My favourite character is the cop with the terrible attitude to gun safety. Like, "Well done, Ant-Man, you-" BLAM! "Guys, it looks like Ant-Man perished in his struggle!"
If TH-cam comment sections have taught me anything, it's that no matter what the topic there's always, ALWAYS an appropriate Simpsons reference to go along with it, lmao.
Actually, I think it's in his next appearance that Egghead unleashes an ant-eater on Ant-Man. Iirc, he just punches it away cause the whole "still have the strength of a regular sized man" thing. Then Egghead ends up the issue contemplating shooting himself with a revolver.
Considering Ant-Man's rogues' gallery contained communist gorillas from Berlin, a guy who picked the name Human Top and Madame X, a villain with the power of crossdressing, Elias Starr was at least using his head when he picked Egghead. They could have named him Hubert Dumpy in the mighty Marvel manner ;-)
@@thedirectorschair1054 Good old Peotor! And don't forget his boss the intangible communist or his fellow simians: a shape shifting baboon and a gorilla strong enough to give Thing a hard time. Weird, wild, wonderful stuff.
Communist gorilla. Oddly enough, in my country, the leftists peronists called the antileftists "gorillas". So, here in Argentina, it would be a weird combination
I cited this in my own post, but another Silver Age title abound with really, really bad villains was the early Iron Man stories in Tales of Suspense. They were hysterical.
@@robvangessel3766 I also remember Iron Man having rollers in his armour, at least in Secrets Wars storyline back in the eighties. Plenty of silly things in superhero comic books. Gladly, they became more sophisticated as the years passed by
On the topic of ant pheromones, did you know that the ant pheromone for "Oh god I'm being crushed to death, please dispose of my mangled corpse for the good of the colony" is close enough to the cat pheromone for "I like this place and have decided to add a smelly reminder to it in case I forget" that cats go absolutely crazy over stomped ants. This is actually what's in the majority of those scent sprays that companies sell to make cats less anxious about new homes.
And refreshingly literate. So much so, that I posted one Comics Tropes to Bill Maher (the insidious ChickTracts, religion in comics). Chris is an ace analyst. I love his "you caught me in the middle of..." openers.
RYAN, I agree with you! DC and Marvel, in addition to both being Superhero Comicbook Companies, they don't know when to leave well enough alone! For example, killing off people I like, keeping alive characters I don't like! Also, sometimes they publish a good comic. But as you read both DC and Marvel's reprint titles, you see how much they've lost over the years!
3:30 The entire idea of somebody picking up a chunk of a white dwarf star and hauling it to their car is so ludicrous it has me howling. For some idea of just how much your average white dwarf star weighs, a tea spoon of white dwarf material is stated to weigh as much as four billion tons, far exceeding the weight of Mount Everest. It's the kind of silliness in comic books that I dearly love.
I mean, when you got something as unearthly and amazing as a chunk of a fuckin star, you'd put all your physical strength in getting that shit in your ride lmao
Criminals: If we don't get rid of Ant-Man soon, we'll starve to death! Also criminals: We'll give you a $10,000 down payment to defeat Ant-Man! Also: Ray Palmer: We could solve world hunger by shrinking food!
@@DSan-kl2yc Both of you are relying on assumptions about how shrinking works (does shrunken food preserve mass? does it require the same amount of water, sunlight, and nutrients?). Also, the important part is the ability to enlarge shrunken items back to their original size. Finally, it probably would be more effective to shrink the hungry instead.
@@jamesdlin7 None of that matters, even if it did require the same energy and whatever it would just be easier to transport the same or more material. Besides the fact that shrinking actual people would have dangerously unforseen side effects and most wouldn't want to be I'd say.
I like the idea of the fundamental misunderstanding in Egghead's plan. Imagine some lunatic coming to you, offering to liberate you from the tyranical rule of someone who is just your buddy.
The problem with Ant Man is his size gesture from tiny Ant to Mouse size with no explanation. Atom had controls to do that. Doll man had a dog and toy planes to travel with. Riding an Ant would take a week to get places.
Gotta love how wacky they would get with some of this stuff. Whenever I see people complain about modern comics, I can't help but think of stories like these. Comics aren't always the highest tier of literature but if you don't take it all so seriously, it's still a fun experience. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to track down a copy of "All about Ants."
The early Silver Age is so full of these weird, quirky stories, I love it. A lot of Flash's encounters with his Rogues in this era always seem to head towards body horror if played straight
I love how weird and nonsensical the superhero origins were back in the day. Just some random scientist doing an oddly specific experiment that accidentally gives them superpowers, and instead of using this reality-breaking technology to revolutionize basically everything they just fight bank robbers.
