Micronauts, Part 6

Micronauts #11 (November 1979) is pretty much the conclusion of the initial adventure, with #12 (December 1979) tying up a few loose ends and setting up future story arcs.

Which is fine, because Bill Mantlo's scripts and Michael Golden's art are all still meshing together to bring us an epic story set in a superbly constructed universe. I'll have to say it one more time--This series is one of the best examples of coherent and intriguing world-building I've ever run across in any fictional universe.

The Acroyears had defeated Karza's forces on their home planet, while Argon had led an apparently successful rebellion on Homeworld. But Karza is still in space with an overwhelming army at his command, holding Rann and Mari prisoner. Argon's forces have pretty much used up their weapons and resources, so are unable to fight back.

Karza had supposedly captured Rann to learn about the Enigma Force, but we now learn that this knowledge is buried in Rann's subconscious. Karza knows this, so holding him prisoner is really just a red herring--a distraction while Karza crushes the rebellion.

And Karza, despite the setbacks he's suffered over the last few issues, does seem to be unbeatable. He smacks down Agron in a hand-to-hand fight and is about to order his troops to slaughter everyone.

But then we finally learn what the Enigma Force is. The Shadow Priests--who had also rebelled against Karza--turn out to be different aspects of Rann, created and split off from him during his 1000 years in suspended animation while he explored the Microverse. 

The meta-physics behind all this are left a bit vague, but it's the sort of thing that makes perfect sense in the context of a Comic Book Universe and the super-science of the Microverse. It's a plot twist that does not at all seem like a cop-out or a dues ex machina because Mantlo has been careful to set up the background for all this gradually throughout the last 10 issues. It's another example of why I think this might be Mantlo's best work in a career full of incredibly fun storytelling.

All the aspects of Rann combine with him to form a powerful personification of the Enigma Force.

Another fight ensues, with Karza coming out on the losing end. He makes a last effort to simply destroy Homeworld (if he can't have it, by golly, nobody can), but the Acroyear fleet shows up in the nick of time to put a stop to that. Karza plunges into a bottomless pit to his apparent death.

And that brings the main story to a very satisfying conclusion. Micronauts #12 is an epilogue, with most of the action involving a formal duel between Acroyear and his traitorous brother Shaitan, which gives us some additional insights into Acroyear's character and ends with Shaitan's death.

We also get indications that Bug is still alive and there's a scene on Earth to give Ray and Steve Coffin a happy ending (a search of the Grand Comics Database doesn't have any future appearances by them other than in a What If?) and set up some future story lines set on Earth.

I do know that Shaitan and Karza are both later resurrected. Remember that I haven't read this particular issues before and the only other issues I have read are the ones I've reviewed in the past: HERE and HERE. I know I missed out on something cool by not getting this series during its original run. On the other hand, this story arc comes to a very satisfying and definite conclusion in regards to the bad guys. Without having read the later stories involving them, I admit to being a bit leery about them returning to life later on. It really is a very over-used trope in both Marvel and DC Comics. On the third hand, though, I trust Bill Mantlo to come up with a good concept for bringing them back. 

The series ran for 59 issues, so, like ROM Space Knight, it's unlikely my finances will allow me to collect the entire run and licencing issues will probably mean reprints are always unlikely. So I may review random issues that I happen to snatch up in the future, but for now we'll be leaving the Microverse behind.

Next week, we'll take a look at a 4-part Batman story from the Bronze Age.

Micronauts, Part 5

At the end of Micronauts #8, the heroes had wrapped up their business on Earth and headed back to the Microverse. This changes the feel of the series in a way--we go from what were relatively small-scale fights to epic space battles and world-wide rebellions. This works, though, as the story has effectively built up to these events.

In Micronauts #9 & 10 (September & October 1979), the Micronauts arrive on Spartak, the home of Acroyear. The Acroyears had been fighting for Baron Karza, but this was the result of a planet-wide "thought-washing." When Acroyear's rotten brother Shaitan failed to defeat the heroes on Earth, Karza sent him home and released the planet from his control, leaving the population very, very displeased with Shaitan.

