4 issue Test #19 - The Astonishing Ant-man

Time I looked into another All New All Different Marvel Title. What’s that? I did one just 2 weeks ago, well get used to it, there’s plenty more on the way.

Scott Lang, AKA Ant-man, former criminal trying to find right in the eyes of the world, and particularly his daughter, since she was the reason he resorted to crime in the first place. She became a superhero briefly, and also died and came back to life, just like him… Yeah, it’s comic books. What’s in store for our hero now? Let’s take a look.

Not sure what the black and white's about but it looks decent artistically

Issue 1 opens with Scott Lang narrating that he feels like he’s done nothing in the last 8 months. On and off in the gym, watching some Netflix (or whatever the Marvel equivalent is) new phone, new diet, small vacation but not much else. On the plus side his work’s good.

We flash back to 8 months ago. Where we see he’s set up a company in Miami, Ant-Man security Solutions. He has two employees of not. Griz, a guy in a bear suit and Machinesmith, both ex-cons themselves. He warns them they have a big meeting coming up and they’d better do well else Ms. Morgenstern won’t be pleased. Ms. Morgenstern is a former superhero who set up a retirement home for former supervillains.

Now as a former superhero she would be a little sympathetic and more than understanding when Ant-Man… Never mind, no she’s a stern woman who wants Ant-Man to the meeting on time or else. She put up some of the money to help finance the business and she wants to see a return. Ant-man says he needs to make a stop first.

He cut to a high school basketball game where Cassie Lang, Scott’s daughter is playing basketball, she only recently recovered from major heart surgery thanks to the events of a previous book I suppose. She loses but Scott fills the winning team’s locker room with ants. He’s watching, but shrunken down.

Cassie complains that she hates basketball, saying she’d easily win if she still had Pym Particles in her system. They were removed when she had heart surgery. Her mother argues that it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to her, Cassie does not agree. Her mother tells her that she has some photos and maybe they could send her to Scott. Cassie thinks that he doesn’t love her, he hasn’t seen any of her games.

Scott’s shrunken down in the car. He hasn’t missed a game but Cassie’s heart operation was down to a maniac wanting Pym Particles in his body. He’d become a grave threat to his daughter’s life and has thus chosen to stay as far away from her as possible. She may hate him, but it keeps her alive.

Meanwhile at Cross Technological Enterprises. Darren Cross, the freak that stole Cassie’s heart is having treatment because his skin has turned pink. His son comes in and embraces him (His design tells me he’s at the very least a teenager but the first line he has is ‘daddy daddy,’ which to me is more something a 5-year old would say) he mention’s his father’s condition but it’s been cured thanks to Cassie’s heart. It seems Cross was after a compatible heart more than the Pym particles as he sees those as a curse.

He’s now shrunken down although his son does say he might be able to control it (Wikipedia tells me his name is Augustine – wow, his mother must’ve loved him) Anyway, they have a meeting with someone who has an app to show them, although Darren isn’t keen, Augustine (seriously, I can’t say that name without cracking up, sorry to anyone who has that name) assures him it might be worth it.

They meet a guy who fashions himself ‘The Power Broker’ and has designed the Hench app, a perfect tool for the busy businessman. Scott arrives at his meeting with a Mr Harden, with Ms. Morgenstern already there and apologising for his tardiness, as it happens, they’re still waiting on one more. Detective Black Burdick, who married Scott’s ex-wife, helps raised his kids and generally hates despite what the movie would tell you.

Back at Cross Technological Enterprises (I’m gonna shorten that to CTE from here on) the power broker explains the app. Based on past experience and encounters, it’ll produce the perfect supervillain to deal with any superhero thorns in your sides. For instance, with Scott Lang it produces Whirlwind who’s sent out.

Mr Harden is a fan of Ant-man having followed his exploits but of course Blake points out Scott’s criminal record and personally he finds that he doesn’t honour commitments well. Scott tries to fight back, giving intel that he offers more than just your usual security but response to whether emergencies. Whirlwind chooses this convenient moment to begin his attack.

The entire time Whirlwind has Scott on the ropes, Augustine and Darren are impressed but this is only a trial, they’ll have to cough up to get to the kill. Darren is prepared to offer thousands but their last funding run raised $1.2billion which they were intending to match. They refuse to put up that kind of money, the Power Broker calls off Whirlwind’s attack. Angry, Darren grows and gets his head stuck in the ceiling.

With the fight over, Mr Harden is horrified, they destroyed the planetarium, people could’ve died. Ms. Morgernstern is not happy. Scott, left alone and possibly in need of medical attention gets a message from Hench wanting him to rate the difficulty of his encounter. We see in the present that he’s wound up back in prison.

