With the early reviews of Ant-Man being overwhelmingly positive it’s clear that Marvel has another smash hit on its hands. There have a been a few people behind the mask of the miniature hero, but Eric O’Grady’s Ant-Man is like no other Marvel hero. He’s a peeping tom with a black heart who manages to lie his way into being a part of The Initiative, a group similar to The Avengers. While Eric O’Grady is not Ant-Man in the upcoming movie, that honour goes to the burglar with a heart of gold Scott Lang, it is worth taking a look at his origins in the short lived comic series The Irredeemable Ant-Man written by Robert Kirkman of The Walking Dead fame.
Selling Nudes and Breaking Hearts
The Irredeemable Ant-Man wastes no time in establishing how shitty Eric O’Grady is, and throughout the 12-issue run he just gets worse. Eric isn’t a villain, he doesn’t do evil things, but he is pretty heartless and very perverted. He is a low-level agent of S.H.I.E.L.D that spends his days slacking off at work, playing cards with his friends, and trying to get nude photos of women. Once Eric gets the Ant-Man costume, which he peels off of the corpse of his best friend because he figures it will help get him laid, he embarks on an adventure 
that’s full of spying on women in showers, including Ms. Marvel, and running away from S.H.I.E.L.D as they hunt him down for stealing their suit. After the death of his best friend Eric wastes no time trying to sleep with his friend’s grieving girlfriend, and even tries to seduce her on top of his grave. He eventually does manage to get in her pants, and then promptly dumps her. In order to get by, Eric joins Damage Control , a group of minor superheros who clean up the destruction the bigger and better heroes make when they fight. Eric uses his time with Damage Control to loot from the destroyed areas so he can make some extra cash. As the series wraps up, and there’s no sign of redemption for Eric, he finds out that he has gotten someone pregnant and she wants him to help raise the kid. Eric, being irredeemable and all, tells her off and refuses to be in the kid’s life. The series then concludes with Eric lying his way into the Initiative, a smaller state-by-stare version of the Avengers.
The Big C
The Irredeemable Ant-Man was cancelled abruptly, and though the major plotline had concluded, Eric as a character had little to no growth. There is a panel in which he shows desire to be better, but he never does anything better within the series. Eric has Robert Kirkman’s style all over him, the moral ambiguity that strikes a little too close to home, but 
that ambiguity seems out of place, even jarring, against idealistic characters like Captain America. What is great about The Irredeemable Ant-Man is that Eric isn’t likable, but he is still a great character. It seems necessary in comic books to create likable, charismatic, and cool heros, but the fact that Eric isn’t makes him stand out from the pack. What Kirkman gives us is a much more realistic and familiar villain, but he plays the part of the hero. Eric is the shitty ex-boyfriend, or the employee that lies and steals. He is the absentee father and the unreliable fried. Eric is a villian that everyone has encountered, but Kirkman turns him into hero. It’s an amazing feat and a series everyone comic fan should check out.
– Ian Benke
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