{"id":18245,"date":"2023-09-04T00:00:58","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T04:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=18245"},"modified":"2022-03-10T22:48:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T02:48:31","slug":"tales-to-astonish-57","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/09\/04\/tales-to-astonish-57\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales To Astonish 57"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s kinda weird how Spider-Man guest starring in other comics almost always set him up like a villain. This one vexed me for a long time. Not unlike my long battle with Strange Tales Annual 2, I would see it offered at a very affordable price on eBay, and then always manage to forget and miss the end of the auction. Unlike the annual, I did finally get one, though, obviously. Once again, that extremely awkward Kirby Spider-Man, now with yellow webs, even. Wacky blurb down at the bottom. Ant-Man has the surprising distinction of being the first Silver age Marvel hero, sort of. When they were still doing generic monster & sci fi books, Hank Pym appeared in \u201cThe Man In The Ant Hill\u201d in Tales to Astonish 27, shrinking down to experience a pretty 50s sci fi movie-type adventure. After The Fantastic Four brought superheroes back to Marvel, someone remembered that story and TtA 35 featured \u201cThe Return of The Ant-Man,\u201d now in a superhero costume. Long time love interest Janet Van Dyne became The Wasp. Try as they might, by adding Wasp or turning Hank into Giant-Man instead of Ant-Man, they could never really make a hit out of them, and they were relegated to being Avengers regulars for most of the rest of Marvel history. But at this point, they\u2019re still trying, so why not toss their teenage sensation in there to boost sales? This issue features a script by Stan Lee, pencils and almost certainly an uncredited plot by Dick Ayers and inks by Paul Reinman. We open on a pretty goofy splash of Giant-Man and Wasp both returning to normal size from their various unusual statures despite just hanging out in their place. What were they doing? Just wandering around enjoying being weird sizes? Hank says he has a surprise for Jan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We happen to be tuning in for the debut of Jan\u2019s \u201cWasp sting.\u201d Now it\u2019s time to see what passes for the archvillain around here. The FF have Doctor Doom, Thor has Loki, Spidey has Doc Ock and just met The Green Goblin, and so on. Giant-Man & The Wasp have\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Egghead. Not exactly one of the great. This team\u2019s rogues gallery isn\u2019t much to speak of. But Egghead\u2019s plan is in motion, so it\u2019s time for our hero to come into this tale\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A weird sequence. Spidey not having any real introduction or internal monologue or anything is pretty unusual, and obviously, no Spider Sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ayers isn\u2019t faring any better than Kirby with Spider-Man, yeesh. Spider-Man snags Jan in his web without really knowing what\u2019s going on. She relays this to Hank, who calls her \u201clittle fool\u201d (how romantic!) and rushes off to save her. He shows up saying Spider-Man better \u201crelease her,\u201d but as Spidey doesn\u2019t even know Jan is there, he\u2019s very confused, and it\u2019s time for Ye Olde Two Heroes Fight Over A Misunderstanding. Egghead is watching this through a \u201ccybernetically-activated viewer\u201d and loving it. He then calls in a tip about the fight to the cops, like news wouldn\u2019t get out on its own, and prepares to have his boys commit a crime while all attention is focused on the super battle. Spidey is having trouble getting ahold of Giant-Man since he can grow and shrink to dodge his attacks, and then the cops show pretty quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The two heroes get back after each other, and the cops call for reinforcements. That\u2019s Eggehead\u2019s cue, and he and his goons rush off to rob a payroll truck. That\u2019s it. They\u2019ve orchestrated a superhero battle and distracted all of New York\u2019s cops so they can rob a payroll truck. Doctor Doom, he is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jan\u2019s correct guess doesn\u2019t stop the fight, but then Giant-Man gets a signal from one of his ants about what\u2019s really going on, and they call a truce instantly and take off to stop Egghead, just like that. And so, the 3 heroes are soon at Egghead\u2019s hideout. Spider-Man webs the strong box they\u2019re unloading and yanks it away. The goons are about to open fire when Wasp stings them all. She even gets a whole page to show her stuff now that they\u2019re letting her be more of an actual superhero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stan responded to fan complaints and suggestions almost in real time in the early days. FF got a bunch of letters complaining that Sue was just a hostage all the time, and that lead to the development of her force field power and her being a more active part of the team. And we have something similar going on here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This goofy idea that Spider-Man and The Wasp don\u2019t like each other due to their \u201cnatural instincts\u201d would continue a surprisingly long time. Not terribly substantial, but as only Spider-Man\u2019s 16th appearance, still noteworthy. No disrespect to Dick Ayers, but this issue really highlights how Kirby and Ditko were on a whole other level compared to almost everybody else in comics. This was fine enough, Ayers told the story clearly and all, but the excitement that the 2 Marvel masterminds brought to the table was uniquely their own. The rest of this issue is a Wasp solo outing by Stan, Larry Leiber & the great Chic Stone, but that\u2019s outside our remit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s kinda weird how Spider-Man guest starring in other comics almost always set him up like a villain. This one vexed me for a long time. Not unlike my long battle with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1619,1620,1618,61,748,6,1617,62],"class_list":["post-18245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1960s","tag-dick-ayers","tag-egghead","tag-giant-man-2","tag-hank-pym","tag-paul-reinman","tag-stan-lee","tag-tales-to-astonish","tag-wasp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18261,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245\/revisions\/18261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}