By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
It's hard to imagine why getting smaller than your opponent is a useful super-power, but shrinking has been a staple in comics since 1939. I can't explain why, but with the advent of "Ant-Man" the movie (premiering July 17), a look at the biggest heroes who are tiny seems useful.
The top 10 tiny heroes in comics:
10) Leonard "Doc" Samson (created 1971): Incredible Hulk supporting character Leonard Samson doesn't shrink physically, but he is a psychiatrist for superheroes. Get it? He's a "shrink"! Ha ha!
OK, that was lame. But honestly, the competition for this tenth slot is immense, because there are so many terrible shrinky characters in comics history to choose from. In the 1940s alone you had, among others, the original Atom from All-American/DC (who didn't shrink at all, but was just short), Harvey's Fly-Man (not be confused with the later Archie character of the same name, who didn't shrink) and Midgetman (who rode a pet rabbit named Bucky).
9) Micronauts (1979): The toys on which these characters were based only lasted from 1976 to 1980, but the Marvel Comics adventures of this merry band of guerrillas lasted considerably longer.
Micronauts was set in a subatomic world called the Microverse, which consists of varying habitats connected like a drawing of molecules. It had been conquered by Baron Karza, a Darth Vader-like bad guy, and the rebels who rose to oppose him were the Micronauts, consisting of Commander Arcturus Rann (based on the "Time Traveler" toy), Princess Mari ("Marionette"), Acroyear, Bug (an insect-like being original to Marvel), Microtron and Biotron. If that all sounds very Star Wars, that's because it was.
Micronauts didn't shrink, as they were tiny already. But the Fantastic Four did, when they'd come to visit.
8) Shrinking Violet (1961): Violet -- real name Salu Digby of the planet Imsk -- was created as a member of the 30th century Legion of Super-Heroes, and I guess by the time they got around to her they had run out of cool powers. Anyway, Salu could shrink because all Imskians could, so one wonders why Imsk didn't find a more impressive specimen to send to the Legion, like maybe a weight-lifter or an acrobat or something.
In some incarnations, Vi has been toughened up some, like in one scenario where she was a rough lesbian with an eye-patch. No, I am not making that up. In other scenarios, her superhero name has been Atom Girl, Leviathan and Virus. I was always hoping they'd change her name to Shrinking Violence, but nobody ever listens to me.
7) Superman Emergency Squad (1960): These characters actually had to grow to become tiny!
Shrinking was all the rage in early 1960s Superman comics, because the villain Brainiac (first appearance 1958) had shrunk the Kryptonian city Kandor small enough to fit in a bottle, which Superman kept in his Fortress of Solitude. While waiting for Superman to figure out how to embiggen the city and everyone in it, Kandorians monitored Earth with their high-tech, sci-fi TV screens. And several times when Superman's pals got into trouble, a bunch of Kandorians put on Superman suits, climbed up the side of the bottle with suction cups, and emerged into our world, where they were the size of action figures and had Kryptonian super-powers. They couldn't grow all the way, though. As one Squadder helpfully explained in "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen" #48: "Spray us now with the enlarging gas, made by one of our scientists! It can't increase us to normal size, but it will make us bigger than microbes!"
Preposterous, yes. But hundreds of tiny Supermen flying around made for some awesome covers!
7) Nightwing & Flamebird (1963): That bottle with microbe-size people was too much for DC writers to ignore. Beginning in 1963, Superman and Jimmy Olsen would shrink down and parachute into the bottle to become the masked heroes Nightwing and Flamebird -- supposedly based on Kryptonian fowl, but really just variants of Batman and Robin. When the duo grew tired of the gig, Kandorian scientist Van-Zee and his assistant Ak-Var -- who bore an astounding resemblance to Superman and Jimmy Olsen -- took over the roles.
5) Elasti-Girl (1963): Rita Farr was a beautiful actress who was exposed to mysterious volcanic gases while filming a movie, as has happened to so many beautiful actresses. This resulted in a shortened life span, but gave her the power to expand or contract not only her entire body, but discrete parts of it. She joined the Doom Patrol, because why not.
She has an unfortunate tendency to have terrible things happen to her. She's been dead at least twice. Last seen, she was a puddle of goo.
4) Doll Man (1939), Doll Girl (1951): Scientist Darrel Dane invented a formula to make himself six inches tall, although why he felt the need to do so is unexplained. Naturally, he immediately adopted the less-than-imposing name Doll Man, donned a costume that made him look like a male stripper and set out to fight crime. His girlfriend eventually learned to shrink as well (by thinking about it real hard), and became Doll Girl. Doll Man sometimes rode his Great Dane into combat, and flew a model airplane called the Doll Plane.
Doll Man was occasionally called "The World's Mightiest Mite," Doll Girl sometimes called herself "Midge" and the Great Dane was technically "Elmo the Wonder Dog." Strangely, none of those nicknames seemed to catch on. But Doll Man makes it to No. 4 on this list by virtue of being the great grand-daddy of shrinky superheroes, invented by the legendary Will Eisner for Quality Comics in 1939 and lasting until 1953, with art by the likes of Eisner, Lou Fine and Reed Crandall.