In their defense, they usually claim that it was an accident, and therefor not reproducible, and sometimes the villains are still trying hard to reproduce it. Super-serum comes to mind, as well as some Hulk subplots.
@@andybaxter4442Yeah, it wouldn't be. But in the case of supersoldier serum, for instance, the case was that Erskine was the only one who knew how to develop the serum. I guess he knew the procedure and ingredients by heart and had no assistants in the process, otherwise they could have just watched his papers to replicate it.
"But how will it react on a human's mind?" Reminds me of Astro Guy/Atomic Guy from the King of The Monsters game; A brilliant scientist who made himself giant to fight the kaijus, only to find that his intellect isn't so sharp as a giant and eventually deteriorated into a mindless brute.
During a summer in the mid-80's, Hook's drugstore sold bags of 3 Marvel comics for less than the price of one new comic. I bought a bunch of bags and managed to collect the Egghead kidnaps Pym storyline in Avengers which is covered in this video. Am I the only one who felt the story of Pym building a weapon under the noses of his captors was a mirror of the Iron Man origin story?!?
You missed in the atoms origin that he did try to replicate the tech shrinking based on the water and lens and it doesn't work. It turned out that it's just his body's unique chemistry. So his tech wouldn't have worked on anyone else. Later(bronze age) he gets it to work on others and anything though.
there are too many hilarious parts of the vid to list...aMAZingly done!!!! the panel reading, the review of little details in each panel...im in tears and watching it again lol
If you mean "Egg Fu" from Wonderwoman, he was in ways a cultural stereotype, but that's not the same as racist. The traditional modes of dress of a region (and all countries have them) and other societal traits cannot be pointed at and called "racist", they exist (or once did) and are often visually interesting. People today aren't content and scapegoating everything and everyone with accusations of "racism" seems to ease their dissatisfaction.
Dude he’s a giant egg with a fu manchu mustache who speaks in broken engrinsh. I don’t think we need to Intellectualize it too much, its pretty racist my guy
Personally, I'm still pissed that they never explained why he even looked like an egg. Seriously, what's the reasoning behind it? Why is there a gigantic egg-shaped dictator? Why does everyone act like it's the most normal thing in the world?
So Egghead plan was spreading gossip 😆 Seeing these early comics really makes me appreciate how well they reworked Ant-Man for the movies, so it's more interesting. The art was really good though
He reminds me of the Wonder Woman Villian Egg Fu which is even more ridiculous. I looked him up thinking he was a carryover from the golden age, but he was created in 1965 by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru!
9:37 I’d like to think that the $10K figure was used because $10K sounds like a lot to the kids reading the book at the time but not very much to adults. So while the target audience, children, are like “Wow that’s a lotta money!” Adults can just chuckle because they know that Egghead actually isn’t very intelligent.
Meanwhile, I'll submit that the Anted one may have been a better bet as a bad guy than a good guy. Just look at that semi-classic film with John Goodman where the horror threat is "half man, half ant - MANT!"
Ray Palmer was clearly unconcerned about dying as he needed an excuse to get away from the abusive Jean Loring and Hank Pym was both still likely grieving over the death of his first wife while suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder. But Darrell Dane has no excuse!
What a perfectly good missed concept, DC had on their hands; 'Type-Righter, rights wrongs by throwing exploding miniature typewriters at villains'. Oh, well. At least they'd have winners down the line like the Human Cannonball and Priveteer.
If you did a series where you take a villians convoluted and silly plan and then proceed to dunk all over it like you did here....well, I'd be down. Video had me LOL-ing throughout.
Just as well Doll Man's pants shrunk as well, otherwise "awkward!"...... Ant Man: Proved himself to be a complete idiot - best line in the whole video 🤣.... I miss the good old days when major scientific break throughs could be done in your garage with a couple of test tubes and some funny coloured water which you would then refuse to share with the rest of the world 🤷🏾♂️ ......Thank you really enjoyed this video. Laughed my way through most of it 👍🏾
Most of the original Ant-Man run falls pretty flat for me. It gets a bit better once The Wasp comes into the picture, but even she starts to fall flat once her entire personality becomes referential to her attraction for Hank. A huge chunk of Ant-Man's original run in Tales to Astonish suffers from That's-Not-How-That-Works Syndrom
With drones now Dollman would be awesome. I liked him riding on a dog. I never understood why they switched Giant Man to that dull Goliath costume. Ant Man got to be a Big movie star while the Atom got stuck as a Small CW character and Doll Man is a C list Tiny part. Doll Man used to be Huge back in the day.
As someone who loves Ant-Man because of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, this coupled with your commentary was a treat. You do the comedy and critique mix quite well
Steve Gerber did a nice job with him on Giant-Sized Defenders # 4 (1975) and Mike Friedrich used him well in Marvel Feature # 5 ()1972). That's about it . . . .
