kid assumes he will be arrested and rides off. In fact the sheriff was going to take him to the governor to get a pardon, but fleeing puts paid to that. However wouldn't reports eventually filter through to the authorities and result in the Kid's name being cleared? But I guess such logic and strict continuity wasn't yet a permanent feature of comics at the time. In the same vein the Kid's sole companion in some stories is his horse, Nightwind but the horse isn't in every story and the Kid sometimes instead travels by stagecoach. Where Nightwind is and how the two are reunited after such long journeys is a subject left unaddressed. How easy is it to find the Kid? A story in issue #20, and a remarkably similar one in issue #35, looks at how tall tales have exagerrated reports of his description, allowing him to move about freely. But in many other stories he's quickly recognised in whatever town he comes to. And in issue #34 Mister Lightning has no difficulty in tracking him down by asking a sheriff for reports. Presumably there's no co-ordinated effort to deal with the Kid, but it would be remarkably easy for any bounty hunter, publicity seeker or revenge seeking foe to track him down. However overall we should be careful in expecting too much in the realms of continuity or strict logic. This was still an era when Superman repeatedly "proved" that he wasn't Clark Kent, only for Lois Lane and/or Lana Lang to try again in another story without having learned their lesson. It was supposed to be a timeless world where the status quo existed in perpetuity, allowing for the same type of stories to carry on regardless. Many comics, particularly those from Marvel, would eventually move on from the idea but it persists elsewhere - for example The Simpsons doesn't progress much.

Within the first year of the (relaunched) title there was some signs of good ideas beginning to run out. Issue #22 contains the story "Beware!! the Terrible Totem!!" which sees the series take a decidedly bizarre turn, featuring a living monstrous totem pole, an alien who has been long trapped underground until an illegally deep mine awakens him. It goes on a rampage until the Kid lures it to a cliff and pushes it into a bottomless canyon. This story is certainly different from the norm, but it's a bizarre step outside the whole western genre (and when it first appeared the Marvel universe hadn't even been created, let alone had it incorporated the non-superhero titles). The following issue contains a further sign the series is flagging by presenting a new telling of the Rawhide Kid's origin, drawn by the same penciller and inker as before. And it's exactly the same script as before with the only changes being the trimming of the odd speech bubble and caption, and one scene having an extra panel. It doesn't even add the details from the later story that saw the Kid become an outlaw. The opening page claims the story is appearing by popular demand, but it's still lazy to just redraw a story that had appeared a mere year earlier. I know the expectation back then was that a comic's readership would turn over every few years, but a single year seems rather too soon to present almost the same tale twice over. The story does, however, suggest that the "Marvel method" of plotting, drawing and then scripting a story was not yet universal even for Lee-Kirby collaborations.

There's repetition elsewhere with some issues carrying remarkably similar stories. Both issues #20 & #29 contain a tale where the Kid meets a father & son, and the son wants to be like him so the Kid pretends to be a brutish bully who gets driven off, with the son disillusioned to find out his hero is a bully and a coward but the father seeing through the ploy. Issue #33 has a similar tale where the Kid and a girl fall for each other, but when he's about to seek her hand in marriage it's brought home to him that all he can offer her is to be the wife of a hunted man. So once again he pretends to be a nasty character to get her to hate him. (It's another trait that would later be seen with Peter Parker both times when he broke off with Betty Brant.) On other occasions the Kid takes blame for the crimes of others so as to conceal the identity of masked foes such as the Bat and the Raven in order to protect their families, including women who have fallen for him.

Indeed on several occasions throughout this volume the Kid encounters a woman and there's mutual attraction - this was forty years before the MAX series that presented the Kid as gay. Here the phrase "slap leather" is used just as a call to draw guns. The Kid has no supporting cast or ongoing romance. Instead he's an example of the wandering hero who has no place to call home, no support and no ties. Sometimes this approach can restrict a series - I found the Punisher volumes weakened by their limited development but they're from a different age. Here it allows a degree of freshness and the very setting lends itself to this type of approach. The stories pit the Rawhide Kid against a succession of foes and problems out in the Wild West, dealing with rustlers, thieves, bullies, occasional Indians and other traditional problems in the west, and fortunately the series's dabblings with science fiction are limited to the Totem story, though another tale sees him tackle a master hypnotist. The Kid's skill with a gun is incredible but at least the origin story takes the time to establish he was trained by an expert. Only once does he waiver in his commitment to the righteous path of helping others, but he soon returns when he discovers the truth that Jesse James's gang are criminals rather than some latter day Robin Hood. Otherwise the series stays in the realms of traditional morality - that is the traditional morality of westerns.

