Ant-Man

Hey, hey! It looks like it's time for another Funko Pop giveaway. ScreenCrush and ComicsAlliance are teaming up to offer up another selection of the collectible figurines fans just can't help but gobble up. From movies and comics to television and video games, Funko's reach knows no bounds, and neither does the adoration of collectors around the world from all walks of life. Fortunately, we're going to make it a tiny bit easier for fans of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, Boba Fett and Ant-Man to get their hands on these coveted cuties. For the next few weeks, we'll be tossing up these little heroes on Twitter, so if you aren't already following either @ComicsAlliance or @ScreenCrushNews, it might behoove you to tune in to our feeds if you hope to get your hands on one.

There’s a fairly sizable (just the first of many size-related puns in this article) cameo in Ant-Man from someone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel had been doing a good job keeping that secret. Until now. The latest Ant-Man TV spot reveals the Avengers cameo, so if you’re dying to know who shows up to meet with Ant-Man, you don't have to wait until the film opens.

Marvel has released the final trailer for Ant-Man following the reveal of the first in a planned series of viral videos connecting Scott Lang to the larger MCU. Hopefully when the next video hits next week, we’ll have a bit more to go on, but until then we have the final official trailer for Marvel’s latest superhero adventure — and it looks pretty fun.

By all superficial appearances, Ant-Man pretty much looks like a standalone Marvel film — but the newest hero of the MCU will be making an appearance in Captain America: Civil War, and it’s all but certain that Marvel has plans for Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang further down the line in Phase 3. A new viral video begins establishing those connections with the reappearance of a minor Marvel character.

This month, the second themed box of goodies from Funko's Marvel Collector Corps is shipping out. Focused solely on upcoming underdog hero (not just in persona, but potentially at the box office as well), the Ant-Man box brings more of the tried and true Funko flavor to your home. I was a bit skeptical about this month's shipment, just as I'm skeptical about the strength of the Ant-Man feature film. I have no real allegiance to the character, but the mysterious nature of the Collector Corps schedule (boxes are revealed slowly throughout the year) means I'm subject to the possibility of a box full of goods that I may not be all that excited about.

We've covered the X-Men, and the Avengers teams. Now we're into potentially the biggest group, the Avengers solo titles, which includes some heroes getting their own ongoing books for the first time. In fact, this group is so sprawling, we've held a couple of characters who are technically Avengers for a later post. Everyone is an Avenger now. Jonathan Hickman made it unwieldy. So here are just eight of the infinite solo Avengers titles.

We’ve got two new Ant-Man bits to share today. First is the above clip, which features Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang using his super-shrinking power for the first time — in a bathtub, of all places. The second piece of news pertains to the possibility of a sequel, which director Peyton Reed says he’s open to directing.

If you’ve been paying attention to Twitter, you’ve likely noticed that the first reactions to Ant-Man have started popping up as the film screened early for a handful of critics. It’s still a couple of weeks before we’ll get to see Marvel’s latest, but you can see a little more of Ant-Man right now with the new international trailer.

Though we've known Hot Toys was planning on making Ant-Man figures to tie into the upcoming feature film, nobody was expecting the first full reveal to be part of the Artist's Mix line. Based on designs by Japanese artist Touma, the Artist's Mix got its start with Avengers: Age of Ultron. While that series has seen multiple waves already announced, we're probably only going to get this one set of three figures from Ant-Man. The Artist Mix line is unlike Hot Toys' bread and butter sixth-scale collection, and offers highly stylized interpretations of characters is static poses. While Hot Toys has hinted that other artists might be taking part in the line in the future, so far both Avengers and Ant-Man have been handled by Touma. Where I wasn't particularly crazy about the Avengers designs, I actually dig the Ant-Man figures a little bit more. That's mostly due to the fact that all the faces are hidden by helmets.

If you’d like to save a little surprise for yourself when you see Ant-Man next month, then consider this a fair warning — this post contains a spoiler for Marvel’s next superhero film. Although we’re not likely to see any MCU crossovers in Ant-Man, there is one more hero that will make an appearance in the film, albeit very briefly, and it’s someone fans have been wondering about since the film was announced.