Tales to Astonish #36
The Challenge of Comrade X!
Henry Pym has made a name for himself as the heroic Ant-Man.[1] Now he is using his shrinking ability to crawl inside a time-locked bank vault and free a gang of crooks who locked themselves inside. After Ant-Man has forced open the lock tumblers from inside, the vault swings open, and the crooks are immediately taken into police custody.
Meanwhile, in Russia, a military official hears the latest news about Ant-Man in America. He sends for Comrade X, Russia’s best espionage agent. Comrade X is instructed to go to the United States to track down Ant-Man and steal his size-changing formula as it could be used by their armies to invade other countries. Comrade X accepts the assignment and begins making arrangements to enter the United States.
A few days later a woman appears at a police precinct afraid for her life. She asks the desk sergeant that she needs to get in contact with Ant-Man as a matter of life or death. Unfortunately, the police officers have no way of contacting the diminutive hero. Luckily, as the call goes out to find Ant-Man, there are ants around that pick up the messages and relay them back to Henry Pym. Learning of the situation, Pym decides to get involved and quickly changes into his Ant-Man costume and shrinks himself down to size. He then climbs into a the miniature catapult that he has built into the side of his home to fire him off to any part of the city. Launching himself into the air, Ant-Man summons a horde of ants to form at the landing site to cushion his fall.
He has arrived just as the woman seeking his aid is entering a cab. Hopping onto an ant, Ant-Man boards the taxi and stows himself inside the woman’s purse. He makes his presence known when the woman enters her apartment and asks her why she needs help. She tells him that she fell in love with a man a year ago while she was traveling abroad in Europe. He soon broke her heart and began seeing another woman. This man, she found out, was the notorious Russian spy known as Comrade X. Wanting revenge, she learned that her former lover was in the United States and wanted to find Ant-Man so the hero could capture him. Learning that Comrade X is hiding out at Pier 89. Ant-Man decides to go after Comrade X and heads to Pier 89.
Leading an army of ants, Ant-Man boards the ship that is docked at Pier 89. Despite their small size, their arrival is picked up by a hidden motion detector. Aboard the ship, Comrade X and his crew are alerted of Ant-Man’s presence on their ship. When Ant-Man and his army round a corner, Comrade X is there to trap them all inside a glass enclosure. In order to get free, Ant-Man summons more ants from the mainland. In order to get past the security triggers, these ants use small pieces of wood to float themselves over to the ship where they begin swarming the armed crew with painful insect bites. One of these guards ends up dropping his rifle on the enclosure, shattering it. Ant-Man then rushes across the deck and gets cover in a mouse hole. This leads to a cabin where one of the spies is monitoring radio equipment. With the help of his ants, Ant-Man climbs up to the ceiling and cuts loose a lamp that falls and knocks the spy out.
Briefly resuming normal size, Ant-Man then uses the radio equipment to alert the authorities. Resuming miniature size, Ant-Man then instructs his insect allies to lock the spies in their rooms while Ant-Man goes to confront Comrade X. The master spy has been waiting for Ant-Man and has prepared a spray gun with a toxic ant-killer. Before Comrade X can spray the tiny hero, the ants under his command quickly cover the lights in the room, plunging it into sudden darkness. While Comrade X is disorientated, Ant-Man ties the spy’s shoelaces together causing Comrade X to trip over his own feet. As it turns out Comrade X is wearing a life-like mask and when the ants pull it off the spy’s face, Ant-Man discovers that Comrade X is actually the woman who sent him to the pier in the first place.
However, Ant-Man already knew all about this because he discovered the mask and the equipment used to disguise her voice while wearing it when he was hiding in her purse. Soon, the police arrive on the scene and Ant-Man leaves Madame X in their care.
Recurring Characters
Ant-Man, Comrade X
Continuity Notes
A narrative footnote refers readers to the events of last issue for more on the origin of Ant-Man.
Topical References
There is a real hurry to get the crooks out of the bank vault because it is feared that they would suffocate. At the time this story was written, suffocating in a bank vault was a very real danger if you were trapped inside. Modern bank vaults have safety measures in place in the event that someone gets trapped inside, including oxygen supplies, alarms, and an emergency exit lever that can be pulled. So the idea of crooks getting trapped inside the vault and being at risk of immediate suffocation is not so much an issue anymore. One could assume that in a modern context, that the crooks intentionally locked themselves inside and were not at risk, but had to be freed to expedite their arrest.
This story has a plethora of Cold War references that should be considered topical. Specifically: All references to the Cold War, Russia is referred to as the USSR, the CCCP, and the “Iron Curtain”, the Russian government being referred and Nikita Kurshchiev being depicted as the leader of Russia.
Likewise, the Russian spies are depicted as using radio equipment that was commonly used in the 1960s here. This should be considered topical as well.
Another anachronism present is the fact that the radio room is lit by a lantern. This should be considered topical since modern ships no longer use lighting that requires combustible fuel as a power source.
Comrade X states that the chemical in his spray gun is DDT which is shorthand for Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. Due to the toxicity to humans, the chemical was banned in the United States in 1972 and a worldwide ban on use of this chemical was enacted in 2004. Readers can assume that Comrade X is using some other kind of poison since DDT is no longer so easy to come by.