Issue #30's non-Rawhide Kid story "This is -- a gun!" tells the story of an individual revolver and the many uses it is put to, ending with captions emphasising that a gun is just a device and it's humans who choose how to use it. There's no caption stating "That was a political broadcast on behalf of the National Rifle Association" but it does feel like a piece of anti-gun control propaganda. Other stories, both with and without the Kid, do skirt on the issue of guns and violence but justify it when used for the right purpose and are very much of the view that the problem is the person, give or take one story where a criminal family is supplying Indians with rifles. A western by definition is invariably a glorification of a life at the edge of rigid civilisation, where the individual often had to fend for themselves and the law was limited, and where it was often shoot-or-be-shot. But there isn't much in the stories themselves that emphasises whether the morality is specific to the setting or more generally appropriate. I doubt this crossed many people's minds at the time (although this is seriously off-topic, the US NRA was politically a very different body in the early 1960s from what it has since become - see How NRA's true believers converted a marksmanship group into a mighty gun lobby) and instead we just had a more conventional series, with the western accents and all.

It's quite surprising to see how some words are spelled in these stories, with the lettering at times putting a stronger emphasis on a phonetic rendition of the accents than on correct spellings. So the dialogue gives us the likes of "Yuh", "Yore", "Hoss", "Ree-ward", "Wuz", "Hisself", "Daid", "Figgered", "Mebbe", "Didja", "Heerd", "Leggo", "Injuns", "Muh" and "Git". And then there are other words with letters dropped - "g"s in particular, giving us the likes of "Capturin'", "Nothin'" or "Joinin'". Now there is a strong convention of emphasised accents in westerns and of literature trying to reproduce those accents. But there's also the issue of just who read the issues, and the way that comics can be a useful educational tool in helping children to first learn to read and then develop their spelling. Comics have always been read by all ages, even if some age groups in some countries have at times been reluctant to admit to it, but they've had a particularly strong following amongst children and this was even more the case in the early 1960s. To use spellings that would likely lose children marks if they repeat them in their schoolwork is a rather questionable decision. I don't have any children of my own, but would I be happy if my cousin's boys read these tales and reproduced these spellings when they go to school? On the other hand would "correct" spellings actually be more accurate and/or realistic? Writing is often more formal and correct than speech and so unless some really good transcribers made a study of speech patterns in the Old West we may never know for sure. But subsequent Marvel non-western titles generally use much more accurate spellings (or I've just not noticed much fancy dialogue beyond some emphasised southern and outrageous foreign accents) even though they were steadily pulling the audience's age upwards.

We don't know for sure who was reading the title at the time, but we can get an idea of how many they were. Issue #28 carried a "Statement required by the act of August 24, 1912, as amended by the acts of March 3, 1933, July 2, 1946 and June 11, 1960 (74 Stat. 208) showing the ownership, management and circulation of", or, as they are better known from later years, a "Statement of Ownership" for the title. Posted at the bottom of the issue's text story it includes the following paragraph:

5. The average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the 12 months preceding the date show above was: (This information is required by the act of June 11, 1960 to be included in all statements regardless of frequency of issue.) 150,162

