Published: December, 1963
Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Steve Ditko
Letters: Sam Rosen
In 1967 The Jefferson Airplane, in their song White Rabbit, sang the lyrics, “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small,” referring to both the classic children’s book Alice In Wonderland, and the use of psychedelic drugs. But they might as well have been thinking of super-scientist Henry Pym, who has developed a series of serums and pills to make him ant-sized, cause his partner to shrink and sprout wings like a Wasp, and now he’s developed a pill that makes him a giant.
We got our first glimpse at Giant-Man in Tales to Astonish #49, and again in Avengers #2. I guess it took a little while for Stan and Jack to figure out that if their hero is giant-sized, his stories should be also. In this issue, the splash promises “a double-length spectacular.” And while the contents of this issue are not quite spectacular, neither is its length double. You see, the surprise at the end of this story is that it is only half a story. Giant-Man and Wasp are nowhere near ready to defeat the villain, who is last seen slinking through the darkened streets with a bundle of dynamite, no doubt intending further mayhem. How will it all end? Well, we won’t find out, until the January issue of Tales to Astonish.
Well, I’M astonished! Never before has this been done in the Silver Age of Comics. Before this time, one simply did not read a Marvel comic from cover to cover without knowing how the story ends! So! You thought our new hero Giant-Man is fresh and different? His stories even moreso!
Readers in 1963 could have cried “Foul!” because in order to get to the conclusion of this adventure, they were being asked to plunk down another 12 cents, for the January, 1964 issue. But I don’t think the additional 12 cents was really a problem for most readers. They were probably planning to buy the next issue, anyway. Instead, they most probably felt perturbed and uneasy because they were being asked to WAIT for the conclusion of the story. Unheard of! I wonder what it must have been like to sit down with this comic in December, 1963, fully expecting a full story, and then to have the rug pulled out from under you.
I remember the first time I saw The Lord of the Rings in the movie theater. My teenage daughter was a big LOTR nerd, so she prepared me that the end of this movie was not the end of the story. But when we got to the credits, the collective “HUH??” from the rest of the audience assured me that many did not have the LOTR-nerd advantage that I had. I wonder if Giant-Man readers in 1963 were engaging in that collective, “HUH??”
It probably didn’t seem fair at the time, but Russ assures me that continuing stories will be the wave of the future for Marvel Comics. The “one complete story per issue” format is antiquated, and about to be replaced not only with two-part stories, but with continuing sagas that stretch for months on end. Russ also assures me the stories will not only get bigger, but also better. This two-part Giant-Man is only the first step in that direction.
HUMAN TOP
And who is the treacherous villain who will usher in this next stage of Marvel Comics? Meet Dave Cannon, aka the Human Top, who can spin around really, really fast. So fast, you can’t see him, he’s just a green blur. Sort of like Clark Kent in Smallville being referred to as the Red-Blue Blur, before the Superman moniker sticks. And how can anything stick when he’s moving that fast?
Apparently Dave Cannon possessed “the amazing ability to whirl around at great speed” even as a lad, for we first meet him both impressing and bullying his young cronies. Cannon takes the bullying path to an extreme, using his superpower first to steal fruit (gasp!) and later to throw ice races. We get the idea: he’s a no-good-nik. As an adult, he’s named “Public Enemy Number One” for a string of burglaries and bank robberies.
It’s never explained where this fantastic spinning ability comes from, but now that X-Men has introduced the concept of fantastic feats through human mutation, I have to wonder if the Human Top is a mutant. My understanding (admittedly, at this point, from the X-Men movies, rather than from the few comics I’ve read) is that mutant abilities don’t manifest until puberty. If so, then how old is Dave Cannon when he’s bullying the other kids on the top of page two?
Looking at these pictures, I see a bunch of BOYS. Kids. Not teenagers. So I don’t know if this ability to spin fast is indeed a mutant power, or if he’s just a freak of nature. And I don’t know if I’ll ever know. I don’t even know if it’s important. But I will say this: I’m pleased with myself for asking this question. It’s the kind of question a student of Marvel Comics should be asking at this point.
I think I’m getting the hang of this Universe.
ENTER…GIANT-MAN!
When Giant-Man and Wasp decide to go after Public Enemy Number One, the big guy discovers that being huge is not always an advantage, especially when chasing a 
slippery foe like the Human Top. And that’s as it should be. It wouldn’t make sense if a guy who’s suddenly 12 feet tall leaps about with the grace of a gazelle.
It irks Pym to no end that the Top gets away, so he does the “mad scientist bit” (as Wasp calls it) and creates a serum to make himself faster—hopefully as fast as the Human Top. But as he practices his fast moves, Wasp can tell he’s not nearly fast enough.
And that’s where we leave it. Giant-Man thinks he’s getting close, and Wasp doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s not. Yet there’s the Human Top, slinking through the darkened streets with dynamite, about to visit more mischief upon the city. Who can stop him?
What’s that they say? “Tune in next time…”
But before we get to next time, and the end of this story, I have one important observation to make about Wasp.