Its funny when you reallize that ANTMAN powers will be better if he blowes the size of ants to gigantic proportion, rather than try to do it in minisized form.
The part with a nylon lasso, ie nylon being some amazing new thing at the time this was written that they talk about like we talk about carbon fiber... it makes me wonder if scientists simply hadn't yet discovered the pheromones ants use when this was written, or it was something that hadn't disseminated through the public yet. Because it feels like pretty common knowledge today, like it would be weird for anyone who isn't an idiot to not know that... it's probably something that is commonly taught in jr high science and wasn't back when the people who wrote these went to school, something like that... it doesn't take an entomologist to know that about ants, you know? edit: Oh wow, the part where he talks about ants not having primitive motives like greed or jealousy etc... lol, yeah, because they are far too primitive to have any emotions or even anything we might remotely describe as a consciousness, they are not far away from natural automatons. It takes quite a lot of neural evolution to reach the point where emotions even exist. Fish and reptiles have zero emotions, while they are creatures more on our scale with defined brains... but they are still missing a further huge step and brain structures. That's why Octopi are so awesome, because they have actually developed a real consciousness with emotion and intellect, yet via the invertebrate branch that has such a vast gulf between it and other creatures with consciousness or sapience like mammals and birds, and in a totally different form, with the brain spread out into many smaller sections throughout its body. We need an Octopus man, who would be like spiderman but would also have the brain structure of an octopus, and his thoughts would be mysterious and inscrutable to the human reader, but still fit with the story and his actions. That would be the best.
Ant Man was a fave of mine in the 1960's. Jack Kirby was a draw, of course. He and Steve Ditko were distinctive beyond anything DC, Carlton, or Gold Key might've presented. Part of Ant Man's appeal was the tech. He had a Human Cannonball thingy, a device that could shoot him to the vicinity of the criminal activity, and he would rendezvous with the winged ants. In that regard, he was like Aquaman, commanding his animal partners. I considered Hank Pym's descent into criminality the equivalent of Tony Stark's devolution due to alcoholism and acquisition of Stark Industries by Obadiah Stane in the 1970's. If I recall, Comic Tropes has done an excellent episode of Hank Pym physically assaulting his Mrs., Jan.
What is it with supervillains and eggs?? Egg-Fu, Egghead (DC), Egghead (Marvel), Dr. Robotnik a.k.a. Eggman, and so on. I suppose eggs are just a villainous item.
the ant smoothie joke actually concerned me, because it just feels like something that would happen in the more obscure depths of comic book history lol although, probably as a villain's origin
Egghead: creates device that communicates with ants! Decides to steal money instead of selling the idea, or hiring other ants to steal the Wentworth (whatever they're called) jewels
I have the man in the anthill comic and egghead's first appearance.My father gave them to my older brother and i got a hold of them.Even as a kid i thought those stories were silly but they were kinda fun.
Incredible Shrinking man was a 1957 movie. Both The Atom and Antman copied scenes from the movie Atom copied fighting a cat and Antman also called Giant man copied fighting a spider although in story with Giant man the spider became giant size. Antman also has part called The Wasp. DC's Baron Bug later used enlarged insects to Battle Dial H For hero including both ants and wasp. Dial H for Hero also became a Hornet man and in another story a Wasp Man.
Speaking of Golden Age, I loved your entries about 711 and Dynamite Thor (farting his way across land and ocean) . They were hysterical. When I look at reprints of Silver Age Ant-Man, I think of some of them as almost a Gldn Age throwback. Kirby's high points were magnificent, but let's face it, he had his campy moments too, as illustrated by Egghead (walking in from Dick Tracy?). Maybe because he was cranking out so many books, he sometimes threw a Hail Mary, facing deadlines. (Check out "Mister Doll" in Tales from Suspense #48, Iron Man!)
I love the snark on this video, Chris. My first exposure to Egghead was a Deadpool issue in which he kills cloned dead villains. I remember Deadpool doing a joke on the slogan "Incredible deadable EGGHEAD!" and Deadpool promptly kills him.
Egghead actually had several appearances where he was a serious villain. In The Defenders as the leader of The Emissaries Of Evil and an Avengers issue where he burned large cities with an orbiting satellite heat ray, he was portrayed as a legitimate threat ( and he had a super villain costume!).
"The government calls him Egghead? That's a _lawsuit_ buddy!" 🤣🤣 It's amazing how some of these late 50s/early 60s stories go, though. Between the Marvel Monsterbus set & all the MMW & Timely's Greatest, I have read some *weird* shit 😳 Makes me wonder, though, if there was an ant radio station... What music would they play?
I like how Egghead had to read several books and watch documentaries to reach “sticky paper stops bugs.”