This might seem a tactically unwise move--allowing a planet of kick-butt warriors to go from loyal minions to angry enemies. But Karza has already sent a fleet to Spartak large enough to destroy the Acroyears. This is actually an effective look at the pettiness and evil of Karza. He's essentially willing to commit genocide as part of an off-hand gesture to punish an underling who failed him.

But he has another motive as well. He knows the Micronauts are on Spartak. He wants to capture Rann alive to hopefully find out more about the Enigma Force (the power that the mysterious Time Traveller embodies or is a part of). Get rid of the Enigma Force, Karza figures, and nothing else can stand against him.

The Micronauts join in the defense of Spartak, but they are badly outnumbered. The good guys  are getting curb-stomped. Before long, Rann and Mari are both prisoners of Karza. Bug is presumed killed in action.

What is Acroyear, once again the leader of the Acroyears, doing while all this is going on? He's having a heartfelt conversation with the planet.

According to ancient legends, Spartak is actually a living being, pledged to help defend itself and the Acroyears in times of great need. This definitely qualifies. Acroyear wakes up the planet, which then starts tossing chunks of itself at the invaders.

The series has taken not just a more epic, but a much more brutal turn with this issues. This is not a criticism--everything that happens makes sense in context of the story. But bad stuff happens, especially when some of Karza's troops manage to land on Spartak and go on a killing spree, taking out women and children as well as enemy soldiers.

In the meantime, back on Homeworld, Prince Argon takes advantage of Karza being off-world and leads an open rebellion, attacking the body banks. With the Shadow Priests switching sides, they soon overwhelm the enemy troops.

As the good guys achieve victory on both Spartak and Homeworld, we get some more examples of how brutal life in the Microverse can be. Are you a snotty rich person who has oppressed and killed the poor to achieve immortality? Are you a murderous invader who has been slaughtering civilians on Spartak? Then don't expect much in the way of due process.

Michael Golden's art work gives the entire story an appropriately epic feel. And I must once again repeat what has become a standard refrain during my look at the Micronauts: Writer Bill Mantlo continues to give us sophisticated, complex world-building wrapped around a strong, well-constructed plot.

Next week, we'll jump from the Microverse to the 30th Century and visit with the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

Micronauts, Part 4

By the end of the 6th issue of The Micronauts, there was a ton of stuff going on. Good guy human Ray Coffin & bad guy human Phil Prometheus has fallen into the Prometheus Pit, transporting them to the microverse. But Ray had been grabbed by the enigmatic Time Traveler, while Phil goes nuts from the experience and is found by Baron Karza's forces.

The other major event in the Microverse happens when Prince Argon, who has been turned into a centaur as a part of Karza's genetic experiments, is rescued by the resistance.

And that's just in the Microverse. Back on Earth, Ray's son Steve and the Micronauts are hiding out in a cabin in the Everglades, trying to figure out their next move and make repairs on their ship.

That brings us to Micronauts #7 (July 1979), which places the series firmly in the mainstream Marvel Universe and continues to throw more back story and exposition at us.

I continue to be impressed with writer Bill Mantlo's skill at weaving in all this information amidst the action, keeping the necessary exposition interesting and never allowing it to slow the story down. I am tending to repeat myself with each installment of my Micronauts reviews, but it must be said again: Of  the various merchandise-based comic series that Marvel produced in the 1970s and 1980s, this series arguably gives us the most sophisticated and well-constructed world-building.

Also, my summary will not attempt to jump back and forth between the various plot lines, as the actual comic expertly does. Instead, I'll once again talk about each separately.

We get more back story about Rann and Biotron's 1000-year space journey. Events during that journey left them telepathically linked and gave Biotron human emotions. (Though Microbot also seems to have emotions, so go figure.)

