GIANT-MAN #1 - #4

Note: AVENGERS #379 - 382 were published as "Double Features" with a GIANT-MAN limited series included as a "flipbook" within those issues. Here now is that GIANT-MAN saga...

"IT'S THEM AGAIN!!" | "THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING GIANT-MAN"
"ATTACK OF THE 50 FT JAN" | HANK THE GIANT KILLER"
Story by: George Pérez | Pencils by: Jeffrey Moore | Inks by : Tim Dzon
Colors by: Maryanne Lightle | Lettering by: Ellie deVille
Editor: Richard Ashford | Group Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: (Issue 1) Ant-Man arrives in Arizona to battle a group of gigantic rampaging ants. One of them is an ant he knows, named Nash. When his control helmet proves useless against the ants, Ant-Man grows to become Giant-Man and is forced to kill Nash. Meanwhile, Hank Pym's ex-wife, Janet van Dyne, speaks with her therapist about what she's been doing since she and Hank both left the West Coast Avengers. However as she describes Hank crashing a party to celebrate her return to the fashion industry, Jan passes out. Meanwhile, at a laboratory in Nevada called Project B.I.G., Hank is informed by his lab partner, Bill Foster, that more renegade insects are on the loose in New Mexico. Giant-Man heads out to battle them. He calls off a squadron of Air Force jets and engages the ants hand-to-hand. Bill sees this on a video monitor and leaves the lab to go help his friend. After Bill leaves the lab, Jan's therapist, Doctor Rossin, calls for Hank to tell him about Jan's condition.

(Issue 2) As Bill prepares to depart Project B.I.G., he is ambushed. Meanwhile, Giant-Man fights the monster insects in New Mexico. Despite Pym's warnings, the Air Force jets remain in the area and one pilot is killed by a huge grasshopper. Giant-Man defeats all the insects and passes out. Elsewhere, Bill awakens, in his Goliath costume, miniaturized in a spider web. Nearby, a miniaturized Captain Atlas and Doctor Minerva, accompanied by some Shi'ar troops, search for him. But Goliath is rescued by Scott Lang -- Ant-Man -- and then a moment later, Atlas and Minvera escape. Goliath explains to Ant-Man that Project B.I.G. is a habitat created by Hank Pym and himself to study the effects of Pym Particles on enlarged insects. The duo exits the habitat, but Bill is unable to return himself to normal size. Meanwhile, Hank is incarcerated by the Air Force -- while in California, Jan's therapist tries again to reach Hank, to report that Jan has spontaneously started growing.

(Issue 3) Hank Pym is interrogated by the Air Force's Colonel Manning and Doctor Honda, while Ant-Man studies Goliath, who is stuck at a miniature size. The phone rings and Ant-Man answers, but he passes out before Jan's therapist can explain what's happened in California, where Jan has grown to massive proportions and is on a confused rampage, searching for Hank. As Goliath shouts at Ant-Man, trying to wake him up, Tigra breaks into Project B.I.G. Meanwhile, Hank somehow senses Jan's predicament and begins to grow, so Colonel Manning sedates him. Captain America arrives, berates Manning, and then takes Hank. Back at Project B.I.G., Tigra breaks apart Hank's gigantic ant farm. Aboard a Quinjet, Cap tells Hank that Hawkeye has randomly grown to a huge size but his body has been unable to cope with his increased mass. In L.A., Vision tries to distract Jan until the Quinjet arrives. When it does, Giant-Man jumps out to confront his ex-wife. The pair stumbles into power cables, and their pain is somehow felt by Ant-Man, Goliath, Hawkeye, Tigra, and all the enlagred insects. Then, within Project B.I.G., a massive being called the Creature from Kosmos appears.

(Issue 4) Kosmosians rampage around the Earth, as Hank Pym realizes that they have all appeared in the vicinity of someone who had been exposed to Pym particles. He then heads out to battle a Kosmosian in Las Vegas. When Giant-Man gets the creature on the ropes, it attempts retreat through a portal, but Giant-Man follows. The pair winds up in the sub-atomic realm of Kosmos, where the Kosmosians have Erik Josten, formerly the size-shifting villain called Goliath, imprisoned. Josten explains that the Kosmosians have been using him for their incursions to Earth, and that Pym is not to blame for what has happened. Giant-Man uses a special device to wipe out the Kosmosians and return Josten and himself to Earth, where everyone affected by recent events soon recovers. In the end, Hank Pym and Jan van Dyne reconcile and go home together.

