8 Incredibly Ridiculous Things About Early Ant-Man Comics
4. Ant-Man Makes A Lot Of Misogynistic Comments
One of the surprisingly great things about Tales to Astonish is the fact that it established one of Marvel's first female superheroes. The Wasp debuted as Hank Pym's partner in Tales to Astonish #44 at the time when Marvel had just a few heroines to tout, much less one put on equal platform with a male character.
All that said, Ant-Man and Wasp comics were not some feminist beacon to strive for. Ant-Man was still the leader who knew what to do while Wasp was just a foolish socialite following along. Worse, Wasp's characterization often boiled down to cliché stereotypes about women being superficial and irrational.
And this wasn't just subtext. Ant-Man had no problem making sexist comments straight to Wasp's face. It's not like we can pretend to be too surprised by this. After all, this was the 1960s and sexist stereotypes were commonplace, but that doesn't make it easy to read. If anything it just reminds readers that comics has always been a very insular business and women's voices are often neglected.