Playing The Trump Card
This month our heroes face the greatest threat known to humanity… bad music. Trago the Trumpeter (you can have that one for free Marvel) has sought out the ancient art of hypnotising music and plans to wield his terrible powers to steal and enslave New York, and then seek out vengeance against Ant-Man and The Wasp.
Well I’ll be damned. Lee and Huntley have managed to write a half decent story centered around hypnosis! The villains powers are explained, he travels to attain them then returns to wield his mystical music to pillage and plunder New York. The story moves quickly offering both of our heros plenty of time to shine both in action and sans costume. Janet and Hank are now almost officially a couple which is something of a development and we get a couple of scenes devoted to them just talking like actual human beings which is cool. The villain Trago was fairly forgettable but the source of his powers were well explained and he was certainly a threat. We also had something of a tragedy as Ant-Man’s trusty ant friend Korr made the ultimate sacrifice for his pint sized human friends. All of which is atypical of Marvel comics at the time which usually trade on triumph not loss.
The character art here is pretty wonderful. Don Heck has a real talent for detailed emotive faces, The Wasp in particular looks great here sharing a wonderful little panel with Ant-Man on page four that I think ranks up there in terms of small emotive panels thus far for Marvel. The cover art is nothing special, I will grant you that is one detailed hand but the composition of the scene and the background of it is a bit plain. The page one full page panel is better, both Ant-Man and The Wasp are wonderfully posed and Trago looms in the background eyes sparkling with hypnotic menace.
This is a solid Marvel comic, with plenty of character progression between our dashing heroic couple. I really dislike hypnosis I think it’s a lame power that Stan Lee had some sort of obsession with in 1963, but it’s written about as well as it could be here and is wielded smartly by the villain. This is worth your time, especially if you are a fan of the Wasp / Ant-Man relationship.
“Ah, Come On, Hank! Break Down And Be Human For Once! The World Won’t Come To An End If We Relax For A Few Minutes!
The Wasp
Our villain scores a low 1 out of 2 on the rouge gallery rating scale.