Continuity Notes: I have asbolutely no idea what Atlas and Minerva are doing in this story. They show up in the second issue, speaking crypitally about how Project B.I.G. jeopardizes the "master plan", then they leave. The final issue sees Giant-Man explaining that they were agents of the Kosmosians, and that their true purpose remains unknown. The Shi'ar warriors are apparently working with them out of a shared hatred of Hank Pym for shrinking them and forcing them to serve Kosmos, which I can accept to some extent, but the biggest issue for me is that, as you may recall, Atlas and Minvera died at the end of "Operation: Galactic Storm"! And while death is rarely permanent in the Marvel Universe, an explanation of how they survived their apparent disintegration would've been nice.*

In issue 3, Colonel Manning is informed that, by special presidential order, Captain America outranks him. It's unclear whether this is some special permanent status, or if it's specific to this situation -- but in any case, Cap is able to pull rank on Manning and spring Hank. However, this moment seems to run counter to the fairly recent "The Captain" storyline written by Gruenwald in Cap's solo title -- where Cap effectively resigned from government service (though his status as an operative in the U.S. armed forces had always been pretty nebulous since he was defrosted in the Silver Age).

There are a couple of footnotes in issue 4; the only such notes in this series: we're reminded that Janet van Dyne's father was killed by a creature from Kosmos in TALES TO ASONISH #44, and later it's stated that Erik Josten shrank into the Kosmos realm following a fight with Hawkeye in AVENGERS WEST COAST #92.

At the end of issue 4, Hank declares that due to whatever happened in the Kosmos realm, Pym Particles can no longer be used for growth, with the exceptions of himself and Bill Foster, due to the fact that Hank was the first person ever exposed to the particles, while Bill's body chemistry is unusual due to a blood transfusion he received from Spider-Woman (which cured him of cancer, a somewhat tasteless development I discussed when I looked at WEST COAST AVENGERS ANNUAL #3 as part of the "Evolutionary War" event several years ago). This status quo definitely didn't stay in place, though I don't know for how long it lasted.

At the end of the series, Erik Josten is back on Earth and comatose. However I seem to recall that early issues of THUNDERBOLTS featured Baron Zemo rescuing Josten from Kosmos when he recruited him to his new team. And since there's no way on Earth Kurt Busiek could make a continuity flub like that, I have to assume Josten gets sucked back into Kosmos at some point between this issue and the THUNDERBOLTS launch a few years later in 1997.

Assemble: No, but we're not counting these four issues anyway, since they were published as part of AVENGERS 379 - 382. Nothing this issue. ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 10 in 49 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: Something about this story just doesn't click for me. For certain, that's in part due to the artwork. Jeffrey Moore and Tim Dzon turn in what can charitably be called a passable effort for the majority of the series (though the work deteriorates throughout and looks downright amateurish by the final few pages of issue 4), so while I can follow what they're drawing for the most part, it's just really ugly.

But beyond that, George Pérez's story is kinda lame, too. Most of the series is told via journal entries from Hank Pym, early on there's a nonlinear narrative device employed which ceases after issue 2, and characters come and go randomly with little explanation -- Atlas and Minerva, for example, seem important until they vanish entirely after issue 2, while Jan's therapist and agent seem like maybe they're here for a reason until they turn out not to be.

And then there are all the words! I'm continually astounded when writers who got their starts as artists, like Pérez, cram story pages with box after balloon after box of text. You'd think these guys would have more sympathy for the artists and try not to clutter up their pictures so much! But Pérez has a lot he's trying to fit into this story, and I think that's part of the problem. If he'd drawn it himself, I doubt it would be an issue. Pérez is a master at filling pages with smaller panels as necessary. But leaving the work to someone like Jeffrey Moore means that Pérez probably needed another couple issues to let this story properly breathe -- but it's a four-part mini-series, so he's forced to do what he can in the space allotted.

As such, I can see why Marvel folded this into the AVENGERS title proper... while I'm certain they would've had no problem publishing it on its own a couple years earlier, during the glut years of the early nineties, at this point I think they were perhaps a bit more discerning about these things, and this series would not have sold well if it weren't attached to a few AVENGERS issues.

Next week we've got a fill-in story, but thankfully it will be our final such issue before Bob Harras and Mike Deodato return for the remainder of this retrospective.

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* Thanks to commentor Tim Roll-Pickering a while back, I learned that the Kree duo's survival was revealed in SILVER SURFER at some point after "Operation: Galactic Storm".**

** See how easy it was to footnote that, editor Richard Ashford??