WASP’S MOTIVATIONS
The awkward relationship between Henry Pym and his flirtatious little sidekick Janet Van Dyne has never been resolved within any single issue of Tales to Astonish. And good thing, too! Because it’s just too much fun. We don’t want a quick resolution! But in this outing, Jan is getting prettied up for her meeting with Henry as if it’s a date, and as he has to remind her it’s all strictly business, our capricious female has a most unusual reaction. Observe:
Well, we know without a doubt that Jan has her eye on “big wonderful dreamy HIM!” That couldn’t be more obvious. But correct me if I’m wrong…in her origin story, when her father was killed by the Creature from Kosmos, didn’t she vow to dedicate her life to finding his murderer, and didn’t she express a fervent desire to “help track down ALL the criminals, the human wolves who prey on honest people”? I think she did.
The Creature from Kosmos was destroyed seven pages after her bold proclamations, but it took even less time for Jan to fall for her crime-fighting partner. Still, I have to wonder: does romantic love supersede and negate a heartfelt pledge of heroism?
Has Jan so quickly forgotten her original commitment? Or was she only pretending from the start, just saying the words she thought Pym wanted to hear, simply so she could be near him? Has her mind been so clouded by her attraction to Henry that she now “only has eyes” for him? Can all those poor honest people being preyed upon by human wolves now go to hell in a hand basket, because she’s found herself a MAN?
What is Stan saying here? Is this a sexist commentary about the nature of women? If so, I’m offended. But not really offended, because I understand that back in 1963, this kind of thinking was the norm. For a woman to have any other attitude would have been considered…unnatural. And so we must accept Wasp’s romance-obsessed heart as easily as we must accept Betty Ross’ pink pillbox hat and matching pumps.
I don’t know how long Giant-Man and Wasp are around in the Marvel Universe, but I hope if they survive the millennium, our little Wasp undergoes a time-appropriate attitude 
adjustment. I love these old comics, but looking back through this prism at the 1960’s, I lament the backwards social attitudes just as often as I find myself longing for simpler, more innocent times.
With that in mind, I leave you with one more image. As Wasp jumps in through the window, her partner happily exclaims, “Just in time, Jan! I was just about to become GIANT-MAN!” Am I the only one who detects a level of sexual innuendo in Pym’s proclamation that perhaps was never originally intended? Ah, yes, for those simpler, more innocent times! It’s so easy to make fun, and have fun with them. But also…ah, yes! How insightful it can be to look at these stories through the prism of time and see how not only our characters, but also our society, and ourselves, have come through and survived, and hopefully been improved, by so many bouts of growing pains.
That’s all for now, but don’t forget to join me in two weeks here in The Marvelous Zone. A bunch of really good stories are coming up, and I know you’d hate to miss it!
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I suspect that Jan didn’t forget her original commitment – STAN did! He was writing so many stories he likely forgot the motivation he gave Jan and wanted to make her characterization different from the standard. Having said that, there is also a degree of sexism in making the female heroine only interested in getting her man.
And continued stories will become the exception, starting in this period. Stan obviously wanted to try-out longer stories and when this met with fan approval (for the most part – some complained) and sales rose, there was no stopping him. Growing up smack dab in the mid-1960’s I loved the anticipation of looking forward to the next issue of FF, Spidey, Thor, etc. A month seemed like a loooooooonng time back then, but usually it was worth the wait (and, of course, I had to deal with cliffhanger endings on Dark Shadows on Fridays, although that was only a two day wait).
Well, if you thought a month was a long time to wait for the next chapter in the story, imagine how us SHERLOCK fans feel, having to wait two years for the next “season” of three episodes?? I’ll have read a LOT of Marvel comics before then!
oops, I meant to say continued stories will become the RULE, not the exception!
Ernie Hart scripted Jan’s first appearance, making it more probable that Stan (who only edited the story) might have forgotten some of the details.
That makes sense. In fact, it makes perfect sense, because I think when these stories were being produced in the early ’60’s, there was probably very little thought that they were making “art” that was going to endure through the decades. They probably thought that kids were reading these 12 cent comics, then throwing them away, so nobody ever dreamt of going back and fact-checking. If they were super-concerned about internal integrity, we would never have seen Johnny Storm worrying about maintaining his “secret identity” in the earliest Torch stories!
Russ and I do a podcast about the 1960’s TV soap opera Dark Shadows, and we find the same sort of thing happening all the time. It’s funny to us now, looking down the long tunnel of history. Who knew these things would endure so long??
Thanks for your insight!
I agree. I seriously doubt that either Stan Lee or Dan Curtis ever expected that we’d be dissecting these early Marvel comics OR Dark Shadows. Since I enjoyed both growing up I distinctly recall my older brother John getting annoyed with me because I was reading a comic instead of concentrating on Dark Shadows while it was on. He explained I could always read the comic but I’d never see the episode of DS again. Little did we know!
Haha! Yes! Little did we know.