The precise wording is a little awkward and a literal reading implies the title had an average of 150,162 subscribers. I suspect this is a flaw in the wording and perhaps a case of publishers not quite grasping just what was being asked for or how to state it - this was just a year after the law was modified to require circulation figures to be included. (The main purpose of these statements is to identify the owners and publishers of periodicals, in order to maintain their mailing permits for subscriptions.) I would assume we're thus seeing actual recorded sales figures rather than the total print run including unsold returns from newsstands. 150,000 surprised me as I'd come to believe comics sales were much greater in the Silver Age. However there is a wonderful site called Comichron: The Comics Chronicles which has pulled together a lot of the available comics sales data, most notably the declarations from these Statements. The page for 1961 Comic Book Sales Figures shows that it's the sales on the best selling titles that get talked about the most and at this point Marvel was a long way from being an industry leader, though on the available data Rawhide Kid was its second best seller with Tales to Astonish only about thirty-five thousand ahead. Sales data for Marvel in this period is frustratingly incomplete, in part because it often took a few years to include Statements in new titles, but issue #33 carries another statement, this time giving the average sales as 131,183. Again fantastic by today's standards, but not exactly the huge figures of legend. Then according to 1963 Comic Book Sales Figures Rawhide Kid's average sales were up to 194,390, the highest selling Marvel title for which data is available (at least when I looked). For much of the rest of the 1960s it sold on average just over 200,000 copies, suggesting a loyal and dedicated readership. Was the 1962 figure perhaps an underestimate or a product of flawed data collection? Or did the series suffer a drop and then a rebound?

We'll probably never know. But it doesn't matter too much - there have been some brilliant comics that sold very little and some total rubbish that sold many hundreds of thousands or even millions. Rawhide Kid shows its age in its format of multiple stories per issue, when the Marvel superhero comics launched just around the corner soon settled on a single story per issue or even multi-issue stories. It's also an example of the old style continuity, or rather the lack of it. There are no direct contradictions, although some very similar adventures, but there equally isn't much development. Instead we get a set of stories that could be told in almost any order. The simplicity of the approach and tales actually work to their advantage, and when combined with a likeable starring character the result is a series that's quite pleasant to read. It's also interesting to see the inclusion of both strip and text stories that don't feature the lead character (or any from a supporting cast, not that there is one here), again a sign of an older generation of comics. The earliest issues may be the oldest material so far reproduced in an Essential volume but they hold up well after all this time as a good, light fun read.

Essential Thor volume 1

The same day that Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15, another hero made his debut in the pages of Journey into Mystery (yet another of Marvel's anthology series). Issue #83 introduced the Mighty Thor, as the Norse god of thunder was brought to life. Well in a way...

Essential Thor volume 1 reprints the Thor strips from Journey into Mystery #83-112, including the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups from issue #97 onwards. Also included is Thor's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition, though in the first edition (at least) the pages are out of order. There are also a couple of pin-ups.

The first issue is plotted by Stan Lee, scripted by Larry Lieber and drawn by Jack Kirby. Lee plots up to issue #96 and then takes over the full scripting on both the lead and back-ups, with issues before then scripted by first Lieber and then Robert Bernstein (under the semi-pseudonym "R. Berns"). Kirby draws all of the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups and most of the leads, with a handful done by variously Joe Sinnott, Don Heck and Al Hartley. The first three stories carry no credit on them, but later on the order of plot-script-art is used and the contents pages are structured accordingly. The order of credit for Thor has become a contentious issue, particularly when the movie of a few years ago carried a "based on" credit that was ordered Lee-Lieber-Kirby, but it seems likely that had there been a credit back in issue #83 it would have been ordered as such. Personally I feel the original order should be used as it's the only way to avoid awkward disputes to which there is no clear answer, but that isn't much help in this particular case.

The very first story in Journey into Mystery #83 is rather atypical of what was to come. Dr Don Blake is on holiday in Norway when he stumbles across first an alien invasion and then a cane that when struck gives him the body and power of Thor. The foes in this story would be forgotten were it not the very first story and there's none of the traditional material associated with the character from his nurse Jane Foster to Asgard and the various other Norse gods who dwell there. As is later made more explicit, this is far from the first time Thor or a Thor has walked the Earth so it's an origin story for Blake but not Thor, whoever that may be.

