Tales to Astonish #44
The Creature of From Kosmos!
Ant-Man returns home from a mission with a heavy heart because he has been thinking of his late wife, Maria Pym. The two had recently been married when they visited her native homeland of Hungary for their honeymoon. Since Maria’s father had a lot of political enemies, Hank was nervous about visiting her homeland. Although Maria assured her husband it would be safe, she was soon kidnapped by Russian agents. Hank tried to stop them but was knocked out. Later, at the American Embassy, Hank learned that his wife was murdered as a message to those who would speak out against the Russian government.[1] Hank vowed to catch whoever was responsible but only found himself needing to be bailed out of a Hungarian embassy. Inspired by one of his late wife’s sayings, “Go to the ants, thou sluggard.”, Hank devoted his life to the study of ants. This later led to the development of his shriking formula and later his desire to prevent injustices like his wife’s murder from happening again he became Ant-Man. However, now Hank finds that he is not doing enough to fight crime and begins contemplating enlisting a sidekick to help him.
Later, while working in his lab, Hank is interrupted by a visit by Vernon Van Dyne and his daughter Janet.[2] Hank is completely taken by the fact that Janet closely resembles his late wife. Janet also thinks to her herself attracted to Hank but wishes he was a man of action. Vernon has come to seek Pym’s aid with his new gamma-ray device that will allow him to contact intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Unfortunately, Vernon mistakes Pym’s distraction by her daughter as disinterest and soon leaves to carry on his experiments alone. That evening, Vernonr’s unintentionally uses his device to draw an alien creature to Earth. This massive creature explains that it is a criminal on its native world of Kosmos. Not wanting to be captured again, the fugitive alien destroys Vernonr’s invention and murders the scientist.[3] Seeing smoke coming from her father’s lab, Janet goes to check on him only to find him dead.
Unsure what to do next, Janet calls Pym for help. At first, he thinks this is some kind of prank until he receives a network of ants that confirm the truth. Changing into Ant-Man, Pym races to the Van Dyne estate where he has Janet show him the crime scene. Based on the evidence, Ant-Man correctly deduces that Vernon was killed by an alien creature. Learning this, Janet drops her school girl facade and demands justice for her father. He tells Janet to call FBI agent Lee Kearns and then go directly to Henry Pym’s lab. On his way out, Ant-Man notices that his ants won’t come near the Van Dyne house, this is because the alien creature uses formic acid, just as ants do, and the ants are reacting to it as though as a repellant.
When she arrives moments later, Hank confirms how serious she wants justice and reveals that he is actually Ant-Man and asks her to be his new crime-fighting partner. Hank works on giving her powers based on the wasp. He experiments on her so that she can grow antennae and wings when she shrinks down in size and soon the Wasp is born.
By this time, the Creature from Kosmos is threatening to destroy the George Washington Bridge. As Ant-Man and the Wasp head there to help the military, Janet admits that she is falling in love with Hank. He tells her to keep her feelings to herself as he still has not gotten over the loss of his wife, and only sought Janet to be his partner, not a lover. When the two arrive on the scene, Ant-Man’s ants still won’t act against the monster and the military’s weapons have no effect on it. The Wasp tries to attack the creature directly but soon gets caught in its hypnotic gaze and it takes all of her effort to pull herself away. Ant-Man then scolds her for acting alone but has come up with a way to stop the monster.
The pair return to Hank’s lab where he works on a formula that will neutralize the formic acid used by the Creature of Kosmos and loads them into some shotgun shells. Then with an army of ants, Ant-Man and the Wasp haul a shotgun and shells to the center of town where the Kosmosian is on a rampage. Ant-Man and the Wasp begin pumping the creature full of shotgun shells and the chemicals inside eventually cause the monster to dissipate into nothingness.[4] In the moment of victory, Ant-Man almost gives in to his emotions but composes himself.
When Ant-Man returns to his lab to report back to Lee Kearns, the FBI agent asks Pym to be his partner in fighting crime. Hank turns Lee down, saying that he has already found a new partner. This pleases Janet, who is now devoting her life to Hanks and vows to make him fall in love with her.