Argon and the lady resistance leader named Slug contact a resistance cell and discover that Karza's Shadow Priests have been secretly working against the dictator. By the time we get to Micronauts #8, Argon is equipped with armor and ready to lead the resistance against Karza. That the Resistance had centaur-compatible armor available seems a bit odd, but artist Michael Golden makes it look cool.






Back on Earth, Steve and the Micronauts are attacked by Man-Thing, who reacts to the despair Steve is feeling over the supposed death of his dad. Steve, though, pulls himself together and shreds Man-Thing apart with the fan of a swamp buggy. Man-Thing can't be permanently killed this way, of course, but it at least gets the good guys out of a bad situation.

Jumping back in the Microverse, Karza realized he can get to Earth via the Prometheus Pit. By swapping his molecular structure with the insane Phil Prometheus, he'll be regular human-sized when he gets to our world. In the meantime, the Time Traveller gives Ray Coffin power and turns him into Captain Universe, giving him the task of saving the Earth from Karza.




Ray has a neat little character arc built into his transformation. He thinks of himself as an over-the-hill ex-astronaut and doesn't want to be a hero at all. But his world and (more importantly to him) his son are in danger, so he'll do what he has to do.

Karza arrives on Earth as a full-sized human and starts blasting stuff, delighted to have another world to conquer. Karza, by the way, was briefly seen a few issues ago with a centaur body. Now he has a completely human body again. I may have missed a reference to this, but his body-swapping doesn't seem to be explained. This might be a detail that Mantlo simply failed to explain properly--a minor point when compared to his otherwise meticulous plot construction.  His original toy could be combined with his steed Andromeda to form a centaur, so I suppose that (unlike the altered Argon), the centaur body is armor of some sort. There's a Micronauts wiki (because of course there is), but that only gives us one short paragraph about comic book Karza.

Karza curb-stomps the army. When the Micronauts show up, he begins curb-stomping them as well. Then Captain Universe appears and goes mano-a-mano with Karza. The dialogue during the fight makes a point of letting us know that Karza's power comes from usurping it from others, while Captain Universe is using powers freely given to him--this gives the hero a bit of an edge.

Rann, in the meantime, is sick of fighting defensively and comes up with a more proactive plan. The Micronauts will use the Prometheus Pit to return to their own universe. If Karza follows, he'll have to return to his regular size. If he stays on Earth, the Micronauts will seal the Pit behind them and trap him there.  I guess they are counting on Captain Universe winning the fight--otherwise, they are leaving Earth with a bit of a mess to clean up.

Karza guesses their plans and does indeed swap his molecular structure back with Phil Prometheus. That leaves an unconscious Prometheus back on Earth and all the main characters back in the Microverse. Ray loses his Captain Universe powers when they are no longer needed and he and Steve reconnect as father and son.







I'm still loving my first visit to this very first Micronauts story arc. Marvel had a lot of success of taking merchandise-driven titles and building strong characters and stories within them. G.I. Joe and Transformers (though both excellent titles) were often hurt a little by the necessity of adding more and more characters as the toy lines grew. Micronauts, ironically, probably benefited from the fact that the toy line never caught on to the same degree. It meant that Mantlo could concentrate on developing his original characters and perhaps have more freedom in building an interesting back story for them.

Next week: Turok and Andar usually hunt dinosaurs, but they suddenly have a chance to once again hunt buffalo.

The Micronauts, Part 3

At the close of The Micronauts #3, the main characters are on Earth and have chased off the bad guys who pursued them from the Microverse, but their ship was badly damaged and one of their number--Bug--was separated from them.

Micronauts #4 (April 1979) continues the saga in a fast-paced, expertly-plotted action tale. Bill Mantlo is one of my favorite writers--I think I've written before that it seems pretty much impossible for him to write something that isn't made of pure fun. Here is one of the best examples I've seen of how good he was at juggling different plot elements and characters over several locations and make sure we always understand what is going on.

