Back in more prosaic territory, this week also sees Marvel making a curious bid to revive Ant-Man.

Ant-Man may be one of the founding Marvel concepts of the early sixties, but the reality is that he was never particularly successful.  Even Stan Lee jettisoned the concept pretty quickly.  But comic books breed nostalgia, and the Ant-Man concept still gets trotted out from time to time in the face of general indifference.  More to the point, there's a movie in the pipeline.  I can't begin to imagine why somebody bothered paying for the rights, bearing in mind that the shrinking hero is a stock idea.  But pay they did, and so Marvel may feel obliged to do something with the Ant-Man name.

The creators are Robert Kirkman and Phil Hester, and with their styles, it's no surprise to see them opting for comedy drama.  The high concept is that the new Ant-Man is a total bastard, and we're not meant to like him at all.  He's a low-level SHIELD grunt who stumbles upon the costume by accident, and embarks on a career of fighting muggers and chasing girls.  Which, at a push, might qualify as being a superhero.

It's certainly different - the book is bending over backwards to make us hate the lead character, who stabs his friends in the back, covers his arse, and generally does nothing whatsoever to earn our sympathy.  You can see where he's coming from, and I suppose it's just about possible to identify with him at times, but basically we're being alienated from the nominal hero.  I have no idea how you make that work in the long term, but it comes off reasonably well in this first issue, and I'm at least curious to see what Kirkman and Hester can do with the idea.

Much of the first issue consists of low-level SHIELD agents stumbling about their business in a state of hazy incompetence.  This is the Marvel Universe from the grunts' perspective.  You could argue that the issue makes SHIELD look like a total joke, but frankly, they've been a total joke for years and it's a bit late to be worrying about that now.  From the way they've been written, I imagine SHIELD being a bit like Paranoia - literally everyone is a double agent, and nobody is actually doing any proper work.  Except Sharon Carter, but she's not in this book.

An odd book, and I'm not sure where it goes in the long run.  But it's got something different, and at least for an initial arc, it may be on to something.

Rating: B+

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