Tales to Astonish #38

Betrayed by the Ants

By Stan Lee with Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: Egghead

So, What Happens?

The top atomic scientist known as Egghead (due to his brains and bizarre appearance) is suspected of spying and fired by the government.

The New York underworld think he will be just the guy to beat Ant-Man and swiftly recruit him. He quickly figures out how ants communicate and, promising to free them from Ant-Man’s control, tells them to pass a message on about a robbery at the museum.

When Pym arrives at the scene of the crime Egghead uses a small bellows to blow him into a flypaper lined box.

Unfortunately Ant-Man’s electronically controlled spring boots enable him to quickly escape and he then makes quick work of some of Egghead’s gangster friends with a string lariat. Ant-Man finishes them off by ordering his faithful ants to carry a carpet onto the ceiling and drop it on the gangsters.

The gangsters are all captured and Ant-Man reveals to the hidden Egghead that as Ants are unable to feel emotions it was pointless targeting their resentment of ant-Man.

In fact the ants told Pym all about Egghead and he was able to plan accordingly. While Egghead manages to escape he is left destitute, reduced to stumbling around cursing the ants.

So is it any good?:

It’s an attempt to come up with a recurring villain who can match Pym’s intellect. It’s not a particularly good one: the final panels of a pathetic broke Egghead are presumably meant to mirror the early ones of the arrogant scientist looking down his nose at patriots; however they pretty much sum the character up.

A lot of his stories seem to end with him reduced to almost nothing and raging at the world.

He would appear in a number of fairly big stories in a range of titles and would in fact end up having quite an impact on a number of characters but he is essentially a fairly pathetic character. He is intelligent but not in the way the Leader or Mad Thinker or Doom are, quite malevolent and effective but only in quite second rate stories and defined by a bizarre appearance that wasn’t really explained at all.

As with preceding issues Pym is still being endangered by regular objects and still has the ants doing all of his heavy lifting in a fight. His big weapon this issue, apart from a carpet, is a thread of nylon that he loops around the bad guys’ wrists.

The idea of a villain trying to use his link to the ants against him is a good one, as that link is pretty much the one spark of personality Pym has, but it ends in a matter of fact way because the ants don’t actually have any personality or emotions either and can’t be swayed from their “loyalty” to Pym.

I quite liked some of the Edward G Robinson style gangsters from Kirby but the issue doesn’t have much else going for it.

Are there any goofy moments?

Super-brain Egghead researches ants by reading what looks like a children’s book titled ‘all about ants’

After inventing a way of communicating with ants Egghead’s next trick is rather less high tech. After a lot of aplomb he announces that run of the mill flypaper will be his tactic to catch the tiny Ant-Man

“Ant Ant-Man finishes them off by ordering his faithful ants to carry a carpet onto the ceiling and drop it on the gangsters. ”

Egghead’s whole appearance is pretty goofy for someone who is supposed to just be a regular human.

Trivia:

Egghead, Elihas Starr, is the closest thing Ant-Man got to an arch-enemy in Tales to Astonish.

Whirlwind was more concerned with the Wasp and Ultron was not around until five years into the Avengers run. Egghead followed Pym to the Avengers, Marvel Feature, the Defenders and then back to the Avengers for a storyline that had a lasting effect on Pym and a fatal one on Egghead.

He has appeared in a few flashback stories and jokey dead appearances but has actually stayed dead for a very long time now. I guess by the time of his death he was somewhat of a joke and only really worked as an effective villain in stories featuring Pym.

Is it a landmark?:

Egghead appeared enough times for this to be a minor landmark I guess.

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