The Magic Of Reading Comics Written In 1977!!

Hank, Jan and special guest Nighthawk have just stopped the Porcupine--yes, the Porcupine--from robbing one of Jan's fashion shows...

Oh, yeah!!



Man, that never got old!!

From the same issue...

"People beeper."

The Avengers--always keeping things topical!!

From Avengers #167 (1978)

Putting The Aggressive In Passive-Aggressive!!

There are some relationships that we should have been able to tell were doomed from Day 1.

Janet Van Dyne is late for a date with Hank. The Wasp is pursuing a thief who has robbed a jewelry store, and is trying to hide his loot in an abandoned sewer line.

Now, this is before Henry Pym developed her mechanical stingers, so Janet didn't really have a way t stop the guy. So she uses her moxie and gumption to come up with a fairly clever plan!

Whaddya know? It worked!! Good job, Jan.

You'd think her boyfriend/mentor would be pleased, but...

Holy. Shit.

Reminder--Hank fell in love with Jan because she resembled his dead wife (hi, Scott Summers!). And Jan tricked Hank into marrying her while he was having a mental breakdown and didn't even realize he was Hank Pym.

Healthy couple, am I right? Who could ever have foreseen trouble in paradise?!?

From Tales To Astonish #57 (1964)

Manic Hostess Monday--They're Real!! They're Really Real!!

Stunning revelation of the year:

Those Hostess ads are real!!

Or, rather, in the Marvel Universe, actual heroes did advertising for Hostess Fruit Pies and the like!!

I wonder if they took the form of faux comic book stories, as did the Hostess ads in our own boring reality. How much did the heroes make? Was Spider-Man able to cash his checks? What about the villains in the ads--were they paid?!? Or does the 616 have a "Son Of Sam" type law that prevented convicted crooks from profiting of the stories of their misdeeds? What about the ads starring DC heroes? Did they appear in this universe? If so, were they merely perceived as fictional characters hawking goods, like in our reality?

Sadly, Janet van Dyne never appeared in a Hostess ad in our world...

From The Unstoppable Wasp #7 (2017)

The Beast, Or Catherine Zeta-Jones?!? You Decide!!

You know that ridiculous cliche that every movie and TV show has to give us, of a hero or thief (or both) jumping/crawling/tumbling/bouncing their way through a laser detection grid?

Aside from the fact that no one in real life uses a system like that, it's also pretty ridiculous--I'm going to design a multimillion dollar security system, but I'm going to leave big enough gaps in it that a 6 foot tall guy could gymkata his way through it without tripping it?

Still, all cliches have their origin somewhere, and I've decided somewhat arbitrarily that the secret origin of the "acrobatting your way through an impossible gantlet of lasers" really began back in Avengers #137 (1975).

See, the Avengers are meeting in Yankee Stadium, to audition new recruits (the ballpark closed for renovations at the time...). Anyway, The Stranger show up, to pull a dickweed move [SPOILER ALERT: it wasn't really The Stranger]:

Hey, dopey alien--Yankee Stadium is a baseball field!

What a dummy. You know, Thor, you could have just stayed on the ground and thrown your hammer, clearing a path...

Tony Stark calling someone else a know-it-all is pretty rich...especially since:

Hey, double dummy, you could have just stayed on the ground and taken out a bunch of mines with your repulsor rays!! And, yeah, you were pretty stupid not to take the drifting into account, Mr. Maneuverability.

Next up?

Seriously, was this a meeting of the Great Lake Avengers, or what?

Well, let's let Dr. Henry McCoy settle matters, shall we?

And there you go.

So, you can keep all your tight-leather-catsuit-wearing females who somersault through an "impassable" laser array (although I do concede the visual appeal...).

Me, I'll take a blue-furred mutant working his way through a drifting flotilla of explosive hover-mines, every time.

(Don't get me wrong, though, I'll still watch Catherine Zeta-Jones crawling through them there lasers in Entrapment...I'm no dummy)

Hank Pym Has Always Been An Unstable Nut Job, Chapter XXVII

Jan has accidentally dropped a box of vacuum tubes that Henry Pym needs for his experiment:

Now, that seems a fairly mild rebuke to me, but it was enough to convince Jan that she should leave him, because soap opera:

And Hank's response? Completely normal and sane, not at all unstable...

So, Pym loses control of his size-changing, smashes up his home and accidentally electrocutes the hell out of himself.

Yeah, the guy has always been unstable...

From Tales To Astonish #64 (1965)

Attuma Is A Dumbass

Did you ever wonder why Atlantean warlord Attuma never succeeded in conquering anything?

Perhaps because he's rather stupid.

Exhibit A: He's just learned that there is a "surface world," and by gum, he's going to conquer it!

Ah, but first: the homework!

Well, the plane full of hu-mans he captures just happens to include one Janet Van Dyne, so we know what's going to happen, right?

And...

But beware, Hank Pym--TREACHERY!!

Whew!!

And then our titanic twosome proves why Atlanteans were never really a threat to us...

Attuma: none too bright!

And that master plan?

But...

And so, Attuma draws the only possible conclusion:

Yup, you've seen two who can do it, so they ALL can do it.

They don't grow 'em smart under the sea, do they?

[SPOILER ALERT: Attuma did return. Liar!]

From Tales To Astonish #64 (1965)