A cover going for imagery over anything actually of substance but... It looks pretty nice and the black background works

Issue 2 opens back at the prison. Scott likes to think he’s the good guy but maybe he’s too trusting. We cut to Cross Technologies where Grizly and Machinesmith are talking a new arrangement with Augustine cross. As well as a nice cash sum, he’s willing to cede in writing that neither he nor his company will cease doing anything malicious toward Scott Lang or his daughter. They agree and Machinesmith begins hacking a secure network for all the data (presumably related to the Hench app)

Scott’s feeling optimistic despite his last venture resulting in $16million in property damage and 3 pending lawsuits. Because people in the Marvel universe are d*cks, get used to that, I might bring that up again. Scott sees his next client, Marlena Howard as she dismisses a magic act. He says that they’ll regret that.

She not only needs security at a show but her client is relocating to Miami, filming a reality show and this particular client has a habit of attracting trouble. Her client: Darla Deerling. Darla was once a world famous popstar, she became Ms. Thing using an old Ben Grimm super suit and joined the Fantastic 4 with Scott when the real FF were away.

With Scott mourning over the loss of his daughter, he gravitated to her, she helped him through it, well that and beating up Doctor Doom but as they broke away from Superhero life, she thought he became boring and when Cassie came back to life, he knew he needed to go and focus on being the perfect father. He never exactly said anything to her.

The two fight but they’re interrupted by the magician, the son of a former villain also called the magician who once fought Giant-Man. He attacks with killer pigeons and bunnies and cards (even being called a ‘Gambit knock-off’ for that) he tells his origin but Darla just knocks him out.

They sit on the roof with Scott apologising and them making up to a degree. She offers him the contract, since Scott has no other clients, he agrees to do it. Scott feels terrible, knowing he’s disappointed every other woman in his life. Turns out this stunt was actually a pilot episode for their new show, the Magician was actually ordered via the Hench app. Ant-Man is confronted by Sam Wilson AKA Captain America who has a job for him.

OK, I get the feeling these covers are going for artsy styles, motion lines that look like light reflecting... honestly, it looks pretty good

After the obligatory bit with Scott in prison, Issue 3 opens back where we left off. There’s a threat that needs dealing with. Scott has a big of trouble seeing Sam as Captain America, knowing Steve Rogers and his quirks. He says he has some people who may be able to help. Machinesmith is entirely against helping Captain America but Grizly reminds him that they owe Scott for working with Cross behind his back.

They agree and Machinesmith is particularly interested when it involved hacking into SHIELD. They have a ship transporting something that is about to be hijacked by a guy named the Hijacker. They need not only to stop him but Sam thinks this object is too dangerous for SHIELD to have. Scott is annoyed, he doesn’t want his skills as a hero but as a thief.

It’s already started, the Hijacker uses some nanites stolen from a guy named Overdrive (they’re all about promoting the obscure, aren’t they?) to hijack the ship. Cap and Ant-man arrive, remarking that the old Hijacker just had a tank but got his head bit off by Venom, which they thought might discourage any replacements) Cap keeps him occupied as Scott searches for the container and shrinks it down. It’s the wrong one however, what they were really sent for is an egg containing a child of a creature that once challenged the Fantastic 4, Giganto.

It hatches and is pretty big quickly. It can level a city unless it’s stopped. Scott has a plan, and Cap encourages him to enact it he climbs onto Giganto and begins to shrink him, until he’s like the size of small dog.

Maria Hill gives a press conference calling the operation an illegal smuggling operation. Sam steps up and says that Maria has promised to find Giganto a home in a savage land nature refuge where he can live in peace. Maria is not happy, with either of them.

They find out that the Hijacker was hired by Hench, started by the Power Broker. Sam has to deal with HYDRA but says he’ll come back, since Power Broker was a villain of the former Captain America. Scott declines, wanting to sort this on his own, heroing on the side may be good for him, no matter what his boss thinks.

Supervillain the Slug is impressed with the Power Broker’s demonstration. Diverting their attention so that a drug shipment could come through. He also owed Maria for outbidding him on the creature. However, he refuses to go with the Power Broker’s Hench app for 1 reason. Cross industries are offering an alternative, at half the price. Power Broker is furious, he blows up Slug’s ship and tells ‘Siri’ that they need to upgrade to version 2.0.

Oh and Ant-man meets the female beetle. 

Erm, Hench and the Power Broker are not in this issue, at all! This is probably the laziest looking cover from the series

So, after another obligatory prison scene, we see the pair talk. Ant-man is reluctant to do anything with her, citing her being a super-villain as well as apparently a lawyer (go figure). Naturally they end up in bed together anyway.

