The Daily Grind

Now

SHIELD has been hunting Eric O’Grady, the new Ant-Man by tracing the Pym Particle emissions given off by his suit. The trail has led to the apartment of a woman named Beth who they interrupt in the middle of a shower. She tells them that O’Grady saved her from a mugging and the two went out on a date that ended with tea in her apartment. She also tells them that Eric left about an hour earlier. Still, this SHIELD unit — led by Mitch Carson, the man tasked with bringing O’Grady in — insists that they search the apartment to make sure O’Grady isn’t hiding somewhere.[1]

Little does Beth know that, after her date, O’Grady returned to her apartment as Ant-Man to peep on her in the show. Watching the SHIELD agents from under the couch, Ant-Man begins to panic as he looks for a way to get out of this situation.

Three Months Ago

The SHIELD helicarrier is now fully repaired and operational again, which means Eric O’Grady is back on the job. As he and other agents are transported to the massive craft, they are welcomed back by Dum Dum Dugan.[2] As Eric finds his new quarters, he is found by Mitch Carson who has been assigned to find the missing Ant-Man suit. Little does Mitch know that O’Grady took it and that he has it in his backpack. Mitch tells O’Grady that the suit was missing when they found Chris McCarthy’s body in the wreckage of the old helicarrier and asks if Eric knows anything about that. Lying, Eric tells Mitch that he hadn’t seen Chris since he first put it on and accidentally shrunk himself and got lost. Mitch is suspicious but can’t tell if Eric is lying. O’Grady says that he wouldn’t have done something so grisly as steal the suit off a dead body, let alone his best friend. Mitch decides to take him at his word, but promises to bring down a world of hurt if Eric is lying.

As Eric struggles to enter the access code to his quarters he is also visited by Veronica King, Chris’ former girlfriend. As it turns out, her room is six doors down from his. She wants to apologize for coming on to him at Chris’ grave while they were visiting the McCarthy family.[3] She wants to say that she cherishes his friendship through this difficult time and looks forward to seeing him when they go back to work on monitor duty the next day. Eric then goes back to trying to punch in his room access code. It still doesn’t work and another agent tells him that his punching his code in the wrong room, his room is actually across the hall.

Later that day, Eric uses the Ant-Man suit to sneak into the women’s locker room and watch female agents in the shower. There he is spotted by a female sniper who sees something on the ceiling. Afraid to get caught, he scrambles into a nearby vent before the women can figure out what was watching them. At first, the vent won’t open, but luckily it does, and O’Grady breaths a sigh of relief that he managed to get away. Suddenly, he is surrounded by ants and panics at first until he realizes they weren’t attack. Remembering that he is wearing an Ant-Man suit, he discovers that the ants answered to his distress and were the ones that opened the vent for him. Giving them commands, he revels in the fact that he can control ants. However, he wonders how he can put this power to good use. After some consideration, he decides to use his newfound power to make the ants race one another and revels in how cool it is being a superhero.

The next day, while on duty, Eric is approached by Veronica again. Both admit that it is hard coming to work without Chris since he was an every day part of their lives before he died. Veronica then surprises Eric by asking if he wants to hang out with her after their shift is done. Eric is surprised she is asking him out, but she doesn’t want to make a big deal about it, saying they don’t even have to change out of uniform. As she goes away, O’Grady pats himself on the back over gaslighting this poor woman, because he is a total scumbag.

Meanwhile, Mitch Carson is in the lab with Hank Pym where he is fitted with a proto-type of the new Ant-Man suit.[4] After getting a crash course on how the suit works, Mitch shrinks down to ant-size so he can begin scouring for clues as to whereabouts of the missing suit.

That evening, Eric’s date with Veronica goes off pretty well. When he is returning to quarters she tells him how she confronted Kristin, the agent that Eric claimed Chris was having an affair with.[5] Oddly, the other woman denied such a relationship and Veronica doesn’t realize that Eric was lying to her. She is distracted from putting two-and-two together because Eric goes into his room mix-up from earlier that day. Veronica then jumps ahead to what she really wanted to say: That she is glad that she had gotten to know O’Grady better over the past little while and finds that he’s not such a bad guy after all. She then kisses him on the lips and next thing they are in bed together. Afterwards, when Veronica has fallen into a troubled sleep, Eric decides to go out as Ant-Man again because he needs to feed his ants. As he does so, he is caught by Mitch Carson, who demands to know who he is.

Now

Carson and his unit are still searching Beth’s apartment. As he gives a status update to Director Hill, one of the agents confirms that O’Grady was in the apartment after finding his finger prints on a tea cup.[6] They then begin scanning the room with an infrared scanner to see if he is still hiding somewhere. Sure enough, they find his heat signature coming from under the couch. Using his full human strength, the diminutive Ant-Man tosses the couch at one of the agents. Fed up of being hunted and hounded, O’Grady has decided that it is time to settle things with Carson once and for all!

Recurring Characters

Ant-Man, SHIELD (Mitch Carson, Veronica King, Dum Dum Dugan), “Hank Pym”, Beth

Continuity Notes

1. Ant-Man’s interactions with Beth transpired over the last three issues, as was the tale on how he got the Ant-Man suit that was being developed for SHIELD. I’ll get this out of the way also: Between the flashbacks and the present day portions of the story, Mitch suddenly has a horrible burn covering half his face that goes unexplained. How he got this injury will be revealed in Irredeemable Ant-Man #6.

2. As seen in Irredeemable Ant-Man #2 and Wolverine (vol. 3) #27, the SHIELD helicarrier was attacked by Hydra, sending it crashing to the ground.

3. Eric is an absolute scumbag who almost had sex with Veronica on Chris’s grave, as we saw in Irredeemable Ant-Man #3. Shameful.

4. Between the flashback in last issue and this one, Hank Pym was replaced by a Skrull impostor named Criti Noll, as will be revealed in Mighty Avengers #15. This is ahead of a Skrull invasion of Earth that will take place in Secret Invasion #1-8.

5. As seen in Irredeemable Ant-Man #1-2, Chris and Veronica were dating, which made Eric jealous. When McCarthy went missing after trying on the Ant-Man suit, Eric made up a story about how he was cheating on Veronica with Kristen.

6. Between the flashback in last issue and this story, Maria Hill was appointed as the new Director of SHIELD after Nick Fury went AWOL in Secret War #5.