Ant-Man & Wasp: Small World

Ant-Man & Wasp (2011) #1-3

by Tim Seeley, Victor Olazaba (Illustrator), Val Staples (Illustrator)

Two of Marvel's smallest heroes must join forces and get over one BIG elephant-in-the-room! Eric O'Grady once STOLE the Ant-Man suit from Hank Pym. But now, Eric is the only one who knows about a secret AIM plot to steal Pym's greatest invention. Can the two men get along long enough to save the soul of the former GOLIATH, Bill Foster? Tim Seeley, creator of "Hack/Slash" brings us the big story of the two smallest Avengers.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Adventure, Superheroes, Mystery, Action

144 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2011

About the author

Tim Seeley is a comic book artist and writer known for his work on books such as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, The Dark Elf Trilogy, Batman Eternal and Grayson. He is also the co-creator of the Image Comics titles Hack/Slash[1] and Revival, as well as the Dark Horse titles, ExSanguine and Sundowners. He lives in Chicago.

Reviews

[Eva B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the one hand, Eric is really irritating. On the other hand, live without regrets 😭😭😭

I'm so tempted to up this rating because it's been weeks and I am literally still thinking about Hank making an artificial heaven for Bill oh my GOD it's such a great detail. Hank "fights alongside gods he doesn't believe in" Pym saying "I don't believe in god or heaven but I want my friend to have something after death" and then making it real--I love him so much it's actually insane.

Also it’s absolutely WILD to me that literally a day after one of my best friends said that she thinks Copacabana is one of “my songs” they have it playing in the background of a scene in this like WHAT ARE THE ODDS.

[Deepu Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and good read, I liked the artwork and storyline, looking forward to read more in this series.

[David Caldwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man and the current Wasp, and Eric O'Grady, the current Ant-Man, must team up to recover a powerful invention stolen by AIM. As a bonus, there are four of the original tales of the Ant-Man and the Wasp.

The main story is okay. The plot is good, the story flows nicely, and there is plenty of adventure. The problem is the two main characters. Henry "Hank" Pym is supposed to be grieving for Janet Van Dune, his former wife and the original Wasp. That is why he has taken on the mantle of the Wasp. He is also opening a center for abused women in her name (since he abused her as well). He is also trying to make up for the loss of his friend, Bill Foster. But, to me, he just came off as distant and cold.

Hank is still better than Eric though. The current Ant-Man took on the role when he stole the equipment. The reason he wants to be Ant-Man is to help him seduce women or to spy on them in the shower. He drinks too much, lies, will betray anyone at the drop of a hat, hangs out with known criminals, and is not that bright. I did not see a single characteristic that made me like him or care what happened to him.

When you don't care for the main characters, it makes it hard to care what happens in the story.

As for the backup stories, they had the problems that were so common to comics from that time. The villains were campy and tended to set up overly elaborate traps for the heroes. The heroes had inconsistencies, especially relating to their powers. Ant-Man does not fly so he propels himself by a catapult cannon. But then you see him turning and even hovering in midair at times. Most of the time, their shrinking actually makes it harder to catch the bad guy. Janet is called Janice at times. Just small things, but still they distract from the story.

If you are like me and was wanting to get caught up on Ant-Man before the movie, this is not the collection to read. Look for a collection with Scott Lang. That is the character that is Ant-Man in the movie. But if you just wanted Ant-Man in general, especially some very early tales, this collection is okay.

[Vicki Tsao · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW🤭😋😋😛😛😝😝😜🤩😎😇🙂🙃😉☺️😊😇

I love the book 📖 it was so awesome! I love avengers books 📚
Well... I love it!!😍 😘 🤩

[Vikas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains three stories for the main characters and then after the first issue, we have a small story where Black Panther is filling up DareDevil's place. And the main story is about the new Antman Eric O'Keefe. This world is full of dead superheroes. And as such A.I.M comes around to steal something amazing created by Hank Pym and the duo go to get their things back it's a virtual heaven created by Hank for Bill aka Giant-Man. It was nice when the bad guy or gal tried to recruit Hank. Oh yeah, I got to read this courtesy of Prime Reading, awesome. So let's go and borrow another graphic novel and keep on reading.

I have always loved comics, and I hope that I will always love them. Even though I grew up reading local Indian comics like Raj Comics or Diamond Comics or even Manoj Comics, now's the time to catch up on international and classic comics and Graphic novels. I am on my quest to read as many comics as I can. I Love comics to bits, may comics never leave my side. I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.