The individual action sequences are sometimes drawn out over several pages, but rarely go on too long and mix in important character moments and bits of humor with the action. Often, modern comic books draw stories out far to long to make them fit into a trade paperback. Here, we have a story that could have conceivably been told in one issue, but it is stretched over three issues with good reason--allowing for character growth and action, as well as exposition regarding the complex sociopolitical issues of the Microverse. In a day when multi-issue events have become one of the worst aspects of superhero comics (and one of the things that eventually drove me away from them), it's interesting to run into a case from the "good 'ol days" when writers and editors saw that a multi-issue arc really was the right thing to do.






I won't try to jump back and forth between the various plot threads the way the story does. Instead, I'll just separate them out and discuss each individually.

Back on Homeworld in the Microverse, Baron Karza is still in control. We learn that his ability to give people new bodies (and effective immortality) when needed--the thing that convinced the populace to put him in charge--is mostly available only to the rich. There is still a resistance movement, run by a lady known as Slug, who manages to get captured on purpose and use this as an opportunity to bust out Prince Argon from the dungeons. Argon has been experimented on by Karza and is now a centaur, but the actually helps he and Slug make a getaway. Karza later on appears as a centaur himself, as do his bodyguards, so he was apparently experimenting on Argon in preparation to doing the same thing to himself.

Back on Earth, Ray Coffin has taken his son Steve and the remains of Microverse ships & aliens to NASA. Ray is a former astronaut and wants to show all this to a former colleague named Phil Prometheus. Phil works at the Human Engineering Life Laboratories (H.E.L.L.) which is a bit of foreshadowing that Ray unwisely ignores. Bug has sneaked along in hopes of figuring out a way to obtain or build a ship. The other Micronauts track him there and sneak in as well.

Unfortunately for the Coffins, Phil Prometheus now lives in Crazy Town. He is part cyborg after an accident on a space station, his security guards are robots (so the rest of NASA doesn't know what's going on in his lab), and he's built a dimensional tunnel that connects with the Microverse. He's obsessed with learning more about this other reality and he's willing to experiment on or abuse anyone to get more information.

When the Micronauts are spotted, this leads to a confused battle in which the little guys are fighting the security robot and perplexed NASA guards are fighting everyone. To save his son, Ray pulls Prometheus into the dimensional tunnel. Steve and the Micronauts make a getaway, though they have to disable a number of cop cars to do so.

Steve doesn't know if his dad is dead or trapped in the Microverse, but for the moment he and the Micronauts head for the Everglades to hide out at a fishing cabin his dad has used in the past. Ray Coffin and Prometheus, though, meet different fates after falling into the tunnel. Ray is zapped away by the Time Traveler, the mysterious figure who helped the Micronauts escape to Earth. Prometheus is captured by Karza, who senses he may have found a new co-villain.

It's all great stuff. I continue to be impressed by Bill Mantlo's world-building here--it really is very sophisticated. Michael Golden's art is fun and gives an otherworldly aspect to the story when that is needed.








We'll return to the Micronauts in a few weeks. Next week, we'll jump back to 17th Century France and see what the DC Universe version of the Three Musketeers are up to.

The Micronauts, Part 2

The first issue (see last week's post) ended with Rann and his ragtag band of misfits flying through a rift that took them out of the microverse and into a whole new universe. Their ship--the Endeavor--crash lands on a planet and the Micronauts soon find they are in a very, very strange place.

The first issue had done an excellent job of world-building and setting up the story. With issues #2 & 3 (Feb. and March 1979) we get to the main premise of the series--the fugitive Micronauts, still pursued by the bad guys--are trapped on a world in which they are only a few inches tall.

This makes for some very fun action set-pieces. The storytelling remains fast-paced, but writer Bill Mantlo continues to work additional exposition and character development into that action.

An encounter with a dog and a teenager trying to mow the lawn give the Micronauts a frightening grasp of their situation. They're soon able to make friends with the teenager--named Steve Coffin--which helps them enormously with Prince Shaitan shows up in a powerful battle cruiser and some supporting fighter craft.

