Last week, I stated confidently that The Maker’s team of New Revengers from the pages of New Avengers was the most obscure assembly of supervillains into one group, citing little known characters such as Asti and Skar as proof. It now seems that team may have held the distinction for one whole week, as this week’s issue of The Astonishing Ant-Man by Nick Spencer and Ramon Rosanas has potentially outdone them with a team I like to call Lang’s Eleven.

Admittedly there are only ten members, but it sounds better with Eleven, and Nick Spencer’s Sinister Six in Superior Foes of Spider-Man only had five members, so I feel like it works.

If you haven’t been following Ant-Man, all you need to know is that Scott’s daughter Cassie has assumed the new role of Stinger in an attempt to infiltrate Cross Technological Enterprises, but was found out by Darren Cross, so Scott Lang has to assemble a team to rescue her.

In order to build that team, Lang is forced to rely on Hench, an app that is essentially Uber for supervillains, and uses it to recruit Whirlwind, The Voice, The Magician, and Hijacker, with the aid of his current love interest/nemesis, The Beetle. He also enlisted Grizzly and Machinesmith, his employees at Lang Security Solutions, and Raz Malhotra, the rookie Giant Man and Scott’s protege.

The last piece of the puzzle will be familiar to fans of Matt Fraction and Mike Allred’s FF; Scott Lang’s ex-girlfriend Darla Deering, AKA Ms. Thing. The oddball group of heroes and villains is everything I love about Spencer and Rosanas’ work on Ant-Man, and leads to hilarious situations such as this.

 

Grizzly
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I say this a lot here at ComicsAlliance, but if you’re not reading The Astonishing Ant-Man, you’re really missing out. It reads as the spiritual sequel to Superior Foes of Spider-Man, but it’s so much more than that. It’s funny, smart and touching in its own unique way, and plays with the Marvel Universe in new and interesting ways that are always entertaining.

 

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