VisualFiction wrote:
So how many memories did it in fact erase? Sammy's memories are part of what gave him a criminal personality. Either he'll just become a crook again, or Hank robbed him of so many memories that he's hardly the same person anymore, which seems a violation of civil liberties. Maybe that's why Hank doesn't make this serum available to psychiatrists and correctional facilities.
Good point. I just hope Second-Story Sam still remembers the address of his apartment! (Between Henry Pym, Charles Xavier, and Dr. Strange wiping out villains' memories in every other issue, it's no wonder New York developed such a problem with the homeless…)

VisualFiction wrote:
Actually I think that reads as exquisitely sarcastic, as if Stan is scathingly taking Burgos to task for inserting the diagram into the middle of the action. The kids will read the caption as sincere, while adults can choose to hear a dripping frustrated scorn.
Yeah, that could very well be. Then again, the more I look at that panel, the more I think that Burgos actually had drawn it as an integral plot point. Maybe something along the lines of: By sheer luck, the plant had started growing its vital tap root directly in "lowest tunnel" of an anthill, and only this fact allowed Ant-Man to dislodge it by enlarging suddenly at that exact point. (Note that in the diagram, Ant-Man is drawn there in the "lowest tunnel" at the lower left). Now, this wouldn't have made any sense, obviously--so what if the root is in the lowest tunnel of an anthill?--and maybe that's why Stan rejected it (and inserted that potentially snotty caption).

Adamantno1 wrote:
This Giant-man story seems a lot more like a DC story to me than a Marvel one.
The cover is decidedly in DC's "What on Earth is going on here? Buy the book and find out"-style than Marvel's "This scene is REALLY cool, buy the book to see it play out"-style, the plot about a crook stumbling over the hero's costume and taking his role is something I'm sure DC has done many times, and the plant subplot is exactly the kind of stuff I'd expect to see over there.
Oh, nice analysis.That really nails it for me. Plus, if we read this as more of a "DC" story, that might increase the likelihood that Burgos really was creating a plot point involving some half-baked (but entertaining) pseudo-science about ant-hills. From my limited exposure to Silver Age DC comics, it seems they were doing that all the time. (My favorite example is from an early Green Lantern story, where the villain tries to defeat the hero by means of an "invisible infra-yellow" light. Now, I don't have a Ph.D. in optics, but wouldn't "infra-yellow" just be . . . orange? )

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