There's a gel thing that you put next to ant paths, they'll eat it and take it to their anthill and they die in large quantities, impressive stuff
Sometimes the best ideas are the simpler ones.
He apparently didn't get that name from knowing things everyone and their grandma already knew.
Borax mixed with sugar best way to kill ants
He has no hair and nothing to live for, at least grant him this tiny victory
My favourite character is the cop with the terrible attitude to gun safety. Like, "Well done, Ant-Man, you-" BLAM! "Guys, it looks like Ant-Man perished in his struggle!"
EGGHEAD: "Help me, ants, and I will free you from Ant-Man!"
ANTS: "Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!"
If TH-cam comment sections have taught me anything, it's that no matter what the topic there's always, ALWAYS an appropriate Simpsons reference to go along with it, lmao.
Hah! Beat me to it! It’s the FIRST thing I thought of!!!
I get that refference! The Simpsons, Deep Space Homer.
Unrelated, but I'm really surprised Ant-Man has never had a villain associated with anteaters. It feels so natural, but nothing has ever come up
Actually, I think it's in his next appearance that Egghead unleashes an ant-eater on Ant-Man. Iirc, he just punches it away cause the whole "still have the strength of a regular sized man" thing. Then Egghead ends up the issue contemplating shooting himself with a revolver.
You could even call him Aardvark if you want a cool name
@@jorgecaballero6215 you know what, you're completely right, Egghead's Final Search. Totally forgot about it
I Remember a Show Called Atom Ant Where a Phantom Thief Named Fancy Fingers Finnegan Unleashed a Anteater to Attack Him.
Spider-Man has the Scorpion. Scorpions eat Spiders.
I've been betrayed by the ants before. They pretended not to know me at a party THEY invited me to and then laughed at me. They can be so cruel
🤣🤣🤣
The royal “They”.
I’m sorry to hear that man.. You need to find better ants.
This might just be schizophrenia sir. Please, take your medicine. There are no ants. There haven't been ants for years.
Sounds like a super villain Creation story to me
Considering Ant-Man's rogues' gallery contained communist gorillas from Berlin, a guy who picked the name Human Top and Madame X, a villain with the power of crossdressing, Elias Starr was at least using his head when he picked Egghead. They could have named him Hubert Dumpy in the mighty Marvel manner ;-)
I just read an early Fantastic Four comic which had an evil magnetic Orang Utan on the moon.
@@thedirectorschair1054 Good old Peotor! And don't forget his boss the intangible communist or his fellow simians: a shape shifting baboon and a gorilla strong enough to give Thing a hard time. Weird, wild, wonderful stuff.
Communist gorilla. Oddly enough, in my country, the leftists peronists called the antileftists "gorillas". So, here in Argentina, it would be a weird combination
I cited this in my own post, but another Silver Age title abound with really, really bad villains was the early Iron Man stories in Tales of Suspense. They were hysterical.
@@robvangessel3766 I also remember Iron Man having rollers in his armour, at least in Secrets Wars storyline back in the eighties. Plenty of silly things in superhero comic books. Gladly, they became more sophisticated as the years passed by
"You believe throwing dynamite is a martial art?"
"Hey, as long as it works"
Imagine what it inspired little kids to play with.
Dynamite Thor in a nutshell
And my friends thought I was crazy to play a character in our Champions TTRPG named "Collateral Damage Man."
@@tokenbastard4586 if it's a bad idea and it works, it's not a bad idea
I prefer to tie two sticks together and use TNT as nunchucks.
I always giggle when I see Kirby draw bald guys, all look like giant babies. Hilarious.
His villains all needed dental work.
His women all needed... work.
Also, Stan has admitted multiple times that he didn't know anything about science and would in fact just make stuff up.
Not like Batman's Egghead. That dude was awesome, and was played by Vincent Price!
Eggs-actly.
Teaming him with Olga and her Cossacks was the best.
@@johnnyplunkett8532 is that from the original TV series? Cuz I have the box-set here, but haven't watched it all. They are good fun :)
@@joedent3323 it was third season I think.
@@johnnyplunkett8532 nice! I'll Google that at get it on the DVD player tonight! Cheers for the info mate
:)
On the topic of ant pheromones, did you know that the ant pheromone for "Oh god I'm being crushed to death, please dispose of my mangled corpse for the good of the colony" is close enough to the cat pheromone for "I like this place and have decided to add a smelly reminder to it in case I forget" that cats go absolutely crazy over stomped ants.
This is actually what's in the majority of those scent sprays that companies sell to make cats less anxious about new homes.
That's actually quite fascinating.
The psychology of ants? "I think it all begin when I was a larva. I was never held as a pupa..."
Comic Tropes continues to be one of the best and most positive comic book channels. Really love your comedic videos of late, this one was a blast!
