Irredeemably Stupid, or: How This Ant-Man Series Fucking Sucks
In the early 2000s, Robert Kirkman was the newest hot commodity in the world of comics. He first got into the industry with a 2000’s indie comic called Battle Pope. 20-something-year-old-me thought Battle Pope was hilarious, because it featured the Pope as a cigar chomping, heavy drinking, womanizing superhero with Jesus as a sidekick. I remember buying a t-shirt of Battle Pope from my local comic shop which featured the explanation “Bring on the Whores!”. That was the level of comedy we were dealing with. The 2000s were an era of pushing the boundaries between comedy and what was offensive. It was all very one-note relying on being offensive for the sake of being funny. I don’t recall it having much commentary to it, but I digress.
Kirkman later published a few hits through Image Comics. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about Invincible and The Walking Dead. If you found my little corner of the internet, you are familiar with these properties, I’m sure.
This led to some work at Marvel Comics, giving Kirkman the opportunity to work on various titles. It started off with an ill fated Sleepwalker series that only produced one issue that was shuffled on the very short lived Epic Comics revival. Kirkman later went on to some runs that were somewhat successful. But mostly, his early works at Marvel were short run series themselves. Notably a 3rd volume of Marvel Team-Up, starting the Marvel Zombies run of books, and the subject of this index, Irredeemable Ant-Man. He worked with Phil Hester, who previously worked with Kirkman on Marvel Team-Up.
The point of the series was to introduce a new Ant-Man who was entirely unlikable. Eric O’Grady was a cowardly SHIELD agent with no ethics, really stupid, and a pervert. His life gets turned upside-down when he ends up stealing the newest Ant-Man suit, which was being developed for military use.
Most of this series involves O’Grady using the suit to avoid fights, peep on women, and just be an overall scumbag. But it’s full of jokes, so you know, it’s all in good fun!
Let me level with you guys, this series sucks. I mean, as a premise, it’s hardly new ground being covered. The idea of Ant-Man as a superhero has been made the punchline of a joke countless times in the character’s 60 year history. Hank Pym, the original character, was frequently the butt of jokes from other writers, and was already an unlikable character for a lot of reasons. Creating a brand new character and making him even more unlikable and a joke as Hank Pym seems like beating a dead horse.
I write jokes for a living, so trust me when I say that this stuff isn’t funny. Not because it’s edgy, or offensive. Please, I could give a fuck about that kind of thing. The reason why it is bad is because it is all low hanging fruit. Meaning, these are all low brow jokes that don’t require any effort to make. They lean heavily into pop-culture references and slap-stick. It all feels like a watered down version of Deadpool, another character that — to me — is more annoying than funny. That’s kind of the issue here: It is very rare that a writer on a book like this is an actual comedian. Compare this to, say, Patton Oswalt’s MODOK: Head Games, the only Marvel book I can think of that was actually written by a comedian. Oswalt knows how to write jokes and it shows in that series. There is a world of difference.
This series is just…. bad. It’s not good and the only reason why I’m including it in my index is because my OCD will not allow me to not include it. Thankfully this turkey was canned after 12 issues, if for nothing else than the fact that I don’t have to write about it about as much as other books.
Still, that wasn’t the end of Eric O’Grady. After his book cancellation he was shipped off over to Avengers: The Initiative, then the Thunderbolts. With each new book he was shipped to, it was another case of diminishing returns until the character was finally killed off in a 2012 issue of Secret Avengers. He would later be replaced with a Life Model Decoy patterned after him and start operating under the name Black Ant. Incidentally, the character’s death and replacement with a LMD happened around the time that pre-production of the first Ant-Man MCU film started. I wouldn’t be some ridiculous contrivance to keep the character around but divorce him from the more problematic elements of Kirkman’s characterization. Particularly his propensity to spy on and gaslight women into sleeping with him. Can’t be a sex pest if you’re and android, I guess. Since then, the LMD O’Grady has been in buddies with the Taskmaster and hasn’t really had a central role in much of anything else as Marvel is focusing its energies on making Scott Lang the definitive Ant-Man. Which is fine by me, because Eric O’Grady sucks.