Who is Thor? It may seem an obvious question at first but it's more complicated than it seems. Is he, as shown in his first story, Dr Donald Blake who has acquired the power of Thor? Or is he, as his relationship with Odin and the rest of Asgard in later issues implies, the true Norse Thunder God? And if he's the latter then just who is Donald Blake? If the two are separate beings fused together then why do they never speak or act as such? We're doubtless seeing the effect of the character not being fully thought through at the start and this would later lead to problems before an attempt to tidy it up (and then much later came one of the most ludicrously unnecessary retcons of all). Asgard first appears in the third story as Loki escapes an age-old imprisonment and seeks revenge on Thor. But the Thor he finds only recognises his foe from legends rather than having the memories. Despite this Loki and the other Asgardians assume that the real Thor is in action. Starting with issue #86 there are multiple times when Thor appeals to Odin for extra help, and then in issue #90 Odin orders Thor against revealing his identity and the latter accepts it without protesting that he isn't actually the original thunder god. In issue #89 Blake, temporarily without his cane, thinks "...even though I haven't the body of Thor, I still have his brain -- his thought processes!" as though he's still thinking of his two identities as more than just different bodies and powers. But increasingly this Thor is treated by all, including himself, as the actual god - in issue #92 he even thinks of Odin as "my father". This leaves open the questions of just who is Donald Blake and exactly what happened when Blake found the hammer Mjolnir, but otherwise the series gets on with things.

Donald Blake's life away from superheroing isn't especially explored. We see him as a reasonable successful medical practitioner who also dabbles in various experiments from time to time, making for a somewhat generic alter ego that isn't too far removed from contemporaries such as Hank Pym. The only supporting cast member at the mortal end of things is his nurse, Jane Foster. Each is attracted to the other but Blake is unable to declare his feelings. It may seem clichéd now, but Jane Foster is (by my reckoning) actually the first working woman girlfriend of the Marvel Silver Age, arriving before the likes of Betty Brant, Pepper Potts and Karen Page. Each works for a living in a white-collar environment, but in a subordinate role, and each is attracted to a man around the office. In three cases the man is their boss but there's no mention of malpractice, being an era when comics didn't descend into such complicated matters. Jane is no wallflower and at times stands up to both the various villains and to Donald Blake when she feels he's been cowardly. She's also drawn to Thor a little, but wisely there isn't a full-blown triangle involving the hero and his own secret identity - that approach had been done to death with Superman. Instead the main impediment to Jane and Donald finding happiness comes from a different source, edicts from Asgard.

Fairly early on we start to see more and more of the other Norse gods and Asgard, providing a steady source of foes but also of continued conflict. By far the key figures is Odin, the ruler of Asgard and Thor's father, and this volume contains a lot of tension as the two repeatedly clash over Thor's desire for Jane and wish to marry her and Odin's refusal to allow his son to marry a mortal. Unfortunately the reasons behind such a key conflict are never properly explored as we never get a very strong exploration of just why Odin feels it is such a bad move. Odin's orders to Thor are often come with the assumption, sometimes explicitly stated, that Odin is right by virtue of his positions both as ruler of Asgard and as Thor's father. Probably more by accident than design the series had stumbled across what would become one of the major social conflicts of the later 1960s as a whole generation rejected the notion of elders and officials having inherent wisdom and that one should do (or not do) something merely because such a person said so. Thor may have long hair but he's not the most natural teenage rebel. It also doesn't help that Odin seems rather quick to form judgements, and whilst he may be able to look down on Earth and see what's happening, he hasn't got sound with the picture and so doesn't always realise why Thor or Jane are acting as they do.

Odin isn't the only other Asgardian introduced here. Between Thor's various visits to Asgard and the back up feature "Tales of Asgard" we meet a variety of others. As well as the various villains we also meet Heimdall, the guardian of the Rainbow Bridge that leads to Asgard, and Balder the Brave. The goddess Sif appears, but at this stage only in "Tales of Asgard" and there's no sign of her role as a potential rival for Thor's affection for Jane Foster.