And refreshingly literate. So much so, that I posted one Comics Tropes to Bill Maher (the insidious ChickTracts, religion in comics). Chris is an ace analyst. I love his "you caught me in the middle of..." openers.
Also check out mr sunday movies video on egghead
RYAN, I agree with you! DC and Marvel, in addition to both being Superhero Comicbook Companies, they don't know when to leave well enough alone! For example, killing off people I like, keeping alive characters I don't like! Also, sometimes they publish a good comic. But as you read both DC and Marvel's reprint titles, you see how much they've lost over the years!
3:30
The entire idea of somebody picking up a chunk of a white dwarf star and hauling it to their car is so ludicrous it has me howling. For some idea of just how much your average white dwarf star weighs, a tea spoon of white dwarf material is stated to weigh as much as four billion tons, far exceeding the weight of Mount Everest.
It's the kind of silliness in comic books that I dearly love.
I mean, when you got something as unearthly and amazing as a chunk of a fuckin star, you'd put all your physical strength in getting that shit in your ride lmao
I still remember Egghead from the superhero squad where he was voiced by Newman from Seinfeld. Great fun! Great episode, sir!
SHS was the perfect piss-take of superhero cartoons.
He’s the voice I imagine for the comic. He probably could’ve actually been a good live action Egghead too.
To be fair, I would find a man throwing sticks of dynamite quite intimidating.
Criminals: If we don't get rid of Ant-Man soon, we'll starve to death!
Also criminals: We'll give you a $10,000 down payment to defeat Ant-Man!
Also:
Ray Palmer: We could solve world hunger by shrinking food!
I know right. 😁
To be fair shrinking stuff would lead to better transportation and thus less hunger
Palmer is right... Not only transportation. But you can grow more per field.
@@DSan-kl2yc Both of you are relying on assumptions about how shrinking works (does shrunken food preserve mass? does it require the same amount of water, sunlight, and nutrients?). Also, the important part is the ability to enlarge shrunken items back to their original size. Finally, it probably would be more effective to shrink the hungry instead.
@@jamesdlin7 None of that matters, even if it did require the same energy and whatever it would just be easier to transport the same or more material. Besides the fact that shrinking actual people would have dangerously unforseen side effects and most wouldn't want to be I'd say.
As nutty as this story is, there’s still a certain charm in it that (for me, at least!) makes up for the lack of sophistication.
Totally agree, it’s got such a lighthearted and simple premise that comes together perfectly with the artwork !
Actually...there IS a book called "All About Ants" by Larson & Larson...and it's an impressively robust and detailed myrmecological summary.
In another universe there’s a video entitled Egghead’s Embarrassing Enemy, Ant-Man.
I like the idea of the fundamental misunderstanding in Egghead's plan. Imagine some lunatic coming to you, offering to liberate you from the tyranical rule of someone who is just your buddy.
The problem with Ant Man is his size gesture from tiny Ant to Mouse size with no explanation. Atom had controls to do that. Doll man had a dog and toy planes to travel with. Riding an Ant would take a week to get places.
Gotta love how wacky they would get with some of this stuff. Whenever I see people complain about modern comics, I can't help but think of stories like these. Comics aren't always the highest tier of literature but if you don't take it all so seriously, it's still a fun experience. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to track down a copy of "All about Ants."
The early Silver Age is so full of these weird, quirky stories, I love it. A lot of Flash's encounters with his Rogues in this era always seem to head towards body horror if played straight
Government: Ray you have over extended your chair budget for the month
Ray: Dammit! :)
I love how weird and nonsensical the superhero origins were back in the day. Just some random scientist doing an oddly specific experiment that accidentally gives them superpowers, and instead of using this reality-breaking technology to revolutionize basically everything they just fight bank robbers.
In their defense, they usually claim that it was an accident, and therefor not reproducible, and sometimes the villains are still trying hard to reproduce it. Super-serum comes to mind, as well as some Hulk subplots.
@@jandrewmore If you can't reproduce it, then it's literally not science.
@@andybaxter4442Yeah, it wouldn't be. But in the case of supersoldier serum, for instance, the case was that Erskine was the only one who knew how to develop the serum. I guess he knew the procedure and ingredients by heart and had no assistants in the process, otherwise they could have just watched his papers to replicate it.
@@andybaxter4442 Nobody claimed that it was science.
@@andybaxter4442 yeah, more like "lab mistakes". But then happened a lot with other popular heroes tok like Spider-Man or the Flash
I just hit eggheads age, so if marvel says I need an anti-aging machine, I guess I will have to hold some scientific minds hostage until I get one.
"But how will it react on a human's mind?"
Reminds me of Astro Guy/Atomic Guy from the King of The Monsters game; A brilliant scientist who made himself giant to fight the kaijus, only to find that his intellect isn't so sharp as a giant and eventually deteriorated into a mindless brute.
