2 out of 5

Nick, you’re REALLY going to make me re-read my Spectacular Foes trades / issues to see if they’re as fun as I recall, aren’t you?  Because Ant-Man, so far, hasn’t been all that fun.  Normally I could make my “indie writer limited by the majors” observation, except Spectacular WAS on a major, wasn’t, and that’s where I, along with many others, first noted and dug Nick’s writing.  But maybe that was just a fortunate confluence of events (artist, timing), or just the right note that allowed Spencer to play to his strengths as a humorist without sacrificing plot.  Either way, this Ant-Man Annual – which is somewhat silly, given that it hasn’t been a full year’s worth of Ant-Man issues yet – reads exactly like the main series we’ve seen thus far: standard good-guy bad-guy stuff with some Scott Lang sarcasm thrown in.  I mean, maybe there is a bit of Major Publisher stuff at play here, since Ant-Man is a bit more of a controlled property than the third-stringers Spencer toyed with in Spectacular (especially since the series was timed to coincide with a movie…), and maybe that’s why these plots feel so inconsequential.  Even moreso in this Annual, which is usually the case with annuals, since they essentially act like extra-long one-shots that just have one or two panels that will contribute to an ongoing (and will be summed up in an editor’s note anyway).

Standard.  Uneventful.