Recurring Characters
Ant-Man, the Wasp, Pilai, Vernon Van Dyne, Lee Kearns (voice), Maria Pym (flashback)
Continuity Notes
Maria’s death is told in a slightly different fashion in Avengers Origins: Ant-Man & The Wasp #1. In the original version of the story, her parents are referred to as former political prisoners whereas the modern retelling states that her father simply had political enemies. In the later telling, Maria is depicted as being shot in the head right in front of Hank. This is refuted in All-New All-Different Avengers #9, which supports the version above, which reveals that Maria was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Nadia, before her murder. Nadia will later surface in Free Comic Book Day: Civil War II #1. West Coast Avengers (vol. 2) #36 confirms that Maria was kidnapped by Russian operatives.
This story presents Henry Pym as meeting Werner Van Dyne and his daughter Janet for the first time here. However, Avengers Origins: Ant-Man & The Wasp #1 paints a different picture: In that telling, Werner was the head of a scientific organization that provided funding for research and development that denied to fund Pym’s size-changing experiments and that he and Janet started dating prior to his becoming Ant-Man, mostly because Janet wished to spite her father. See below.
The Creature of Kosmos is later identified as Pilar in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #5. Also, Avengers #379-381 reveals that Kosmos is a world that actually exists in another dimension. The Kosmosian dimension is also where mass is shunted or taken from whenever a size-changer (such as Ant-Man) uses his powers.
Although Pilar is seemingly destroyed here, the creature is later discovered to be alive as one of the many prisoners on the Stranger’s world as seen in Quasar #14. How this creature survived is unexplained.
Topical References
This story refers to Hungary as a communist nation. This is no longer the case as the country became a democracy in 1989.
Likewise, all Cold War references should be considered topical. Particularly references to Russia being the “Iron Curtain”.
Characters in this story are depicted using rotary phones to make telephone calls. This type of phone became obsolete in the 1980s when it was replaced by the touch-tone phone which is now in its death throes thanks to mobile phones.
Hank and Janet are depicted watching the news about the Kosmosian’s rampage on a black and white television.
Reconciling This Story with Later Retellings
A number of events in this story are told differently when it is revisited in Avengers Origins: Ant-Man & The Wasp #1. There are three major differences, they are:
In the retelling of events, Henry Pym was depicted as being present when his wife was murdered. This contradicts events, particularly the revelation in All-New All-Different Avengers #9 that Maria gave birth while in captivity. No official explanation has been provided. However, the account in Avengers Origins is told via Henry Pym having a nightmare. Since this was a dream sequence, it could be assumed that Pym dreamed about being present when in reality he was not.
The second contradiction is that Avengers Origins states that Henry Pym knew the Van Dyne’s prior to developing his Pym Particles. In fact, it depicts Vernon Van Dyne denying Pym funding and Janet starting to date him to spite her father. Even though Hank starts dating Janet earlier in this accounting, he is still reluctant to make things official or display emotions because he is still dealing with the grief of losing his wife. Again, no official explanation. However, one could assume that Vernon and Janet’s introduction in the story above was more for the benefit of the readers since this was their first appearance and not them introducing themselves to Pym for the first time. This seems plausible since the whole grieving widow part of Hank’s backstory was also dropped in this story apropos of nothing as well.
Lastly, Pilai is depicted as a mindless creature incapable of speaking when he appears in Avengers Origins. That story also replaced the shotgun scene with the Wasp using Hank’s neutralizer to destroy the monster on her own. He is also drawn differently, looking like something out of a Lovecraft story than whatever the fuck Don Heck was trying to scribble on the page back in 1963. I think we can assume that this was artistic license since the focus of the story was on Ant-Man and Wasp’s origins and not some random 60s alien creature that nobody gives a shit about. Obviously changing Pilai’s defeat where the Wasp defeated the creature on her own is to change the rather condescending way Ant-Man treats his so-called “partner” and mansplains everything. However, I’m not one of those fans who lazily excise things with retcons since that’s rarely really how Marvel works. Instead of eliminating one series of events, I would instead choose to combine them. My take is the moment where Janet uses her neutralizer to destroy the Kosmosian happens after they pumped him full of lead from the shotgun. One series of events is not mutually exclusive to the other in other words.
