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Scott Lang, Nadia van Dyne and Burr (their many-angled, microscopic friend) have escaped harm — or have they? What’s with those negative images in Ant-Man and the Wasp #4? Is it good?
The Skinny
Have the Astonishing Ant-Man and the Unstoppable Wasp become living quarks, with opposite spins? Or worse — is one of them antimatter, set to annihilate the other?! One way to find out!
A heaping helping of semi-accurate comic book science later, and the pair is back to normal size, though there’s still something … off. Was this world constructed for them? And by whom? Will someone have to make a sacrifice to finally get home? Just keep growing and maybe you’ll make it!
The Lowdown
After shrinking more and more during the first three issues of Ant-Man and the Wasp, down to the size of the fundamental particles of the universe, the personality-crossed pair start to grow out of their problems in #4. But home isn’t what it should be — it’s better! Though isn’t it a little suspicious when Scott can actually make it in time for a Cassie birthday? That doesn’t fit the hard luck narrative!
It’s even weirder when Nadia meets … someone she’ll never have the chance to. Writer Mark Waid does a great job of portraying her nervous energy, keeping with her previous characterization, but it still feels like this moment should be, I don’t know, bigger? There is some definite vulnerability on display, but you’d expect some more raw emotion, too. Maybe that would be too heavy for a lighter book like this, in which case maybe the plot point shouldn’t be here at all?
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Javier Garrón does draw a creepy compendium of copies of this character, which is a little unsettling (but nicely impactful) for an “all ages” book. He’s good at creating both communicative facial expressions and far-out, trippy, impossible visuals in the micro and macro realms. Colorist Israel Silva does a knockout job of layering blues for the out-of-phase quarks/anti-matter depictions, and his bright superhero stuff is still rock solid.
The Upshot
Ant-Man and the Wasp #4 isn’t breaking any new ground, plot-wise or in the world of fictional science-babble, but it’s a decent enough look at the characters of Scott Lang and Nadia van Dyne, even if some of the emotional beats don’t quite ring true. The zaniness is turned up to 11 after our heroes go from tiny to unfathomably huge within the span of 20 pages, exactly how a book like this should go. There’s no telling what will happen next, which is a refreshing change from more predictable superhero comics.
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