He soon realises he’s late for a job and heads out. The job is a big basketball game that Darla and Marlena are to see. He’s late but Griz and Machinesmith were supposed to cover for him. They’re dancing in a conga line. Scott shrinks down as Cassie takes her seat. He asked for some tickets and sent them under a truly pathetic guise but does not want to be seen by her.

We see that Darla has a new boyfriend, Paul Sheer, he fancies himself a basketball player but ends up just hitting the head of one of the crowd. On the plus side, he does return calls. In the commentator’s box a guy walks in and tells the commentator to punch himself in the face, he does so. (I don’t think this is the purple man, because… he’s not purple but it’s not dissimilar to David Tennant’s version) he speaks through the microphone and tells everyone he was hired by the Cross version of the HENCH app, LACKEY.

He tells the audience is odd numbered seats to attack those in the even numbered seats, the team in grey to act like crazed psychopaths and referees to destroy everyone around them. Anarchy reigns. Cassie’s not in her seat, she takes a barrel of something and uses it to knock out one of the referees. In process she sees Scott. Fortunately, Jalen Diggs was wearing earplugs so didn’t hear the commands. He was also not in a grey jersey so I don’t think he had any instructions. But he and his basketball team help.

Paul also threatens Ant-man, calling him his nemesis as he’s afraid of Ants, Darla knocks him out. Knowing that not Purple Man would keep giving commands until they end up killing each other, he sends out some ants to short out the microphones, this buys him enough time to kick his ass. He asks who hired him and it turns out it was Paul. He thought the Lackey app was a game akin to Candy Crush and got some gift coupons for it.

It’s time for that talk with Cassie we all knew was coming. She discovers he gave her the tickets and soon realises he’s been watching her in secret. She’s annoyed about this, he’s her father, not her stalker. Scott tries to argue that being around him gets her hurt, which rebuttals saying it hurt more that he wasn’t there. She tells him to stay away, for real this time.

Meanwhile, Giant Man (who is now a completely separate character, go figure) is fighting a villain called the Unicorn at the Golden Gate Bridge. Unicorn distracts him with his words and he ends up tangled in the bridge.

So, that was the Astonishing Ant-man #1-4, how do I rate it? Let’s take a closer look.

For starters let me say I have nothing but praise for the interior artwork, the covers in many cases feel based of what’s written on the solicit rather than the actual issue, but you’ll have seen my thoughts on the covers in the commentary.

There are some great ideas presented here, the Hench app is a great example of taking superhero work into a more modern environment, something the All New All Different Marvel is partially about, I also like it’s use of more obscure characters, Ms. Thing, the new Giant Man, and others have shown up in this book. I also liked the idea of Scott having a security firm with other ex-cons in major positions, that was a quite a clever setup.

I also see their logic with things going wrong. Scott Lang has always been somewhat of a loser, the adult version of a Peter Parker character (and let’s face it, they’ve got to have something now Peter Parker is a rich businessman) so having things in his life not work out a lot due to things that sometimes were and sometimes weren’t in his control is fine.

I honestly, however, believe that some characters are wasted here. Ms. Morgenstern, for example, feels like a massive wasted opportunity to me. Instead of exploring her roots as a former hero with a bit of money she becomes yet another antagonist in Scott’s life, and as the remaining issues proved, there are more than enough

I’d be less annoyed about this if she just an old grumpy businesswoman. But as a former superhero herself I found myself wishing she was more sympathetic to Scott’s plight. Even in the golden age, superheroing came with a cost.

And the constant tease of him being back in prison really didn’t add to the stories. Sure, it’s hinting at something further down the line but at the current stage it was skippable at best. Then the whole Cassie sub-plot revolved around yet another ‘lie to protect you’ which if you’ve read my Arrow or The Flash reviews you know I’m sick and tired of. I’m glad this arc was resolved and wasn’t an ongoing thread.

I don’t feel like it was necessary for a Captain America team up. I don’t think the arc added anything for either character. I just fell flat for me I’m afraid. Maybe also a few too many references about how Sam Wilson is not Steve Rogers

For everything I like about this comic, there’s something I dislike, which makes it frustrating for me as a reader.

#1 6/10

#2 5/10

#3 5/10

#4 6/10

Overall 5.5/10

Recommendation: I sadly can’t recommend this title. It’s got some cool ideas but its execution needs work.

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Images/clips used in this review are from The Astonishing Ant-man and belong to their respective owners. All images/clips in this review are subject to fair use