We learn, by the way, that the melee weapons carried by the Micronauts are pretty powerful, allowing them to essentially turn a dog fight into a hand-to-hand battle.

The 3rd issue takes the battle to the air. In the confusion, Bug is left behind and poor Steve has to explain to his dad about the carnage from the battle littering the backyard. This actually sets up a future plot point. Steve's dad worked for NASA and when he finds the wreckage of a small but obviously real ship (complete with dead pilot), he realizes that this is something that needs to be studied.

Meanwhile, the battle ends up over a skateboarding park, causing humans to dodge out of the way as Shaitan and the Mirconauts go at it. Shaiton lost all his support craft in the backyard battle, but his main ship can separate into six separate components. The Endeavor is outgunned, so while Biotron flies, Mari and Microtron fire the ship's guns and Rann and Acroyear fly out to fight independently. They manage to shoot down most of the components, forcing Shaitan to warp out with what little is left of his ship.

But the Endeavor is too damaged to leave Earth. The Micronauts decide to return to the backyard and find Bug.

I continue to enjoy this series enormously. The characters (both good guys and bad guys) are all interesting and the action is well-choreographed and exciting. Last week, I expressed regret that I didn't read this series during its original run. But perhaps that's just as well. I'm having a lot of fun reading it for the first time now.

Next week, we take a break from the Micronauts and jump over to the DC Universe, where Green Lantern and Green Arrow will be forced to team up with an arch-enemy.

The Micronauts, Part 1

cover-dated January 1979

I did not read The Micronauts during their original run. In fact, it wasn't until within the last few years that I happened upon some back issues and read it at all. Because Marvel doesn't own the rights to the toy line any more, we're not likely to ever see reprints.

Other licensed titles--such as The Transformers and G.I. Joe--were eventually reprinted by other companies. But these titles had little or no interaction with the regular Marvel Universe. Micronauts, along with ROM Space Knight, were tossed right into Marvel Earth and so often interacted with superheroes. I'm presuming that this means allowing another company to reprint them would be verboten.






Anyway, I learned that the first 12 issues of  The Micronauts make up what has been described by fans as an epic space opera. Combine this with being written by Bill Mantlo (who regularly produced strong, fun stories) and with Marvel's success in constructing strong, coherent universes for toy lines, and I decided to search out affordable copies via Ebay.

I've just read the first three issues and I could not be more impressed with the quality of the world-building that Mantlo and artist Michael Golden achieve. The story picks up in a sub-atomic universe on the world of Homeworld, inhabited by a human-looking species. (And I'm just going to be referring to them as humans from now on.)

The planet's ruling class has been overthrown, with only Princess Mari and her brother Argon escaping. We soon learn that pretty much the entire population has turned against them. Not because they were bad rulers, but because a scientist now known as Baron Karza has found a way to regenerate cells and guarantee immortality. All he wants in exchange for this is complete sovereignty over the entire planet.

Heck, over the entire microverse. His soldiers are from another nearby planet ruled by Prince Shaitan. The former ruler of that planet, Acroyear, is currently a prisoner on Homeworld, along with an insectoid alien simply known as Bug.

Prince Argon is soon captured and taken to Karza's Body Bank for to be experimented on. In the meantime, an astronaut named Rann returns to Homeworld after a 1000-year-long exploration of the microverse. Rann was telepathically controlling his ship while in suspended animation, accompanied by a robot named Biotron. As soon as he lands, Karza has him zapped unconscious and tossed into a dungeon.

This is a lot of information, isn't it? But it's all expertly presented to us, with the exposition mixed in with the action so that the story always moves along at a strong pace. I like Golden's art throughout--his style gives the setting a subtle alien feel, always reminding us that this isn't Earth. Character designs, while based on the toy line of course, are given more detail and personality.

