Irredeemable Ant-Man #5
Confrontation
Now
After hunting him down for months, SHIELD agent Mitch Carson has finally found Eric O’Grady, aka Ant-Man. He has been hiding out in the apartment of a woman named Beth, whom he went on a date with.[1] Fed up with being hounded by SHIELD, O’Grady is ready to settle accounts once and for all until Carson pulls a gone. Ant-Man then cowardly flees out of the window. Carson orders his men to stay behind and then leaps out after O’Grady, pursuing him in his SHIELD issue flying car.
Three Months
When the Ant-Man suit went missing, Carson was outfitted with a prototype so he could search the SHIELD helicarrier for it. In his search he comes across O’Grady in the ventilation shafts feeding the ants under his control.[2] Unaware of who is wearing the suit, Carson orders the thief to surrender. Not wanting to be captured, O’Grady fights back but is no match for the senior SHIELD agent. Carson demands to know if Ant-Man killed Chris McCarthy to get his hands on the suit.[3] Eric manages to get away when he orders his ants to attack Mitch.
Retreating back to his room, O’Grady is relieved that Veronica left while he was gone and returns to normal height. However, this time only his helmet grows along with him with the rest of his costume nowhere in sight. Trying to figure out what happened, he begins pushing random buttons on his helmet to try and figure out how to fix this situation. He ends up activating a training video from the suit’s creator, Hank Pym. Putting on the helmet to watch it, O’Grady learns of this new function that makes for easier storage: By activating a specific command, the suit will remain at ant-size and be stored in the full-sized helmet for easier storage.[4]
He has to quickly stash the helmet when Veronica comes knocking at his door again. She wonders where Eric went while she was asleep and he makes up a flimsy lie that she doesn’t entirely buy. When she suggests they go for a walk and talk about things, Eric tells her that he’s tired and wants to get some sleep. She then, correctly, realizes that he was only interested in sleeping with him. She calls him a jerk and then storms out of the room. The complete asshole doesn’t even understand what he did wrong.
Meanwhile, Carson returns to Hank Pym’s lab with his suit in shambles. He barely managed to get away from the army of ants. Pym figures he can get the prototype back up and running within a few days, a delay in his mission that annoys Carson.
Two Weeks Later
After his encounter with Carson, Eric O’Grady has decided to lay low and just do his job. After his shift is over for the day, Veronica approaches him in an effort to try and patch things up. However, O’Grady has lost interest in her and tells the poor woman that it is not going to work out. Angry again, Veronica slaps him across the face and storms off. Completely obtuse to the fact that he is the bad guy in this situation, O’Grady goes back to his room thinking that she is crazy.
Inside, he is shocked to discover that Mitch Carson is waiting for him inside. Carson explains he got in because of his SHIELD level clearance. He tells Eric that he came to remind him that they have another one of their regular poker games that evening and tells him not to be late. Eric isn’t really into the idea, but Mitch says that Chris would have wanted them to keep the tradition going, pressing O’Grady to agree to come.
Meanwhile, Veronica is crying in her room over how Eric casually blew her off. She blames herself for being so stupid. The reason why she is so upset is because she took a pregnancy test and it has come back positive.
Unaware of how his shitty actions have created serious consequences, Eric O’Grady goes to the poker game. The topic of conversation is the sudden mutant de-population that happened over night and how this has had serious repercussions, namely that the US government has reinstated the Sentinel program.[5] It soon becomes clear that Mitch is trying to read Eric the entire time. O’Grady begins bragging about how great his poker face is. This convinces Carson that Eric is the Ant-Man he fought the other week and lunges at him from across the table. He accuses O’Grady of killing Chris McCarthy and stealing the Ant-Man suit. Not understanding what’s going on, the other agents present pull Mitch off of Eric, who denies the whole thing. Carson then vows that he will kill O’Grady for what he has done.
Now
Mitch Carson’s search for Ant-Man hits a dead end as the trail goes cold. Little does he know that O’Grady is hiding in the wheel well of his flying car.
Recurring Characters
Ant-Man, SHIELD (Mitch Carson, Veronica King), “Hank Pym”, Hank Pym (in training video)
Continuity Notes
O’Grady stole the Ant-Man suit for his own perverted amusement. He saved Beth from a mugger and convinced her to go on a date with him. He shamefully went to go peep on her after she shot him down for a one night stand. SHIELD then tracked him back. This happened over the last four issues.
Between the flashback and present day of this story, Mitch Carson’s face is suddenly half burned without explanation. How he sustained these injuries is revealed next issue.
In Irredeemable Ant-Man #1, O’Grady’s best friend Chris put on the suit and accidentally shrunk himself. Later, when Hydra attacked the helicarrier in issue #3, Chris was killed prompting O’Grady to steal the suit for himself.
This flashback happens after Hank Pym was kidnapped and replaced with a Skrull spy named Criti Noll, as will be revealed in Mighty Avengers #15. That said, the Hank Pym in the training video would have been the real Pym as he created the new Ant-Man suit before he was swapped out. This was all ahead of an Skrull invasion of Earth that will take place in Secret Invasion #1-8.
This flashback takes place shortly after the events of House of M #1-8, wherein the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) used her reality warping powers to change reality into a world where mutants are the dominant species on the planet. When forced to restore everything back to normal, Wanda used her powers to de-power 90% of the mutant population and remove the mutation from the gene pool, as revealed in Decimation: House of M - The Next Day #1. In response to this, the Office of National Emergency, instated a squad of piloted Sentinels to protect the mutant population. See Sentinel Squad ONE #1-5 for more on that. This will remain the status quo until Avengers vs. X-Men #12.
Topical References
When O’Grady’s shift is over he whispers “Yabba-Dabba-Do”, this is an exclamation used by the character Fred Flintstone from the animated sitcom The Flintstones. The character is best known for saying this phrase when he is off work for the day. This series originally ran from 1960 to 1966. It has been spun off into various sequel series, revivals and movies over the years since. That said, given the iconic status of the series, you could argue that its reference here is not a topical reference, as replacing it with a contemporary or general reference would change the context of the joke.
