Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: ant man, syd shores

The Man in the Ant Hill Before Ant-Man in Mystic #57, Up for Auction

Before Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish' #27's "The Man in the Ant-Hill", there was "Trapped in the Ant-Hill" with artwork by Syd Shores.

As many serious Silver Age Marvel collectors will know, the debut of Ant-Man is unusual among the Marvel Silver Age superhero introductions in that the character was plucked out of relative obscurity from Tales to Astonish's weird science pre-hero era and transformed into a costumed superhero nine months later in an issue that hit newsstands in the same month that Spider-Man and Thor were introduced.  Stan Lee discussed why this happened in 1975's Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, saying, "In 1962 we published one such fantasy strip called 'The Man the Ant-Hill," about a fella named Henry Pym who shrunk down to the size of an ant, to his everlasting consternation and regret. We featured that story on the cover of Tales to Astonish #27, just as we had featured hundreds of other stories on the covers of hundreds of other magazines. We never suspected that it would be anything special in any way, and promptly forgot all about it. A short time later, when the sales figures were tabulated, we were amazed to find that the issue featuring "The Man in the Ant-Hill" had been one of our very best sellers for the entire year. Well, ain't no flies on Stan Lee! As soon as I learned that fateful fact, I decided there must have been something about Henry Pym and his rather unusual habit of shrinking to ant size that had appealed to the minions of Marveldom."

While the historical company mythology surrounding Marvel has often proven inaccurate, bringing a character or concept back because of a good sales is something that will usually ring true, absent other known factors.  The month before Hank Pym returned in Tales to Astonish #35, Marvel used a shrinking man theme similar to Tales to Astonish #27's "The Man in the Ant-Hill," with Tales of Suspense #32's "The Man in the Beehive."  While there's been plenty of discussion over the significance of this one over the decades, at baseline, it might reinforce the notion that Marvel thought they had something that worked in the shrinking man concept.

But before that, and almost five years before Tales to Astonish #27's "The Man in the Ant-Hill," there was Mystic #57's "Trapped in the Ant-Hill," about another blonde scientist who spills shrinking serum on his arm and winds up in an ant hill, before returning to normal human size in the end.  Of course, shrinking characters were hardly unheard of in comics at this point, not to mention in science fiction media in general.  It's possible that this story was inspired by the extensive publicity that the 1957 film release The Incredible Shrinking Man got throughout 1956, or the release of the Richard Matheson novel that same year, upon which the film is based.  And of course, there are plenty of other precedents.

Some of the similarities between "Trapped in the Ant Hill" and "The Man in the Ant Hill" nearly five years later put Mystic #57 firmly into Ant-Man prototype territory.  The story was drawn by Syd Shores, and the issue has a cover by Bill Everett, which is fantastic but not related to that story.  One of the lesser-known Marvel prototype issues, but interesting nonetheless, there's a Mystic #57 (Atlas, 1957) FN+ condition copy up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

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