Anyway, the main protagonists (which also include another robot) meet in a sort-of gladiator ring, fighting a whopping big tank. With the help of a mysterious being who calls himself "Time Traveler," they manage to wreck the tank. They run for Rann's ship and flee the planet. Time Traveler tears a rift in a space wall that normally marks the borders of the microverse, allowing them to literally escape to another universe. But the rift in the wall is still there, allowing Prince Shaitan to pursue them in a powerful battle cruiser.

 It's a great first issue. We are given the necessary information needed to grasp a complicated back-story, helped along by a character summary that's also included. (That's what I've posted at the top of this entry.) The various characters are given distinct personalities, with Rann and his crew hitting just the right "Ragtag Team of Misfits" vibe to make them fun. It is a fine example of skilled world-building, perhaps the most sophisticated of all the various universes Marvel built out of toy lines and other licensed properties. The balance between dealing with some dark social/political themes AND keeping the overall adventurous feel of the book high is remarkable.

Next week, we'll look at the 2nd and 3rd issues, which brings the action to Earth. Then, every two or three weeks, we'll continue to go through issues 4-12, probably in three-issue batches. I'll space them out like that so that anyone not interested in tiny aliens visiting Earth won't have to wait too long for something else to come along. Though, really, if you aren't interested in tiny aliens visiting Earth, then I don't know what can be done about you anyways.

Toys Running Wild in the Toy Store

Micronauts Annual #2 (1980) is made of pure fun.

The plot is simple. The Micronauts are in their ship, flying over New York City, when Acroyear is struck by a severe headache and compelled to fly down into the city and then into Macy's Department Story. This is because a mad scientist has inserted a special chip into a new line of Micronaut action figures and is using a beam to activate and control them. A side effect of this is causing Acroyear to go bonkers--it later affects some of the other living Micronauts as well. The other Micronauts pursue Acroyear into the store.

This leads to a rough-and-tumble fight between real Micronauts and fake Micronauts, with some time out to deal with the mad scientist as well. (The villain, by the way, turns out to be a half-cyborg scientist they had encountered before.)



I could go into more detail about the plot, but that would be senseless. It's mostly an excuse to let Steve Ditko go to town with showing us tiny warriors battling through a toy department and using what they find (checkers, frisbees, even a teddy bear) to help defeat the evil toys. It is indeed pure fun. In fact, trying to decide which panels to scan to share in this review nearly drove me as mad as the story's villain. There's not a single image that isn't engaging and lively.

Rich Buckler drew the first seven pages, with Ditko taking over for the rest of the issue. I think Ditko's style fits the half-goofy, half-serious Micornauts stories perfectly and his old skill at choreographing entertaining fight scenes is still evident. So when I say that the plot serves primarily as an excuse to set up the battle, I'm not being critical. The world would be a poorer place without a record of this particular bit of comic book mayhem.

The story is fun on another level as well--tacitly acknowledging that the characters are based on toys and making gentle fun of merchandising.

The writer was Bill Mantlo, a storyteller whose own sense of fun shows through in pretty much everything he wrote. He simply knew how to entertain his readers. Here, he combines humor (without ever going too far into slapstick) with non-stop action to give us 30 boisterous and enjoyable pages of great fantasy.

Next week, we'll watch the Fantastic Four fix history after the timeline is mucked up by...   their mailman?

Ant Man vs. Bug

I haven't researched  this, but I'm going to guess that it was the enormous and unexpected success of the Star Wars toys in the late 1970s that inspired toy companies to put out action figure lines with identifiable characters and back stories. G.I. Joe, for instance, had usually consisted of generic characters who could be dressed and armed in various ways. But then the Joe line was re-vamped, with figures that represented specific characters with specific biographies and skill sets. Thus we got Snake Eyes, Duke, Destro, Scarlet, Duke, Storm Shadow and scores of other good guys and bad guys.

