Crushing Krisis

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Ant-Man

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Ant-Man – every one of them!

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Today’s new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis covers one Marvel’s first Silver Age superheroes who was among the last to get his own ongoing series – and that series featured the third iteration of this hero…

Ant-Man & Giant-Man – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

This is one of the handful of Marvel guides that have been stymieing me for months now. I think you’ll soon understand why.

The original Ant-Man was Hank Pym, who debuted in a late-Atlas-era monstrous one-shot story in Tales to Astonish just as Marvel’s Silver Age superhero universe was gaining traction.

He was quickly brought back as a superhero (rather than a mad scientist) to anchor anthology stories in that title as well as to found the Avengers, though he was immediately super-sized in Giant-Man while Wasp held on to the miniaturizing powers of the couple.

Hank Pym would go on to be one of the Marvel characters to hold the most different superhero names in the course of his career – Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket – later he even took Janet’s name of The Wasp!

When Pym abandoned the Ant-Man name for good in the late 70s, Scott Lang took over. (There was a precedent for this – Pym’s lab assistant Bill Foster nabbed the Goliath name in 1975 when Pym and Hawkeye were through with it. He’s in the guide, too.) [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Ant-Man – every one of them!

Ant-Man & Giant-Man – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Sep 29 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Ant-Man and Giant-Man comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2026.

Ant-Man was one of Marvel’s first Silver Age superheroes and a founding member of The Avengers, although the character has taken a vastly different path than his enduring Silver Age compatriots Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk.

Scott Lang on the cover of his first solo series, Ant-Man (2015) #1 (textless variant)

Three different Marvel characters have worn the Ant-Man helm, and the only common thread between them is a slightly dubious set of ethics kept in check by their superhero mantles.

The original Ant-Man was Hank Pym, a scientific super-genius who discovered a means to shrink to the size of an ant and control his insect companions. He debuted in a one-off anthology story in Tales to Astonish in keeping with the pulpy sci-fi adventures that preceded the Silver Age in Marvel’s Atlas Era, but quickly made his return when he fit in with Marvel’s new Silver Age super-hero direction.

That made Hank Pym (and his smart and sassy assistant Janet Van Dyne) a perfect founding member for Marvel’s Justice League analog, The Avengers. One insect-size hero was enough, as Pym was quickly upgraded to be “Giant-Man” with the ability to grow super large (and tank for the team in the place of the quickly departed Hulk). Pym anchored the team for its first 16 issues while continuing in Tales to Astonish.

When he later returned to the Avengers, it was with the more hip name of “Goliath” but also in his capacity as a super scientist. It was in this phase that Pym invented Ultron (and, by extension, Vision). However, Pym was also increasingly capricious – frequently changing identities and coming and going from The Avengers.

After Pym abandoned both his Ant-Man and Giant-Man identities, other heroes carried them on. Hawkeye was the first to swipe the Goliath title while Pym was called Yellowjacket. Later, Pym’s assistant Bill Foster would become Black Goliath (and also occasionally Giant-Man).

Scott Lang, an engineer and former criminal, emerged as the second Ant-Man in 1979. He became the primary Ant-Man for a new generation of Bronze Age and Modern Age readers, who knew Hank Pym as an increasingly unreliable and egotistical mad scientist. Lang was never a full-time Avenger, but an occasional hero trying to make up for past wrongs while working for Stark Industries and raising his young daughter Cassie.

Lang would later join the Fantastic Four and become a Hero for Hire, but he never broke out as a solo star past a handful of features in Marvel Comics Presents. That made him a prime candidate to sacrifice to the meat-grinder of Brian Bendis’s Avengers Disassembled in 2005.

In Lang’s absence, another criminal took up the Ant-Man helmet. Eric O’Grady wasn’t much of a scientist, nor was he much of a superhero – he was more motivated by using his power to get out of trouble and harass women. His dubious morality saw him joining Norman Osborn during Dark Reign, but later get his chance of redemption via Steve Rogers in Secret Avengers.

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While Avengers vs. X-Men marked a major status quo shift in the Marvel Universe in 2012, a big change in Ant-Man happened alongside it. O’Grady was out (via the final arc of Secret Avengers) and Scott Lang was back (via Avengers: The Children’s Crusade). That allowed Lang to return front-and-center in Marvel Now as part of Matt Fraction’s replacement Fantastic Four in FF and in Jason Aaron’s Original Sin.