We get a mixture of the famous and forgotten foes, with several of a type familiar to the early Marvel Silver Age. Thor's very first adventure sees him fight off the Stone Men from Saturn - an alien race trying to conquer the planet. Then in his second story he fights the Executioner, who is no relation to his later Asgardian foe of that name, but the corrupt bearded leader of a Communist revolution in a Latin American country. Now I wonder who he was a parody of? And Communism isn't just seen in fictional countries, with one early tale revolving around the Soviets kidnapping key scientists and another showing "Red" China trying to invade India only to be turned back by Thor and subsequently creating the Radioactive Man to fight him. Back home there are more generic criminals such as Thug Thatcher, or Sandu the fortune-teller who steals from his audience until Loki powers him up. Then there's Professor Zaxton, a corrupt scientist who invents a duplication ray with the added power of giving the duplicates opposite personalities under his mental control. Or there's Merlin, who is revealed to be a mutant (he first appeared the same month as the X-Men launched) who used his powers to fake magic and who has been in suspended animation for a millennium. (I have a feeling he's been since retconned as not the actual Merlin.) Or there's the Lava Man, supreme warrior of his more often seen race, and Skagg the Storm Giant. At the, erm, fantastic end are the Carbon Copy Men, a race of aliens with the ability to disguise themselves. No, nothing like the Skrulls from the Fantastic Four. When captured they are forced to use their shape-changing power to permanently turn them into a form where they forget who they are. Again nothing like the fate of the Skrulls.

More familiar foes include Loki, Thor's half-brother and master of mischief, who first appears in the third adventure and appears regularly thereafter, either attacking Thor directly or empowering agents. In total Loki appears as a villain in thirteen of the thirty lead stories here, as well as appearing in some of the Tales of Asgard back-ups as well. Other big name foes introduced include Zarrko the Tomorrow Man, the Radioactive Man (who originates from "Red" China), the Cobra, Mr. Hyde, the Enchantress, the Executioner, Hela the goddess of death, Surtur the Fire Demon and the Grey Gargoyle. (I'm surprised that his name is spelt that way rather than "Gray" - were both spellings common in the US in the mid 1960s or was the British spelling used to emphasise his foreignness?)

And the very last issue in the volume touches on one of Thor's other great rivalries. He comes across children arguing over who is tougher - himself or the Hulk - and relates a story of an encounter between the two that ended inconclusively. This may have been intended to set up a forthcoming rematch, but it feels odd to be getting a story told in flashback that takes place between panels of an early issue of Avengers, rather than introducing an original situation and building on it. It's also uncertain just which of the two actually is the strongest, in spite of Thor successfully appealing to Odin for all Mjolnir's magic to be suspended for a few minutes to allow a fight based on pure strength.

Indeed Thor's powers and strength levels are often altered in these tales thanks to either appeals to Odin or punishments being arbitrarily imposed (Odin also seems reluctant to just actually tell his son that a particular punishment has been given). It can make for a slightly uneven approach that undermines the tension when Thor is up against an especially powerful foe. However there's less of this as time progresses and Thor increasingly has to resort to brain rather than just brawn. The ultimate comes in his fight against the Grey Gargoyle when his Thor body is turned to stone for twenty-four hours and he has to defeat his foe as Donald Blake.

The early stories are relatively straightforward, perhaps due to the writing being split between plotting, drawing and scripting. There's also rather a heavy emphasis on anti-Communism, with some quite overt propaganda, especially on the point that democracy and communism are incompatible. However once Lee takes over the full scripting from issue #97 onwards we start to get more intricate tales with action flowing from issue to issue, multi-part tales and a sense of direction even if the actual direction isn't too clear beyond the rather repetitive conflict between Thor and Odin about Jane Foster without a great deal of advancement. Otherwise we have a succession of battles that keep to the spirit of Thor as a noble being who fights for the common good. These aren't the most dynamic of Thor stories but they do well to lay out the basic tapestry of the series, with "Tales of Asgard" providing an epic feel (though I'm not sure how true to recorded myths the series actually is). But with Thor the best is yet to come.

The material appears to have been sourced from a mixture of clear remastered black and white pictures and direct reproductions of the printed colour comics. However the latter is of a noticeably higher quality to all previous such scans in earlier Essentials (this volume first appeared in early 2001 and was the first to sport the second cover format), especially in the speech balloons and captions. It seems that developments in scanning technology and digital clean up were used to get a much better page than previous reproductions without master materials. Indeed it almost opens up the question of whether all the pages should have been scanned from colour copies, as sometimes the grey can enhance the effect. However in other places it can make the resulting image too dark and some of the colour doesn't scan so well, producing a dotted smeary grey effect.

