Tales to Astonish 36

In this issue:

The Challenge of Comrade X!
13 pages :: Jack Kirby/Dick Ayers
reprinted in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics 1

I have a copy of this comic. As a Silver age marvel collector I just can't afford the old X-Men or Spiderman but the old Tales to Astonish can still be purchased for a song— maybe more like the price of a lapdance while a song is playing. I think this one cost me $20 in fair condition even though it is the third issue in the series. This may reflect the low quality of the story. Is Comrade X the bad guy who is really a woman or the bad guy who is wearing stilts and a padded suit? I don't quite recall. But I do remember that the old Tales to Astonish starring the Ant-Man lacked a certain literary charm. They developed well and I was picking them up and enjoying them everymonth by 1965, but the early ones were quite bad.

Ron, Comrade X was the woman. Next month's Protector was the one with the stilts.

It's funny to compare what Marvel did with Ant-Man to what DC did with the Atom around the same time. DC seems to have gotten a lot more of the “giant props” motif into their stories. Marvel was apparenlty unable to make much of a guy who was smaller than even the Atom normally was, and quickly turned him into Giant-Man.

Kirby said in an interview once that he was fascinated with Ant-Man but never got a chance to develop the character. I think given time Kirby would have been able to make something interesting out of the premise, although these early stories, while crude, have a simplistic charm of their own.

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