During a summer in the mid-80's, Hook's drugstore sold bags of 3 Marvel comics for less than the price of one new comic. I bought a bunch of bags and managed to collect the Egghead kidnaps Pym storyline in Avengers which is covered in this video. Am I the only one who felt the story of Pym building a weapon under the noses of his captors was a mirror of the Iron Man origin story?!?
Imagine learning that ants were talking shit about you
The writing in these episodes cracks me up!
If Egghead isnt the main villain in Hawekeye we riot. We need a proper adaptation of this utter G.
You missed in the atoms origin that he did try to replicate the tech shrinking based on the water and lens and it doesn't work. It turned out that it's just his body's unique chemistry. So his tech wouldn't have worked on anyone else.
Later(bronze age) he gets it to work on others and anything though.
there are too many hilarious parts of the vid to list...aMAZingly done!!!! the panel reading, the review of little details in each panel...im in tears and watching it again lol
At least Egghead isn't a racist stereotype like DC's egg like villains.
If you mean "Egg Fu" from Wonderwoman, he was in ways a cultural stereotype, but that's not the same as racist. The traditional modes of dress of a region (and all countries have them) and other societal traits cannot be pointed at and called "racist", they exist (or once did) and are often visually interesting. People today aren't content and scapegoating everything and everyone with accusations of "racism" seems to ease their dissatisfaction.
Dude he’s a giant egg with a fu manchu mustache who speaks in broken engrinsh. I don’t think we need to Intellectualize it too much, its pretty racist my guy
Personally, I'm still pissed that they never explained why he even looked like an egg.
Seriously, what's the reasoning behind it? Why is there a gigantic egg-shaped dictator? Why does everyone act like it's the most normal thing in the world?
@@matteomastrodomenico1231 it wasn't meant to be taken seriously - its just a yoke.
@@joedent3323 Shame on you.
So Egghead plan was spreading gossip 😆
Seeing these early comics really makes me appreciate how well they reworked Ant-Man for the movies, so it's more interesting. The art was really good though
Tbf the Ant-Man we see in the movies isn't the same as this one, Scott Lang is relatively new in comics too, he's the 3rd or 4th Ant-Man
@@gusbabiski hes the second ant man. Hes been around since '79. There have been ant men after him though like Eric O'Grady (the irredeemable ant man)
@@plain3089 Eric is my second favorite Ant-Man after Hank Pym
@@wowisntitanamazinglyamazin9550 Isnt O'Grady the perverted AntMan that spied on his ex on the shower
@@jesusramirezromo2037 Yes otherwise he wouldn't be the Irredeemable Ant-Man. Still a very entertaining character
He reminds me of the Wonder Woman Villian Egg Fu which is even more ridiculous. I looked him up thinking he was a carryover from the golden age, but he was created in 1965 by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru!
To be fair Red China was a big deal back then.
9:37 I’d like to think that the $10K figure was used because $10K sounds like a lot to the kids reading the book at the time but not very much to adults. So while the target audience, children, are like “Wow that’s a lotta money!” Adults can just chuckle because they know that Egghead actually isn’t very intelligent.
Meanwhile, I'll submit that the Anted one may have been a better bet as a bad guy than a good guy. Just look at that semi-classic film with John Goodman where the horror threat is "half man, half ant - MANT!"
I’m surprised that Ant-Man biggest enemy isn’t a can of Raid
I don't know why Egghead didn't use an insecticide. The people who hired him didn't specify if they wanted Ant-Man dead or alive.
If Egghead exists in the MCU, then it wouldn't surprising if Will Ferrell gets the role since he played Megamind, hence the size of his BIG BRAIN.
He was in Ant-Man and the Wasp, played by Michael Cerveris
Yes its just SPOILERS.....
He died from an explosion along with his wife and his daughter became the Ghost in the MCU.
@@bryedtan I checked it out and I never noticed that when I first watched the film. Thanks for clearing that up.
He is in the Movie, just not as Egghead
Egghead in any villain teamup: WE'VE GOT TO KEEP OUR COMPOSURE!!!!!
Ray Palmer was clearly unconcerned about dying as he needed an excuse to get away from the abusive Jean Loring and Hank Pym was both still likely grieving over the death of his first wife while suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder. But Darrell Dane has no excuse!
You didn't have to show a gaint picture of a spider, ya know...
19:17 Eww, that's disgusting. Imagine being oily all over your body in a spandex outfit.
Oh I remember him from Marvel superhero squad, I watched that show a lot when I was a kid
What a perfectly good missed concept, DC had on their hands; 'Type-Righter, rights wrongs by throwing exploding miniature typewriters at villains'. Oh, well. At least they'd have winners down the line like the Human Cannonball and Priveteer.