Essential Ant-Man volume 1

1962 saw Marvel launch more than one hero based on an arthropod (arachnids are technically not insects). But whilst one soared to great fame, the other wandered along, went through multiple identities and ultimately has remained a minor player in the Marvel Universe. That hero was Ant-Man.

If you ever find yourself on QI and are asked "Which was the second Marvel superhero strip of the Silver Age?" think very, very carefully before risking an answer.

(For those unfamiliar with it, QI is a British television comedy quiz show devoted to obscure trivia and pedantry. Often the questions asked have a seemingly obvious answer that is in fact wrong and giving this answer sets off a klaxon and loses you points.)

"The Man in the Ant Hill!" from Tales to Astonish #27 is part of another, now obscure genre - the science fiction/fantasy and monster stories that Marvel had been telling prior to the superhero revival. It's the all too common tale of a scorned scientist seeking fame but finding his invention backfires on him, as Henry Pym's shrinking formula reduces his body in size too quickly, and he has to find a way to get to the growth formula with the complication of facing down ants. This is really part of the old genre rather than the new, although the divide between the two is far more blurred than is often assumed. There are no real signs of the traits of the superhero era that was growing - there's no costume, no real villain and no great characterisation of Pym beyond being a stock fame-seeking scientist. It wasn't until issue #35 in September 1962 that he became a regular feature and a costumed hero. So his claim to be the second hero feature after the Fantastic Four is contentious (as are some of the other claimants' but let's not go into those now).

As for Tales to Astonish itself, this was another of the various Marvel anthology series that morphed into a superhero title and is best known for carrying the Incredible Hulk from issue #60 onwards, eventually transforming into the Hulk's own title. The later issues would also carry Namor the Sub-Mariner, who took over Ant-Man's slot. We'll look to see why a vacancy opened. Essential Ant-Man volume 1 carries the Ant-Man/Giant-Man strips from Tales to Astonish #27 & #35-69, including the various back-up strips featuring the Wasp either solo or telling a story. All but a couple of the issues are plotted by Stan Lee who also scripts many, with others scripted by Larry Lieber or H.E. Huntley. The other two issues are written by Leon Lazarus and Al Hartley. The art sees runs by the likes of Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Carl Burgos and Bob Powell, with Steve Ditko contributing one issue and Larry Lieber drawing all the Wasp features, which he also scripts over Stan Lee plots.

The publication of this volume was a landmark back in 2002. Up until this point the Essential series had only focused on the biggest name heroes and teams and the idea of an Essential Ant-Man was largely just idle speculation on Usenet. But Marvel took the plunge in bringing one of its more obscure heroes' series back into print and the success of the volume has led to many other Marvel series being rescued from the depths of obscurity and brought back into print, including the Human Torch in Strange Tales, The Man called Nova, Ms. Marvel, Dazzler, Godzilla and many more.

But the volumes has also revealed just why these adventures are so forgotten. Frankly this is a series that's never quite sure why it's there, which does little to develop the world around the hero and which sees motivations, costumes, powers and identities regularly changed. And few of these changes feel like natural developments but rather sudden alterations made in individual stories. The result is that the series never gets a clear identity for itself. Perhaps that’s appropriate given Hank Pym's subsequent career with yet more identities to the point that he’s never really been clearly identified with a single one.

On the face of it a man who can shrink to a tiny size and communicate with ants sounds plainly silly. But aren't some of the other Marvel heroes equally silly? A blind man with enhanced senses becoming an all action crime fighter is patently absurd. So's a teenager getting the powers of a spider. Or another teenager who can turn into living flame. Or a man who can stretch his body in all manner of ways. But we've already made those leaps of faith and it's how the concepts are handled that has determined whether or not such characters have durability. One could easily nit-pick the shortcomings in Ant-Man's powers or question some of the leaps of logic (such as how exactly does a man move around so quickly either flying on the back of an ant or by catapult?) but such silliness is part and parcel of the era and a good writer in a later generation could doubtlessly easily come up with explanations for some of that if it was deemed necessary.