Whatever the impetus for this trend, it meant that these toy lines were now fodder for coherent and potentially good storytelling. Marvel Comics, which first published Star Wars comics, also got hold of the license for several toy lines not based directly on movies. They did G.I. Joe, the Transformers, Rom: Space Knight and the Micronauts. Interestingly, Joe and the Transformers inhabited their own self-contained universes, whereas Rom and the Micronauts were tossed into the Marvel Universe. 

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There's no denying that this was very much a commercial venture, with profits for Marvel, Mego and Hasbro being the driving force behind it all. There's nothing wrong with making money, but this is not always a situation that promises good storytelling. It could have turned out to be a crass commercial venture without artistic value. But in this case, talented writers were given an opportunity to play with new characters and tell some fun stories. In fact, Bill Mantlo, who wrote Marvel's Micronauts series, convinced editor Jim Shooter to acquire the comic license for that particular toy line after Mantlo saw his son playing with them. He recognized a good opportunity when he saw it.

I didn't read the Micronauts when it first came out in 1979--I did jump aboard the G.I. Joe bandwagon a year or so later and also enjoyed Rom and the Transformers on a more irregular basis. But for me, the little visitors from a microverse somehow got lost in the shuffle. 

From what little research I have done (meaning I've read the Wikipedia entry on them), I gather the Micronauts were from a microscopic universe consisting of different planets or habitats linked together like a molecule chain. A motley crew of warriors from the different habitats band together to fight a tyrant. On a couple of occasions, their ship breaks through a dimensional barrier to reach Earth, where the Micronauts are just a few inches tall, and have a variety of adventures there.

I recently scored Micronauts #19 & 20 (July & August 1980) from the back issue bin. The Endeavor, the Miconauts' ship, has returned to Earth. One of the crew, an insectoid named Bug, scouts around but gets captured by a mad scientist named Odd John, who is mutating insects (making them a little larger, smarter and aggressive) to wipe out humanity because... well, because bullies made fun of his love for bugs when he was a kid. Nothing good ever comes of bullying, kids. 

Bug gets mutated as well and is soon leading a swarm of insects in an attack on a supermarket. In the meantime, the other Micronauts tangle with Odd John. They have a bit of trouble--the mad man's shotgun is an effective anti-space ship weapon when the space ship is really small. Also, his bugs do make an effective fighting force. But by the beginning of the second issue, they've subdued him. But their mind-controlled comrade and an army of nasty insects are still on a rampage.

Some non-mutated ants call out to Scott Lang for help. If you aren't up on Ant Man continuity, Scott was a guy who got hold of Hank Pym's original Ant Man costume and some shrink gas, taking over that identity. (I think Hank was Yellowjacket by this time.) He also arrives at the supermarket to help fight the bugs. 

What follows is an entertainingly choreographed fight that makes good use of the setting and the small size of the various opponents to give a unique flavor to the battle. It's also interesting that Ant Man and the Micronauts spend much of the battle fighting the evil insects without being aware of each other, making it an unplanned two-front war. 

In the end, Scott learns that the shrink gas he carries will reverse the mutation, thus returning Bug and the bugs to normal. That part is a little contrived, but the rest of the story is fun enough to forgive this.

I have to say that this story has wet my appetite for the Micronauts. There's a nice variety of characters aboard the Endeavor, both in terms of appearance and personality. The background is rich in potential stories, especially with various story arcs jumping between the microverse and Marvel Earth. And it's always a good sign when Bill Mantlo was the writer. His stories always had a sense of fun infused into them. 

Sadly, because Marvel no longer has the rights to the Micronauts (or Rom for that matter) we probably won't be seeing any trade paperback reprints of the series. That's a pity--I admit that though it is sometimes fun to own the original comics, I'm more interested in enjoying the stories and I'm perfectly happy with collected reprint editions that hand be those stories in one convenient package. 

Oh, well, there's still the back issue bins and Ebay. My back issue budget is small, but I'll probably snatch up some more Micronauts from time to time.