If you did a series where you take a villians convoluted and silly plan and then proceed to dunk all over it like you did here....well, I'd be down. Video had me LOL-ing throughout.
This is easily my favorite episode you've ever done. Love it so much
Baron Zemo and Paste Pot Pete had stronger glue than fly paper but I guess he didn't know either of their phone numbers or addresses.
Just as well Doll Man's pants shrunk as well, otherwise "awkward!"...... Ant Man: Proved himself to be a complete idiot - best line in the whole video 🤣.... I miss the good old days when major scientific break throughs could be done in your garage with a couple of test tubes and some funny coloured water which you would then refuse to share with the rest of the world 🤷🏾♂️ ......Thank you really enjoyed this video. Laughed my way through most of it 👍🏾
Most of the original Ant-Man run falls pretty flat for me. It gets a bit better once The Wasp comes into the picture, but even she starts to fall flat once her entire personality becomes referential to her attraction for Hank. A huge chunk of Ant-Man's original run in Tales to Astonish suffers from That's-Not-How-That-Works Syndrom
Boy, Egg Head is one of the villains of all time.
I'm slightly suspicious that judo wouldn't be very effective against ants with their six legs and all that
Inspector Gadget wasn't created until later it was Ironman that had Jets in his boots which would work better than springs.
So close to 150k, man. Hoping your channel grows fast.
3:18 those bits of chair look like wood though, which would be organic
Egghead, wish they brought him back, maybe as a blank clone, but his character was intriguingly evil.
With drones now Dollman would be awesome. I liked him riding on a dog. I never understood why they switched Giant Man to that dull Goliath costume. Ant Man got to be a Big movie star while the Atom got stuck as a Small CW character and Doll Man is a C list Tiny part. Doll Man used to be Huge back in the day.
I know this guy from that one episode of Super Hero Squad, where he’s just as incompetent
wait the movies passed up on the chance to use Egg Head as an actual villain, dang he would have been fun
Did Ant Man accidentally step in someone else's flypaper so he designed those boots? This comic is hilarious
Awesome video. I’m so glad you’re doing weekly’s again. Your my Favorite channel on TH-cam
I like how Egghead reads books about ants and then gets it all wrong. In fact he invents ant biology.
I love that Kirby crackle background, nice touch
I always loved Gil Kane’s artwork. Prior to Byrne, Kane and Colan’s art were always instantly recognizable.
As someone who loves Ant-Man because of Earth's Mightiest Heroes,
this coupled with your commentary was a treat. You do the comedy and critique mix quite well
Steve Gerber did a nice job with him on Giant-Sized Defenders # 4 (1975) and Mike Friedrich used him well in Marvel Feature # 5 ()1972). That's about it . . . .
Its funny when you reallize that ANTMAN powers will be better if he blowes the size of ants to gigantic proportion, rather than try to do it in minisized form.
Another banger video! Content like this is why I became a patron last week.
Hahaha "I shall give you ONE SUGAR CUBE"
The part with a nylon lasso, ie nylon being some amazing new thing at the time this was written that they talk about like we talk about carbon fiber... it makes me wonder if scientists simply hadn't yet discovered the pheromones ants use when this was written, or it was something that hadn't disseminated through the public yet. Because it feels like pretty common knowledge today, like it would be weird for anyone who isn't an idiot to not know that... it's probably something that is commonly taught in jr high science and wasn't back when the people who wrote these went to school, something like that... it doesn't take an entomologist to know that about ants, you know?
edit: Oh wow, the part where he talks about ants not having primitive motives like greed or jealousy etc... lol, yeah, because they are far too primitive to have any emotions or even anything we might remotely describe as a consciousness, they are not far away from natural automatons. It takes quite a lot of neural evolution to reach the point where emotions even exist. Fish and reptiles have zero emotions, while they are creatures more on our scale with defined brains... but they are still missing a further huge step and brain structures. That's why Octopi are so awesome, because they have actually developed a real consciousness with emotion and intellect, yet via the invertebrate branch that has such a vast gulf between it and other creatures with consciousness or sapience like mammals and birds, and in a totally different form, with the brain spread out into many smaller sections throughout its body. We need an Octopus man, who would be like spiderman but would also have the brain structure of an octopus, and his thoughts would be mysterious and inscrutable to the human reader, but still fit with the story and his actions. That would be the best.
Ant Man was a fave of mine in the 1960's. Jack Kirby was a draw, of course. He and Steve Ditko were distinctive beyond anything DC, Carlton, or Gold Key might've presented.
Part of Ant Man's appeal was the tech. He had a Human Cannonball thingy, a device that could shoot him to the vicinity of the criminal activity, and he would rendezvous with the winged ants. In that regard, he was like Aquaman, commanding his animal partners.