The real problem stems from the limited scope and development in the series. Apart from the Wasp the only recurring supporting cast that I can spot is a US government agent who appears twice. Otherwise we're limited to just Hank Pym and, from issue #44 onwards, Janet van Dyne. And Hank's motivations for why he does what he does change a bit without clear explanation. In the initial story he's just a fame seeing scientist whose invention gets out of control and he destroys it. But then he becomes an ongoing series and suddenly his serum is back with no explanation for why he brought it back. Nor is it clear why he's switched from using it as a way to cut down storage and travel to becoming a crime fighter. Nor is it clear why a biochemist is suddenly able to discover the means by which ants communicate and devise artificial means to enter that conversation.

A change of tack comes in issue #44 when we suddenly learn a whole new element of Hank's backstory. Now we discover that he once married a Hungarian woman called Maria who had fled communism but choose to visit the country on their honeymoon, where she was recognised, kidnapped and executed. And so the widowed Hank was motivated into fighting crime back home. Some of that just doesn't add up, and after being introduced in this issue the whole point is then ignored for the rest of the series save one issue when he goes on a mission behind the Iron Curtain. And there's also the uncomfortable point that Janet looks very much like a younger Maria, a point explicitly remarked upon at the time. And this was nearly two decades before a similar plot point was used in X-Men.

With the introduction of the Wasp the series takes a shift but in no way is this a partnership of equals. The Wasp may be brave and resourceful in battle, but all too often she is otherwise presented as a silly, flighty girl who spends her time wishing Hank would be more romantic or worrying about clothes and the like. Between issues #51 & #58 she gets her own back-up feature but in nearly all of these stories she is just narrating various science fiction stories to either orphans or veterans. The early 1960s were not yet a time for enlightened women, but even compared to Marvel Girl over in the X-Men the Wasp is not the most advanced character of her era. And Hank's attitude to her may not be overtly sexist but he frequently doubts her word and makes comments that border on misogynistic. And there's a late development when Hank devises the means to change size merely by thinking commands into his headgear - and he also adds the ability to make Janet shrink down without having to do anything herself! I don't know how many young girls were reading Tales to Astonish at the time (or many women have picked up this volume) but I doubt many dreamed of growing up to be the Wasp.

Throughout the run there's a succession of changes in the way that Hank operates his shape-changing powers. At first he pours a serum on himself but later he switches to a gas, then later to pills and finally to some undefined method of incorporating the size-changing into both his and Janet's bodies and activating it by cybernetic enhanced thought. There are several times where the method of the day fails, either because Hank gets cut off from what he needs to change size or because a foe makes use of them instead, but it rarely directly leads to him looking for a new method that will prevent such repetition.

Issue #49 sees the big change when Hank now starts growing and takes on the identity of Giant-Man. (Very rarely is the "Gi-Ant Man" pun actually exercised within these pages.) Yet it's here that his identity problems begin. He retains his power to shrink and for some strange reason he continues to use the moniker "Ant-Man" when he shrinks down, despite the difference between Ant-Man and Giant-Man being merely one of size. There's no attempt to pretend that the two are in any way separate individuals so one has to wonder why he uses the two separate names instead of finding one that can cover multiple sizes. The problem is resolved in issue #68 when it's revealed that his encounter with the Hidden Man's sill absorbing rays in the previous issue has robbed him of the ability to shrink down to Ant-Man (a point that makes no sense as Hank can still shrink to human size, albeit with more difficulty now) but up to this point it has left the hero with an inconsistent confusing identity. The final issues also see Hank settling down into a single size for his Giant-Man form but it's another change to add to the mess. And the structure of the stories isn't one of a long, ongoing journey of development so this doesn't feel like a natural turning point but just one more change in a long line of them.

The stories are also inconsistent on some basic details. For example exactly what communication is received from the ants - is it just normal words or just pictures? Are Ant-Man/Giant-Man and the Wasp's identities meant to be secret or not? Several stories use them as a plot point but in others both are pretty free about taking off their helmets and masks, and Hank is not exactly hiding his connections to the giant hero. He is also quite easy to contact in an emergency, especially when various foes strike.

