AntMan Season One AntMan

The first modern retelling of Ant-Man that I read. I felt like the story balanced the modern and the classic very well. Cutting back on the cheese while still paying homage to the original story. I appreciated how seriously they took Ant-man's powers and found a lot of his fight scenes clever and enjoyable.

Of course the story still has a host of issues. Most notably, how it treats the deaths of two important characters. On the one hand our story starts with the assassination of Pym's scientist wife, on the other we have Pym's father sacrificing himself for his son. And while this all seem fairly gender neutral on the surface, this is not the case. Although it does make it easier for me to explain what issues I do have with the way they killed off Maria.

This particular update of the story does flesh out Maria's character a bit more than in previous versions. In Ant-Man Season one we are introduced (through Hank's memories) to a rather intelligent female scientist. She even manages to invent the device Pym later uses to communicate with ants - bravo! But then, skipping back to the first page of this comic, she is killed by a bomb in Budapest. Initiate grieving husband revenge sequence!

Maria is actually right at the center of the rest of this comic. Whether it's Hank angsting about her death, Hank suspecting his boss of having her killed or the overweight white vilain lusting after her/blaming Hank for her death. It's classic dead woman in refrigerator. Real live women with actual agency are just too much trouble, but if we killed them the plot writes itself! Of course by the end poor Maria doesn't even get that much respect. The bomb that killed her is not part of Eggheads master scheme to take over the world (as Hank originally thought) it was probably just some random act of violence after all

This is very different from the death bequeathed to Hank's father, which happens at the very end of the book. An insensitive and business minded guy, warren is the polar opposite of Hank. Always pushing him to get back to work, make money and (for the most part) forget his dead wife - to say that Hank and Warren have a rocky relationship is probably an understatement. He certainly has less influence over Hank than his dead wife. Everything changes when he sacrifices his life for his son!

You see, Warren Pym (for all his unlikability) is given one key characteristic that Maria is never allowed. The power to act. All the influence he has in the story is due purely to his actions. We start out hating him for his actions, we end up morning him because of his actions. His death is no accident, it is very deliberate and comes at the end of what ends up being a pretty standard heroic character arc. He's a real person whereas Maria is only an idealized mary-sue esque memory doomed to be replaced.

Otherwise, the art was pretty lackluster. The panels are much to large to warrant the overly simplistic style. Mr. Egghead was waaaaay too cartoonish and putting Dr William Foster in a basketball jersey seemed pretty cliche. I don't really know his character though, so maybe not?

I did actually burst out laughing when Pym first puts on his antman outfit. Up until that point, Pym has obvious looked fit, but not outrageously so. More of a brains over brawn sort of guy. And the ant suit looks kind of like a formless red bag. Of course as soon as he puts his super hero outfit though, the artist is contractually obligated to make him super ripped!

So yes, much like many of the other ant-man stories I have read since starting this. Pretty decent super hero premise ruined by some level of traditional misogyny complemented by a dash of racism.