Scott Lang on the cover of Astonishing_Ant-Man (2015) #9

With a feature film on the way for this Scott Lang, who had never even had an entire story arc to himself, Ant-Man graduated to his second ongoing title (and Lang’s first) in 2015. It was quickly cut short by Secret Wars but restarted immediately after.

The present-day Scott Lang Ant-Man is virtually an all-different character from his early 1980s incarnation. He’s much less of a capable engineer and reliable father, and much more of the lovable screw-up portrayed by Paul Rudd in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. [Read more…] about Ant-Man & Giant-Man – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Marvel series still awaiting an omnibus from the Masterworks Era (1961 – 1980)

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This is the final post in our series time-traveling backwards through Marvel’s era of comic books to see what books would make fantastic omnibuses, and this is a big one – it’s what I’m calling “The Masterworks Era.”

After this post, you should have more than enough ammo to fill out your 2017 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, which is due by Sunday at midnight! I’ve suggested over a hundred possible votes!

What exactly is “The Masterworks Era,” aside from something I just made up? It refers to the period of comcis that Marvel has covered with their deluxe, standard-size hardcover Marvel Masterworks reprint line. The Silver Age portion of the line begins with Fantastic Four #1 in 1961.

The end is a little fuzzier. The Silver Age is understood to end in 1970-71, but with a handful of exceptions Marvel has already pushed past that point with every line of Masterworks collections. In fact, their newest two Masterworks lines are The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976), Spider-Woman (1978), and The Savage She-Hulk (1980)! 

Yes, that’s right – Masterworks now cover comics that began in the 1980s! That’s like when the oldies station of my youth started playing Madonna songs. Plus, the farthest outlier, Uncanny X-Men, has reached all the way up to issue #188 in 1984.

When it comes to classic Omnibuses, until this year Marvel followed a specific formula almost every time – one omnibus contained three Masterworks volumes. We’re now seeing them deviate from that formula with Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil,  and Thor, all of which contained more than the customary three volumes.

To figure out what comics are due for potential omnibuses to feature in this post, I had to first figure out both what has been covered by Masterworks volumes and what has been skipped! That’s not really a part of this discussion, but if you’re interested, I’ve shown my work.

A list of titles that are eligible for Masterworks treatment

How am I defining “due” here? It’s any superhero universe series that the Masterworks line has skipped entirely or any Masterworks line with three or more un-omnibused volumes.

Any comic with a Masterworks line that’s in-progress with only one or two volumes is not included: Ka-Zar, Luke Cage, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One, Not Brand Echh Vol. 1, Rarities Vol. 1, Rawhide Kid, She-Hulk, Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Woman.

I also didn’t include the one-and-done Masterworks volumes Champions and Deathlok as potential omnibuses, since the omnibus would be the same as the Masterworks!

Are you ready to travel back in time from 1980 to the beginning of Marvel’s Silver Age in 1961? Here we go! [Read more…] about Marvel series still awaiting an omnibus from the Masterworks Era (1961 – 1980)

20 Must-Read Marvel runs (that ought to be an omnibus) from 2012 to 2015

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Each year, a mysterious and intrepid comic book fan known only as Tigereyes reaches out to some of the biggest collected editions communities on the web to ask them a single question: What are the top 10 Marvel Omnibuses you’d most like to buy?

Thus, the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot was born.

While we only get to see the top 50 or so results of the survey each year, based on the number of voters it’s entirely possible that there are over ten times that many omnibuses nominated by voters. The long tail of the survey would make not only for interesting analysis, but terrific rainy-day reading.

To help inspire that long tail as well as your own rainy day reads, I’m covering dozens of Marvel runs that would make for terrific omnibuses. For the past four days I highlighted every potential missing X-Men omnibus from 1963 to 2015. Now, I’m going to stroll backwards through time to look at the rest of Marvel, starting with their newest comic runs released from 2012 to present.

The fact that these books aren’t currently omnibuses (and may never be) doesn’t have to stop you from sampling them – even if you’ve never read a comic before in your life! Each one is a terrific self-contained comic experience that can be enjoyed without any crossovers or companion series.