[Cale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eric O'Grady as Ant-Man grates against me on every page, so having him paired with Hank Pym didn't seem likely to go over well. But this short series takes advantage of his unpleasantness and paints him as the terrible person he is, even while throwing him into a decent adventure story with some good action and intriguing antagonists. O'Grady causes one of Pym's devices to get stolen, then teams up with Pym to get it back. It's a pretty slight story overall; even though it throws a surprising number of ideas and concepts into the mix, most exist only for plot purposes and get no fleshing out (which in the case of iHeaven comes as a bit of a let-down - it could have used a fourth issue to spend more time there, which would have done the series some good).
Overall the art is decent, the writing is wry and occasionally funny, but the impact of the story is pretty slight, and never quite gets around to treating our protagonists quite how they deserve to be treated (read: O'Grady doesn't take anywhere near enough punches). Definitely not something to go out of your way to read.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining story as Hank Pym teams up with the new jerk Ant Man to battle AIM. I'm familiar with Tim Seeley's work from Hack and Slash, and his art was very good here. Tigra looks sexier than ever, and with her always wearing that bikini Hank Pym gets props for being able to concentrate on his science. (Tim Seeley really needs to do a Tigra solo series.)

This isn't Watchmen type stuff but a fun superhero romp with sexy art and some humor thrown in as well. If you're looking for some sexy art and a fun story, this is it.

[mary johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terribly Surprised by the Great One Shot Story

These are the stories that I like, one good story in one book. It showed the contrast between Eric and Hank. And at the end gave A.I.M. a time 🔥 foot with the Punisher and crew. I hate that they didn't show that fight.

[Steven Eisenpreis · Rating 5 out of 5]

BIG THINGS COME IN small packages

Avengers Fans Assemble and enjoy a recent Marvel Masterwork! Great story and art and the characterization that have become Marvel trademarks combine to make SMALL WORLD a big package of entertainment EXCELSIOR!

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this with ComiXology Unlimited. A fun adventure. I had no idea Hank Pym was the Wasp. And this Ant-Man was Eric O'Grady, who was much more tolerable here than in other stories.

[Eddie Castlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good read

Best way to read conscious digital. Take time and join me. Helps get your mind of the crazy world we livein

[Darius Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read

Good read fast paced just like a good comic should be. Marvel comics are the best. .. .. .. ..

[Alex Sarll]

So far, hopes that superhero films might bring new readers to their source comics have tended only to work for indie stuff like The Boys, rather than Marvel or DC. Nevertheless, around any new MCU release, related comics tend to pop up on Amazon's Prime Reading for nowt, desperately hoping to work as a gateway drug. Which makes me wonder what the hell anyone picking this up after watching Quantumania, and previously unfamiliar with the comics, would make of it. If Ant-Man and the Wasp were Pym and Janet, rather than Scott and Hope, then fine; at least those are characters in the film who used to have those roles. But no, here we have the third Ant-Man, Eric O'Grady, of whom the films have very sensibly steered clear. A character who was always presented as a heel, albeit one who later stumbled into a redemption arc, but whose tendency to use his shrinking powers to spy on women in the shower plays a lot worse nowadays than it did even a decade ago. And as the Wasp: Hank Pym. Who, feeling that his previous handful of aliases were still insufficient, was at that point paying tribute to the temporary death of his wife by adopting her old identity, because that's a completely normal thing sane people do. The really weird thing is that at the time, the comics were playing this with almost a straight face, and this one more than most, so a character notorious for beating his wife gets to hold the moral high ground, ticking off O'Grady throughout a team-up he thinks he's too good for. Though admittedly it was O'Grady who occasioned the mess they're sorting out, after a character now better known as the Black Cat's charming rogue of a mentor used fnords* to implant a hijacker in O'Grady's subconscious who then proceeded to nick the story's MacGuffin for AIM. Said MacGuffin being the digital afterlife Pym built for another deceased size-changer, Bill Foster AKA (Black) Goliath. Which, again, at most other points since the eighties, would be an opportunity for some 'WTF, Henry?' material, but no, here it's apparently a lovely gesture on his part with only very minor questioning of whether making a copy of your dead mate's mind is actually doing him any kind of favour. An odd little series all round, and all the more so considered as part of an outreach programme.

*The funny thing is that despite this entire story relying on multiple flavours of 'science' which are particularly gimcrack even by the standards of superhero comics, it was mainly the bit with the fnords which had me spluttering 'But that's not how they work!'

