Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Meals To Astonish, Tales to Astonish

Marvel Comics To Publish Meals To Astonish #1 In December

Marvel Comics is set to release "Meals To Astonish" #1 this December. What could this mysterious new title be about?

Published Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:55:05 -0500

Article Summary

Marvel announces Meals To Astonish #1 for December, sparking speculation about its mysterious content.
The title hints at a playful twist on the classic Tales To Astonish series that launched Ant-Man and Hulk.
Fans are guessing: Is it about Marvel heroes and food, like X-Men barbecues or Avengers shwarma?
History of Tales To Astonish explored, but the true nature of Meals To Astonish remains a mystery.

This is going to be a C. B. Cebulski thing, isn't it? Given his Eataku blog? Maybe, maybe not. But Meals To Astonish #1 has been scheduled for the first week of December, a stub with nothing to go with it, just a take on the Tales To Astonish comic that launched Ant-Man, and relaunched Hulk, back in the sixties. So what could it be? Something to do with Hell's Kitchen? An X-Men barbeque? Avengers take-out of shwarma? Not a clue…

: Meals To Astonish mockup

Tales to Astonish was published from January 1959 to March 1968, initially under Atlas Comics, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel, beginning as a science-fiction anthology. It contained science-fiction mystery/suspense stories credited as written to editor-in-chief Stan Lee and his brother, Larry Lieber, with artists including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, Don Heck and Paul Reinman, including the first appearance of Groot. One story, The Man in the Ant Hill, in 1962, introduced the character Hank Pym, who would be repurposed eight issues later as the superhero Ant-Man. As with much of Marvel, featuring superheroes as the Silver Age ramped up. Anthology stories continued to appear as backups until The Hulk, whose original series The Incredible Hulk had been canceled after a six-issue run in 1962, returned to star in his own feature when Tales to Astonish became a split book became a superhero "split book" in 1964, one story each of Giant-Man and one of the Hulk. Its final issue was #101, only for The Incredible Hulk to take over the series but keep the numbering with #102 in April 1968.

A second Tales To Astonish, reprinting Sub-Mariner stories, ran for 14 issues from December 1979 to January 1981. A 72-page one-shot special starring the Hulk, Namor, Ant-Man, and the Wasp in the story Loki's Dream by Peter David and John Estes was published in 1994. But that's Tales To Astonish… Meals To Astonish, I have no idea. Yet.

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