I considered Hank Pym's descent into criminality the equivalent of Tony Stark's devolution due to alcoholism and acquisition of Stark Industries by Obadiah Stane in the 1970's.
If I recall, Comic Tropes has done an excellent episode of Hank Pym physically assaulting his Mrs., Jan.
What is it with supervillains and eggs??
Egg-Fu, Egghead (DC), Egghead (Marvel), Dr. Robotnik a.k.a. Eggman, and so on. I suppose eggs are just a villainous item.
Thanks for coming back. Depression is the one bitch we can slap in the mouth without regret. Keep keepin on.
I keep getting caught off-guard seeing you in my sub box, the more frequent uploads are awesome. Thanks for the great content!
I have forever had an exercise where I see some bald headed guy on TV and wonder if the head shape means he could easily play Egghead.
Jack Kirby could draw anything and make it interesting. Even the NFL.
The little bits of humor you interject into your script are great. Keep the vids coming!
Thank you for making a video about this. I was actually thinking about this the other day and I couldn’t remember if it was actually real or not.
Gold & Silver Age comics are like fever dreams 🤣
Chris, I love the Kirby-esque animated background
the ant smoothie joke actually concerned me, because it just feels like something that would happen in the more obscure depths of comic book history lol
although, probably as a villain's origin
Egghead: creates device that communicates with ants!
Decides to steal money instead of selling the idea, or hiring other ants to steal the Wentworth (whatever they're called) jewels
I have the man in the anthill comic and egghead's first appearance.My father gave them to my older brother and i got a hold of them.Even as a kid i thought those stories were silly but they were kinda fun.
Wonder Woman Battles Egg Fu that is much sillier looking than Egg head is a Giant egg shaped head with a mustache that lassos people.
I love when you cover goofy old comics and riff on them, great stuff, thanks for doing it
Great to have Comic Troupes back on a weekly basis! Love that you highlight not only great comics but also the ridiculous/fun as hell ones.
Your production value and scripting has skyrocket, man! Great stuff!
Incredible Shrinking man was a 1957 movie. Both The Atom and Antman copied scenes from the movie Atom copied fighting a cat and Antman also called Giant man copied fighting a spider although in story with Giant man the spider became giant size. Antman also has part called The Wasp. DC's Baron Bug later used enlarged insects to Battle Dial H For hero including both ants and wasp. Dial H for Hero also became a Hornet man and in another story a Wasp Man.
Hmm, if chairs are made of wood aren’t they organic the same way fruit are?
throwing sticks of dynamite may not be a super power, but it still would be effective lol
Well, at least Hank got to fight Egghead and not Egg Fu.
Speaking of Golden Age, I loved your entries about 711 and Dynamite Thor (farting his way across land and ocean) . They were hysterical. When I look at reprints of Silver Age Ant-Man, I think of some of them as almost a Gldn Age throwback. Kirby's high points were magnificent, but let's face it, he had his campy moments too, as illustrated by Egghead (walking in from Dick Tracy?). Maybe because he was cranking out so many books, he sometimes threw a Hail Mary, facing deadlines. (Check out "Mister Doll" in Tales from Suspense #48, Iron Man!)
That was Ditko, though . . . .
@@johnminehan1148 Ah, my bad. Yeah, I didn't notice that. All those guys had their highs and lows.
I love the snark on this video, Chris.
My first exposure to Egghead was a Deadpool issue in which he kills cloned dead villains. I remember Deadpool doing a joke on the slogan "Incredible deadable EGGHEAD!" and Deadpool promptly kills him.
Egghead actually had several appearances where he was a serious villain. In The Defenders as the leader of The Emissaries Of Evil and an Avengers issue where he burned large cities with an orbiting satellite heat ray, he was portrayed as a legitimate threat ( and he had a super villain costume!).
And had his niece's arm blown off by a bomb and had Yellowhacket framed as a criminal
Watching your intro in half speed makes it even more epic!
The only realistic thing about this is the policeman casually about with his gun drawn
The Atom (Al Pratt), 1940.
"The government calls him Egghead? That's a _lawsuit_ buddy!" 🤣🤣 It's amazing how some of these late 50s/early 60s stories go, though. Between the Marvel Monsterbus set & all the MMW & Timely's Greatest, I have read some *weird* shit 😳 Makes me wonder, though, if there was an ant radio station... What music would they play?
Adam and the Ants obvs : )
Yeah - " AntMusic " (oioioioi); unplug the jukebox / and do yourself a favour.
Alien Ant Farm
@@Trtevoorryu yes! Well done :D
Maybe its a Nickname or as a Insult.
Doofus though he is, at least Egghead has classy taste in cars.
Good old egghead, the greatest, most cleverest villain of them all