You can either pick up existing collections as outlined by Crushing Comics’s Guide to Collecting Marvel Comic Books, or just sign up for Marvel Unlimited, a Netflix-for-comics where 100% of the issues from today’s post are available to read on any device.

[Read more…] about 20 Must-Read Marvel runs (that ought to be an omnibus) from 2012 to 2015

Marvel introduced a black female Iron Man – is that a good thing? (Yes.)

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Today, Marvel and writer Brian Bendis broke the news via Time Magazine that at the end of the currently-running event “Civil War II” the mantle of Iron Man will be taken over by a 15-year old black MIT student named Riri Williams

(This IIM - 2016 - promois a major shocker, because the vast majority of fans assumed Riri’s introduction in the pages of Invincible Iron Man (visit the guide) – where she was reverse-engineering Tony Stark’s armor – was a set-up for her to take over the mantle of War Machine. Rhodey has become unavailable to carry that title due to the events of Civil War.)

Riri Williams as Iron Man is a very good thing. We do not have enough female heroes or heroes of color, and to see a that in a character who is both as she takes over the mantle of ostensibly Marvel’s most popular single hero outside of Spider-Man is a huge, visible step not only for Marvel comic readers, but for their film fans who this news will surely reach. To have Williams also be a female super-scientist when Marvel generally boasts only a handful is even more wonderful.

(The most prominent female geniuses of Marvel are Kitty Pryde, who is frequently shown to be nearly as genius as Beast; Valeria Richards, whose preternatural intelligence is partially attributed to super powers; the new Moon Girl; and Mockingbird, an oft-forgotten PhD) .

So Riri Williams as Iron Man is a good thing, right?

On the face of it, yes. Inclusion means representation. I love reading books about heroes that are women, and so does my daughter – also a girl of color.

However, there are some aspects of this character choice that have given some fans and critics pause, which I’d like to discuss here – three in particular. I’m very interested in your input. (Edited to add: Here is a post with similar critique from black writer Son of Baldwin, Here is another from black female nerd BlerdGurl.)

1. Minority legacy heroes are only useful until the original makes their return; then their marginalization can be worse than the average minority hero.

“Legacy Heroes” is a term applied to heroes that are the replacement or junior version to their original heroes. They are sometimes used by creators as an opportunity to change the gender or race of the character bearing the main mantle.. The easiest examples to give are from DC comics (Superboy, Batgirl, Wondergirl, etc), because Marvel simply isn’t known for this practice outside the past few years.

Let’s stick with Marvel, for the moment. For a brief time in the 1980s, Tony Stark could not serve as Iron Man and Rhodey Rhodes took over the title. Rhodey is the best possible example of a Legacy Hero – he was a dynamic, well-developed character long before he became Iron Man, and that means that he was able to continue to be featured even when Tony Stark returned.

Ms-Marvel - 2014 - 0004As War Machine, he’s lead his own title on many occasions (though they are usually short-lived) and he’s and been a significant character in both comics and now films (though he’s frequently sacrificed as a narrative reason to make Stark feel bad, as has happened twice this year alone).

His time as a Legacy Hero made him more visible, but after being Iron Man he didn’t stay an A-level hero. The white guy bumped him.

Another terrific example is the relatively new Ms. Marvel, the Pakastani-American Kamala Khan (visit the guide). Kamala is a wonderful analog to the original Spider-Man as a new, unsure hero, and Carol Danvers is very unlikely to ever retake her “Ms.” hero mantle now that she is officially Captain Marvel.

Her books sell ridiculous amounts of copies and have been nominated for Eisners. She’s now an Avenger. Things are going well … but we’re only in year two.

There are examples that don’t go as well. At the end of the comics version of the original Civil War, Captain America appears to die, and Bucky takes over the mantle as Cap (visit the guide). His days as Cap are amazing – great, layered storytelling. When Cap came back they shared the mantle for a while before Bucky was spun back to being Winter Soldier, at which point he began to sink back into obscurity – and he’s a white guy who stars in movies.

As with War Machine, he’s now a character Marvel needs to periodically kickstart into a new title or team only to watch him sink again.

Despite those concerns, check out the amazing list of Legacy Heroes Marvel is currently fielding: [Read more…] about Marvel introduced a black female Iron Man – is that a good thing? (Yes.)