Review by Frank Plowright
To celebrate Ant-Man’s 60th anniversary Al Ewing devised a clever acknowledging of the different people who’ve been Ant-Man over the years, via pastiche stories representing their periods of publication. They’re funny, occasionally silly, and note perfect in imitating the storytelling peculiarities. Recreating the artistic styles of each period is a calling card for the versatility of Tom Reilly.
Chapters featuring Hank Pym, Eric Grady and Scott Lang remain true to the personalities, and Ewing cleverly introduces the other two in passing during Hank Pym’s chapter. The original Ant-Man stories were far from Stan Lee’s greatest achievement, and Ewing highlights that via using some ridiculous villains surely never seen in the intervening years, yet his plot holds together and makes good use of single theme powers. There’s no revisionism here, pointing out how those discoveries might be put to better use, yet the tone avoids ridicule.
Eric Grady might be irredeemable, but only his Ant-Man stories were consistently good, and Ewing captures their spirit, while his Scott Lang is a little more generic. As it’s an anniversary Ewing doesn’t forget a couple of other people who were also briefly Ant-Man. The pastiche form of homage is smart, but to ensure there’s no misunderstanding, Ewing includes pages concerning a problem in the far future needing Ant-Man’s presence. That eventually becomes the focus, uniting four different Ant-Men in the far future dealing with a revised version of Hank’s greatest enemy.
Reilly’s art is joyful in whatever style, and imaginative when it comes to creating the futuristic aspects. In the end, however, it’s those aspects that result in too much technobabble in the final chapter diminishing the enjoyment slightly.
As if to prove how bad an Ant-Man story could be back in the day, Ant-iversary also includes a hokey 1962 story plotted by Stan Lee, drawn by Jack Kirby and scripted by Larry Lieber.