[Devero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questo volumetto contiene la mini di 3 dedicata alla coppia in copertina, più altre cinque storie, le prime in cui nel lontano 1963 Wasp Janet Van Dyne appare al finaco di Ant-Man Henry Pym.
Personalmente ho gradito molto l'ironia implicita nella miniserie inedita in Italia, nonché la costruzione della storia, gli avversari del AIM con la Rappaccini in testa a tutti e il collegamento a quella vecchia storia della Marvel UK degli anni '90 pubblicata nella mini dell'allora rinnovato Death's Head, in Italia vista su Star Magazine.
Il personaggio di O'Grady, che non ho mai gradito e nemmeno sopportato, ne esce comunque decentemente. I disegni sono buoni, e stride parecchio la colorazione della mini moderna con le storie anni '60. Però rispetto ad altre colorazioni moderne, questa non è invadente o coprente i disegni, come a mascherare le magagne dell'artista.
Per tutti questi motivi ritengo che le 4 stelle siano poche, anche se forse 5 sono troppe.
4 e mezza sarebbe più giusto.

[Ann DVine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ant-Man & Wasp is a team-up between two pint-sized superheroes who just can't get along, as they literally steal back (sort of) heaven from the nefarious A.I.M.

Hank Pym, a scientist who has taken on more superhero names than I think almost anyone in the Marvel multiverse, is Wasp. Named after his dead wife, Janet Van Dyne, he takes up her mantle, and establishes a center for women's health and domestic abuse prevention, in her name - to do the good he never did as Ant-Man. Eric O'Grady stole the Ant-Man suit from Hank Pym, and becoming Ant-Man, became an Avenger. When O'Grady unwittingly allows A.I.M. to steal "iHeaven," a virtual heaven for the "souls" of those who have passed, he and Pym, as Ant-Man and Wasp, must sneak in and steal it back, for the sake of Pym's dead friend, Bill Foster (aka Goliath), whose "soul" is located inside the device.

I wasn't expecting huge things from this three-issue limited series, but nontheless, this is a supremely disappointing read. Seeley's script in particular comes off as forced, with the humour almost pathetic in its insistence on being memetic in nature; references to playing the Nintendo Wii, iDevices, and internet prank sensation, the RickRoll, are all in here, and they're all absolutely mindnumbing. Even when the book attempts its hands at surrealist humour, it feels stiff, unnatural, and almost dull - a resigned, listful surrealism that fails to capture any kind of convincing unreality vital for its tone to succeed. For a comic so devoted to throwing jokes the reader's way, none of them being particularly clever or funny is a huge misstep.

As a team-up, it's sort of frustrating, too; it pegs itself as "Marvel's odd couple," but both of our protagonists are sort of just different flavours of unlikable jerk. Eric O'Grady is a borderline alcoholic, misogynistic, woman-abusing asshole. Hank Pym is a reformed woman-abusing asshole, but he's an entirely different sort of insufferable - he's just kind of snobbish and bad-tempered. I found it very hard to sympathize with either hero, with one of the more ambiguous villains taking up center stage as the book's "heart," if there is one - who is cynically thrown away for the sake of a single gag, sadly. I do not like this Ant-Man, and I do not like this Wasp, and I would have thought, in a book about Ant-Man & Wasp, I would have felt a kinship with at least one of them. I understand, mind, that the point of Eric O'Grady is that he's a despicable human being, but that does nothing to warm me to him in any way.

Despite being short, plodding, and generally unsatisfying, some of the plot concepts are intriguing, the art is decent (if unspectacular), and some interesting character arcs and observations at least make sure this book is trying something special. I appreciate the scale-based fights utilizing creative arrangements of Pym particle-related powers, I love the insipid pseudo-science that makes no sense at all, and I appreciate the concept of a "Marvel's odd couple" - if it had been pulled off, that would have been fantastic. Sadly, it either had too little running time, or not enough ambition, or perhaps Seeley's usually quite edgy dialog becomes dry when put through the Marvel wringer. However it failed, I find it indeed failed, and it is certainly nothing close to as thrilling as it could have been. Nontheless, a lot of the conceptual fun shines through, seeing that the volume is far from totally irredeemable - in short, very rare bursts, it does threaten to be wholly entertaining (in particular, an extended gag in which the A.I.M. Supreme Scientist struggles to contain Pym in various, and numerous, interdimensional traps, with her, as he escapes one after the other with earned confidence, assuring him she has enough traps to last the duration of their conversation - I thought that was pretty neat).

