Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: ant man, Comics, entertainment, film, george r r martin

What George R.R. Martin Actually Loved About Ant-Man

Published Fri, 31 Jul 2015 18:00:32 -0500

By Kevin Carter

Hey guys! So I was scrolling through my twitter and came across an article posted by IGN about George R. R. Martin's (author of Game of Thrones) thoughts on Ant-Man which premiered two weeks ago. First off, I was really surprised by the fact that George R. R. Martin loves and follows comics as much as he does. Now, maybe you guys already knew this, but I don't know much about the writer himself only that he does a great job of killing off every character you love in a book. So I visited Mr. Martin's blog just see what his thoughts were exactly, and I was completely caught off guard by his extensive knowledge of just Ant-Man alone. His post was titled "Me and Ant-Man".

[**Warning: There are mild spoilers for the Ant-Man film below!]

Apparently, George R. R. Martin was "disappointed" by the fact that Marvel decided to go with the Scott Lang story rather than the Hank Pym story from his youth. The Scott Lang story was developed just as his comic reading began to "fall off" so he didn't know the character as well as he knew Hank and Janet or "Ant-Man and his winsome Wasp" as he refers to the married heroes. Another thing I found that humbled me was the fact that Mr. Martin was there when the first issue of Tales to Astonish was ran. Think about it, George R. R. Martin probably bought the comic for $3 when he was younger and now it's being sold on eBay with offers well in excess of $1000.

He actually grew up with Ant-Man, he knows his arc as well as Stan Lee does. I mean, his very first "viewing" of Ant-Man was on a panel from a paperback comic book and just this month he saw this childhood hero come to life on the big screen, and what's more, he LOVED it! I can't really say I've ever loved an MCU movie and I like DCCU movies even less (except the Dark Knight trilogy, that one was pretty great) but for someone who was actually there to see Ant-Man brought to life on paper and then go on to see that same hero decades later come to life on the silver screen, that's amazing.

Another bit he wrote stated that he was tired of the endless "romantic tension card" used in so many comics over the years or even the whole "I have to hide my secret identity to protect the ones I love" scenario. He found the fact that Ant-Man and Wasp could be in a relationship, be in love, adventure together, and do all this without ever questioning anything refreshing. They even went on to help found the Avengers which happened to be "revolutionary", as Martin put it, in the 1960's. I can definitely understand his fatigue with the secret identity crisis, in comics these days it's a little archaic in my opinion. There are people who do enjoy the secret identity conflicting with the love life, and I can understand that too. It provides us as the readers the potential conflicts that could arise. But then I do agree with Martin as well, sometimes that whole issue gets in the way and can become a distraction.

Anyway, that's my bit for the day; I hope you guys enjoyed the read! If you want to take a look at G.R.R.M.'s personal blog, click here.

My name's Kevin and I am a new writer here at Bleeding Cool! Come follow me on twitter! @Kevincarter9

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