Quite a number of the villains introduced in these stories have made appearances elsewhere, including Comrade X, Egghead, the Scarlet Beetle, the Hijacker, the Voice (although here he's mainly identified by his real name, Jason Cragg), the Chiltarians, the Porcupine, the Living Eraser, Supremacy, the Human Top (who later underwent a name change to something less hilarious), El Toro and the Beasts of Berlin. We also get the Black Knight, a modern day descendent of a hero from the 1950s "Marvel" (I forget what they were called at each precise stage). However without checking every single subsequent appearance in databases, I'm not sure how many of the "returns" are in fact reprints or flashbacks or other features reliving these adventures. And I suspect if they have shown up in further issues, they've been selected precisely for their ultra obscurity. The villains who appear to have never been seen since include various generic Communists, the Protector (who is running, surprise, surprise, a protection racket), Kulla the ruler of an alien dimension (who, amazingly for an alien in an early Silver Age Marvel, isn't trying to conquer the Earth - but then this is Tales to Astonish), the Time Master, the Kosmosians, Trago, the Magician, Colossus (no relation to the X-Men member), Second-Story Sammy, the Wrecker (no relation to the Thor villain), Madame Macabre and the Hidden Man. Villains from other series are strictly limited to Attuma and hordes of Atlanteans, from the pages of Fantastic Four. So really there are only three villains of any lasting note in this volume - Egghead (a name that back then was the equivalent of "nerd" or "geek"), who is still very much Hank Pym's enemy whatever title he's in, the Human Top who is better known as Whirlwind, and the second Black Knight who didn't last long anyway before being replaced by his nephew as a hero, and in any case was a revamp of a 1950s character. Consequently, the most significant villain to exclusively come out of the pages of these issues is none other than Whirlwind. That says a lot about why these stories are so often overlooked.

As for the stories themselves, they are frankly not at the cutting edge of early Silver Age Marvel. Rather they feel very generic. The artwork is generally okay but suffers from a turnover of pencillers and even though several of them are amongst the biggest Marvel names of the early 1960s such as Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers or Don Heck, few seem to be giving their best. The writing is also rather pedestrian - other than his relationship with his partner the hero experiences no present day problems outside of his adventuring. There's no supporting cast to interact with. Some of the villains are hooded but usually only one suspect is presented - this is especially true of the Protector. Few present any real lasting threat. Nor does the hero face any problems with public adulation, beyond getting irritated by visits from his fan club. This series is very much a conventional superhero feature from a company that was elsewhere doing a lot to beak down the pre-existing conventions.

There are, however, a few signs of the Marvel changes breaking through in the later issues. We get a couple of stories with big name guest-stars, including a battle with Spider-Man that is probably the volume's best known tale, and a fight with the Hulk that set up the latter's transfer to Tales to Astonish. That was the first sign of Giant Man's popularity starting to collapse. Up until issue #59 his page count had steadily grown, even if some of the pages were devoted to the Wasp's stories (which aren't terribly memorable - in most the protagonist finds their cunning backfires on them), culminating in issue #59 containing an eighteen page story plus a five page feature reminding us of our heroes' powers. But then the Hulk took up residence in half the book from issue #60 onwards, forcing the Giant-Man feature to shrink to fourteen pages, then twelve, until finally issue #69 ends on an ambiguous note as Hank worries about the danger he has put Janet in, and she wonders if he's about to retire. Issue #70 saw the feature replaced by Namor the Sub-Mariner.

And it's hard to get upset about the fate. The series was not the most dynamic or ground-breaking being put out even at the time and little was being done to develop the characters. Instead we have a comic pot-boiler, produced by many great talents passing time between more amazing assignments. The result is a series that doesn't try to push against the conventions or really develop the lead character but instead wanders through a succession of generic situations. Ant-Man may have had outrageous powers but in themselves that should have been no impediment to doing something bold with the character. The Wasp is equally not the most developed sidekick and so neither of the characters is really given a strong core for later writers to build on. Many have complained that they've found it difficult to take Hank Pym to a point where his late lashing out at the Wasp is forgotten, but it's clear from the character's roots that there wasn't a lot to the character to fall back on. This volume is very much one for completists.