An acquired taste, much like its hero...
As stated in my previous review, a majority of my comics collection comes from Marvel's Civil War era. It just happened to be when I had enough disposable income for my interests in comics to really take off. During this time, besides trying to stay current with all the crazy superhero beatdowns going on, I was searching for series that were just starting up to dig into and make my own. Among these was Robert Kirkman's and Phil Hester's Irredeemable Ant-Man, a new start for the character who was formerly Hank Pym and Scott Lang. I knew this wouldn't be your typical superhero book and more focused on humor, but the way this book does so is unique in its own way. Does that make it good? Well that's hard to say.
So our story begins revolving around two low-level shield agents. It's obvious from the opening that one of these dudes is going to end up being our new Ant-Man, and this book does a good job of introducing both of them and making them interesting characters. On the one hand we have Chris McCarthy, who has always dreamed of being a superhero and despite being a bit of a screw up, he's a nice and likeable guy. This kinda screws up the two person angle since, going by the title of the series, we know our Ant-Man can be none other than guy number two, Eric O'Grady (Okay, the last page also gives that away. Shaddup). Eric is... a douche. He manipulates women, abandons his friends in their time of need, and is just kind of a scummy guy. He is also terribly funny and the way Robert Kirkman writes him makes him very likeable if only because he is so ridiculous with his scumminess.
This is also where the story kinda goes south, though. This being the first issue, the reader should be pretty excited to continue reading the series the following month. However, we don't even really get the main conflict of this story-arc. We don't get a lot of action. All we get is some nice humor and the beginnings of an origin story for our future "hero". To be fair, the character interaction and dialogue is pretty darn good, but it gets tiresome when the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere and there isn't any true action to break it up.
This also takes us into the art. I am personally a fan of Phil Hester's art since he did the initial run on Green Arrow. His blocky style is very reminiscent of some of the DCAU stuff back with the Justice League. However, I think Hester's style plays better in hero-centric stories when there are a lot of distinguishable characters doing very cool hero-centric things. This first issue doesn't have any of that. There is a pretty cool splash page of Wolverine cutting up some dudes, but other than that, it's a lot of talking heads which, frankly, isn't a great fit with Hester's style.
This might seem like I didn't enjoy the Irredeemable Ant-Man's first issue. On the contrary, I saw a lot of potential with this issue and with the series as a whole (potential that was never really reached). Going back, it really is somewhat of a sputtering start to launching a brand new superhero book, but it manages to remain an interesting part of my collection based solely on the strength of its humor, its writing, and the uniqueness of its main character. If you don't mind a little joking and an even littler amount of hero-ing, then take a look at Irredeemable Ant-Man.