Besides the core series, this collection features a bunch of old Ant-Man and Wasp stories by the legendary Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, featuring Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne as Ant-Man and Wasp, respectively. They are, as you'd expect, severely dated, and I can't bring myself to legitimately enjoy them, but they're always a pleasure to see, from a purely historical context. They pad out the collection nicely, and, as much as I find any silver age story unreadable that isn't British horror or sci-fi, their inclusion is more or less welcome. The collection isn't pricey, by any stretch, so I don't feel particularly duped that more than half of this volume is dedicated to "classic" Marvel - they're a curious glimpse into a genre-defining era, albeit an era that is far beyond its prime.

Overall, this three-issue team-up is merely okay. It's an acceptable read - it's a decent waste of time, but it won't blow any minds, and it's intensely annoying in some parts; grating humour and severely unlikable protagonists don't make for a particularly enthralling journey. But, it still provides decent Marvel action, cameos, and reference that should at least satiate those familiar with these characters. An admirable effort, but one that falls considerably short of quality graphic storytelling. What a pity.

[Edoardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simply, for fans

It's a volume that Pym fans can enjoy, not even that much. Great drawings, good story. But leave you a weird taste after all, like if is not complete or right. Still, with Prime is a pleasant lecture.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun but largely forgettable story from a period that no longer matters.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Second time reading about the irredeemable ant man. Still not a fan. Weird, cause I like the Boys. Just not a fan of it in Marvel?
Add that to Hank Pym as the Wasp? Sorry, that was just sad.

[Steve Bolt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbage

I am not a writer but I could make a much better comic than this piece of garbage. Super heroes that are asinine jerks!

[Ray Keane · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[Andrei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun romp with Ant-Man Eric O'Grady teaming up with original Ant-Man Hank Pym (now going by Wasp) to retrieve an item stolen by A.I.M. Eric is kind of a douche when he talks but doesn't go too over the top, so this makes for surprisingly enjoyable dialogues across each issue. The action itself isn't particularly memorable, but that's not really the point here, so just relax and enjoy the ride. The art is good, and as a bonus, Tigra appears in a few panels and is hot :)

[Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adequate and amusing, takes place during a transition time for Hank Pym, and reminds us that, for some reason, everyone who has worn an Ant-Man suit is egregiously flawed in some way, not just Eric O'Grady, who, while in a book not as well put together as Kirkman's "Irredeemable" stuff, is still a shitty human being. The Black Fox "fnord" stuff in this volume made me (internally) weep tears of joy, and the three-volume tale is fine, just not spectacular, moving both men further along their paths without much arc for either. The back-up reprints are awesome, but only in a nostalgic sort of way that celebrates how far comics have come in terms of characterization of Janet Van Dyne.

[Doctor Doom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the pre-super hero saga of Ant-man as well as they early super hero stuff in real time. Loved Ant-Man/Giant-man stuff from day one. When they turned him into a creep I basically quit liking the guy though I read the comics into the 1970s that he appeared in. Then I pick this up... Pym is the Wasp and some jerk is Ant-man? Meh. This is what we are left with when they ruin a good character [though I did enjoy the Marvel Zombies character as he reminded me of what Pym started as and could have been... if he wasn't a zombie, that is.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story was good, but not great. The focus on the Eric O'Grady version of Ant Man and one of the low points of Hank Pym [as a weird "tribute" to his late ex-wife, The Wasp] was one of the things that made this an awkward story. Another was that, frankly, O'Grady is just too annoying. He's just not a character I like.
On the other hand, this book included several short stories from the early days of Ant Man and the "real" Wasp, and those were a treat to read.

[Nicolas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ironically, this begins with Hank opening a series of centers for woman. It goes on to be one of the most sexist comics I've ever read. It's apparent in the art and the way the women are treated in the story.

Also, Eric is a terrible character.

We discussed this and more on the All the Books Show: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/ep...

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little team-up between the (then) current Ant-Man and the original Ant-Man. Not a fan of O'Grady's look during the mini, as his Irredeemable look was much more original and interesting. It would've been great to see the two working together more.

[Michael Laflamme · Rating 4 out of 5]

A LOT of fun.

This brings back a lot of memories about what made Marvel my comic book company, back in the day. Who says old folks can't do graphic novels? We like them too. It's great escapism and nostalgia too. Awesome!

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot better than I expected when I picked it up. I'd have rated it higher, but the four Silver Age stories always feel like the equivalent of slogging through thick mud...

[Terje Birkedal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main story is only 3 issues but it's a great read.

[Kris Ivy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Henry Pym as the Wasp with Eric O'Grady as Ant-Man. What is it to be a hero?