Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
(Part Two)
Eventually, of course: the rosy-fingered dawn of Simple Common
Sense broke over someone's mental horizon, over Marvel Comics way...
and the painful truth accompanying so heartrending a revelation had to
be acknowledged, for good and for all:
Heroes the approximate size of
dust bunnies -- heroes who, on top of that, are on a Christmas-cards-every-year
basis with ants, f'chrissakes -- just don't make the storytelling nut,
readership awe- and inspiration- wise. 
It was different for DC Comics' Atom character; he could shrink down to sub-atomic size, and was having his storytelling ashes hauled, monthly, by the single most engaging and inventive writer of the day (Gardner Fox), to boot. (Not to mention the added "perk" of having said exploits gorgeously rendered by a Gil Kane playing at the very peak of his respective "game," as well.)
Held aloft alongside those storytelling "street creds"... a glib (but often shallow) Stan Lee and a seriously overworked Jack Kirby (the latter of whom was only drawing eight, maybe ten monthly Marvel features at the time, is all) simply didn't rate, comparison-wise...
... and then, someone -- either Stan or Jack (memories differ, on this point) -- came up with the clever notion: "well... if he can get really, really itsy-bitsy... then who's to say the character couldn't reverse the process, and turn himself into a veritable behemoth, as well...?"
Enter: the gargantuan Giant-Man. [See cover reproduction,
below]
That's just one reason,
among an assortment of same, why Kirby and Lee are (still; to this very day)
regarded as two of the principle architects of the Silver Age of comics... and
we're all just, y'know, talkin' about the books in question.
This solitary change in the character's conceptual dynamic paid off big storytelling dividends virtually instantaneously, as the much-maligned (to that point, I mean) Henry Pym was suddenly transformed into one of the premiere "power players" of the Marvel Universe of the day.
Gone, long gone were the ineffectual likes of Egghead, when it came
to scheduled sparring partners for this fifty-foot fellah; instead, he
got to mix it up with more decidedly "A"-list opponents such as Attuma;
The Mad Thinker; and even no less puissant a powerhouse than The
Incredible Hulk, his own bad self. [See cover reproduction, below]
No longer was an shamefaced and ineffectual Ant-Man forced to endure,
during Avengers meetings, a sadistic Thor's
cruel, incessant demands to "pull my finger, Termite Boy. C'mon...
I said pull it, you little wimp!" The size twenty-nine shoe
was on the other foot, now; it was the massive and imposing Giant-Man
who would drop his pants and command a panicky, shrilly-bleating Thunder God: "... no... you take a tug or three on this here 'finger.'
Ya hippie long-hair fink."
Hmmmm? Beg pardon...?
Ummmmmm... well... I forget
which issue number, actually. But it all happened, dammit!
Speaking of Giant-Man's long-time tenure with The Avengers: the character proved even more invaluable to the group, overall, when he became its chief powerhouse-in-residence anent the withdrawings of both Thor and Iron Man from the team's roster, in the latter part of the '60's.
With a "core" membership, at that juncture, consisting of himself; the Wasp; The Black Panther; and Hawkeye ... the big man (now calling himself Goliath, incidentally) became the team's linchpin and (unofficial) leader.
This was, undoubtedly, the character's "golden era." Valued and respected leader of the flippin' Avengers (Marvel's true "flagship" team title; all online apologists for The Fantastic Four notwithstanding); Regular Saturday Night Thang for the lovely Janet Van Dyne...
... oh, yeah. He had it
all. And THEN some.
... and then, of course, came the nervous breakdown.
An amnesiac Hank Pym showed up in AVENGERS #59 as the insolent and vulgar super-hero parvenu calling himself Yellowjacket. [See cover reproduction, below]
The size-changing, insect- controlling crimefighter (boy... talk about your tough mysteries to crack, huh...?) was the inevitable end result of a man being spread too thin, for far too bloody long. In addition to the gent's multitudinous AVENGERS- related responsibilities, he'd also been wrestling with his own private inner demons, re: having (unintentionally) breathed life into the team's deadliest and most unrelenting of nemeses: the artificial (and wholly insane) construct known only as Ultron.
(This last, in particular, was no little "Whoopsie! My Bad!" laboratory screw-up, either. Aside from his being a raving, all-but-unstoppable would-be world-conqueror... the cruel-visaged Ultron had an actual, no foolin' Oedipal complex working overtime, to boot.
To wit: the two things he most desired, in alllllll the world, were:
a.) the slow, gruesome death of his putative "father" (i.e., You-Know-
Who); annnnnnd --
b.) the transference of Janet Van Dyne's "essence" into the ambulatory shell of a calculatedly feminine metal "robot"-ess, with whom he could, ummmm, "marry." And the Wasp -- being the closest thing on earth Ultron could reasonably claim as a maternal figure...
... well. You do the math.
Icky, icky, icky.
In any event: Hank got his memory back, and decided to stick with the more dashing Yellowjacket persona, for the forseeable future.
The Wasp, in the meantime, actually grew to surpass her one-time mentor in terms of character depth and complexity, overall. The (formerly) scatterbrained heiress -- her own powers "beefed up," as well, in the course of a MARVEL TEAM-UP two-parter [see cover reproduction, below] -- stepped up smartly to the storytelling proscenium and became, in short order, one of the more assertive and self-confident super- heroines around...
... even (for a brief period) divorcing Henry Pym, after their marriage had taken on a decidedly Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-ish complexion.
He got custody of the ants, weekends and holidays.
Kidding. Kidding.
The characters remain (semi-)active within the confines of the Marvel Universe, to this very day.
"Semi-active," however, isn't nearly status sufficient for this checkered and endlessly fascinating pair.
Not so far as this narrator
is concerned, at any rate.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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