Marvel Premiere #47
Marvel Premiere #47 is the cornerstone origin issue for Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man — a character whose defining trait was a radical departure from every superhero convention of the Bronze Age: a genuinely guilty ex-convict, not a wrongly accused innocent, motivated entirely by fatherly love rather than accident or ambition. In a single 36-page story the issue simultaneously introduced four characters who would each accumulate decades of narrative weight — Scott Lang as Ant-Man, his daughter Cassie Lang (later the Young Avenger known as Stature, then Stinger), villain Darren Cross (later Yellowjacket), and surgeon Dr. Erica Sondheim — making it one of the densest debut issues of its era. The issue's two-part tryout in Marvel Premiere did not immediately earn Lang his own series, yet the father-daughter dynamic and reformed-criminal hook proved durable enough to anchor four MCU films and propel Cassie Lang into the Young Avengers' founding lineup more than twenty-five years later.
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Writer David Michelinie conceived Scott Lang deliberately to contrast with Hank Pym: where Pym was a genius scientist, Lang would be a blue-collar electronics expert with a criminal record, motivated not by ideology but by parental desperation. Michelinie explained in Back Issue! #71 (TwoMorrows Publishing) that he wanted a reformed criminal rather than an unjustly accused innocent — the unexpected angle — because that gave the character genuine moral weight. Hank Pym's transition to the Yellowjacket identity created the narrative opening, and editor Roger Stern (assisted by Jim Salicrup, under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter) handed the art duties to penciler John Byrne — one of three Marvel Premiere issues Byrne drew at the time — with Bob Layton providing both inks and the cover. The issue was released on April 10, 1979, as part of Marvel's rotating tryout anthology, which ran from 1972 to 1981 and regularly used its pages to audition characters for potential solo series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Scott Lang as the second Ant-Man (his first appearance as a civilian character had occurred one month earlier in Avengers #181, March 1979).
- First appearance of Cassie Lang, Scott's daughter, who would go on to become the size-changing Young Avenger known as Stature (Young Avengers #6, 2005) and later Stinger (Astonishing Ant-Man #6, 2016).
- First appearance of Darren Cross, CEO of Cross Technological Enterprises, whose experimental nucleorganic pacemaker mutated his body and drove him to kidnap heart surgeon Dr. Erica Sondheim; Cross would not assume the Yellowjacket identity in comics until Astonishing Ant-Man #12 (2016).
- First appearance of Dr. Erica Sondheim, the heart surgeon whose specialized skill is the catalyst for the entire story — Cross abducts her to sustain his own failing heart, while Scott needs her to save Cassie's congenital heart condition.
- Story title: 'To Steal an Ant-Man!' — written by David Michelinie, penciled by John Byrne (breakdowns), inked and covered by Bob Layton, colored by Bob Sharen, lettered by Tom Orzechowski, edited by Roger Stern.
- The issue was reprinted as a pack-in comic with the Ant-Man figure from the Marvel Legends Giant-Man series (a Walmart-exclusive release), introducing the origin to a new audience outside the direct market.
- The story was adapted as a mostly faithful animated episode — 'To Steal an Ant-Man' (Season 2, Episode 5 of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, aired April 29, 2012) — with the additions of Luke Cage and Iron Fist; filmmaker Edgar Wright posted a screenshot from that episode on his blog in January 2014 with the caption 'homework' while developing the live-action Ant-Man film.
- Although Lang's two-issue tryout in Marvel Premiere (#47–48) did not immediately lead to a solo series, it established the father-daughter dynamic and reformed-criminal motivation that would define the character across all subsequent adaptations, including Paul Rudd's portrayal in the MCU beginning with Ant-Man (2015).
Cast · 5 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Scott Lang uses a stolen Ant-Man suit to try to rescue a surgeon who can perform a life-saving operation on his daughter.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).