3) The Atom (1961): DC Comics was on a roll in 1961, having rebooted various 1940s characters by dropping everything about them but the names, creating new, sci-fi versions of Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman. In Showcase #34 they did the same with the powerless Al "Atom" Pratt mentioned earlier, by giving the name to a new guy named Ray Palmer, a physicist at Ivy University who had developed a shrinking process. With it, he could reduce to any size (even microscopic), whereupon he donned a costume with the same color scheme as Doll Man and fought crime as The Atom.
The best part of the new Atom's origin to me was that Palmer had to use white dwarf star matter to stabilize the process. Coincidentally, he stumbled across a white dwarf star meteor in his very first issue. When Palmer picks up the cantaloupe-size meteor, he says, "So heavy ... I can hardly lift it!"
Yes, I imagine so. A white dwarf star is one of the densest forms of matter in the universe, with a typical white dwarf being as massive as the Sun but with a diameter only slightly bigger than the Earth. If a white dwarf star meteor had ever actually hit the Earth, it probably would have been about as heavy as our planet, exploding both objects into, ahem, atoms.
But, OK, it's comic book pseudo-science. And later versions of the origin wrote that part out. The Atom deserves a high spot on this list for his longevity (he's been with the Justice League off and on since the early 1960s) and for being one of the most versatile of shrinky heroes. Not only can he reduce to any size, but he controls his weight as well.
2) The Wasp (1963): In the early 1960s, Janet van Dyne was a wealthy socialite who dated Henry Pym, the biochemist who shrank and fought crime as Ant-Man. He gave her the power to shrink like himself, but also implanted specialized, synthetic cells in her body so that when she shrank she grew wings (to fly) and antennae (to talk to insects). It's never been explained why Pym didn't do this for himself, but was comfortable disfiguring his girlfriend. He also invented wrist-mounted, compressed air "stinger" guns so Jan could live up to her namesake, because in comics brilliant biochemists are also brilliant garage mechanics.
The Wasp -- who began her career as a sidekick -- gets her own entry for being a founding member of the Avengers, giving that team long service (with or without Pym), and even rising to leader on occasion.
1) Ant-Man (1962): Pym developed a shrinking gas from something he dubbed "Pym particles," and has been a significant part of the Marvel Universe ever since. But more on him next week!
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Replies
Looking at the Jimmy Olsen cover my first thought was "poor Curt Swan" having to draw all those little Supermen flitting about. The cover would have made me buy that issue for sure.
Psycho Man also turned up in Micronauts. Oddly I don't think Ant-Man/Yellowjacket did. Somehow after FF#16 he claimed he'd lost the ability to shrink to microscopic size, which he unsuccessfully tried to explain to the Hulk. Didn't make sense, especially since Reed Richards was able to do so after observing how Hank did it once.
For some reason The Atom really intrigued me when I read some of those stories as a kid. The comic book science in it is reminiscent of The Flash, another character I really liked.
Here are a few more tiny comics people that leap to mind, not all of them shrinkers:
The alien races in Buck Rogers included the Asterites, who were miniature people (from the asteroids, presumably, but I'm not sure I've seen that stated). I don't know when they first appeared: Wikipedia lists a story "Asterite Invaders" as having appeared in 1932-33.
Doll Man was preceded by a few months by Minimidget and Ritty in Amazing Man Comics. They, however, were permanently stuck at their small size. In the first instalment the evil scientist who shrank them has them under his mental domination and sends them to kill. I think it was modelled after the movie The Devil Doll. In the subsequent instalments this is quickly forgotten, and they're sympathetic protagonists.
Mighty Man, also from Amazing Man Comics, was introduced as a giant. Subsequently he gained the ability to control his size, and often shrank to a small size. (In his later instalments he often acts surreptitiously). I've sometimes wondered if he influenced the conversion of Ant-Man into Giant-Man. He didn't have a costume, and he could enlarge only a part of his body.
One of the characters in the M.F. Enterprises Captain Marvel stories was Tinyman, who started as a villain and reformed. Most of the feature's super-characters were derivative in some way, so he was probably modelled after Doll Man.
There was also Colossus of Colossus Comics in 1940. What's meant to be a Super Soldier serum turns a man into a 2000 foot giant. It affects his mind and he decides to conquer the world. The last panel says that next month he would attack Europe, but the series only ran one issue.
I found a lot of tiny characters in the Golden Age, most of them just awful. And there are tiny villains, too, like Mouse Man.
Of course, shrinkiness isn't confined to comics. Alice (of Wonderland fame) shrank and grew, didn't she? Gulliver ran into the permanently tiny Lilliputians. Land of the Giants wasn't exactly shrinking people, but the effect was the same. And I remember being depressed by the end of The Amazing Shrinking Man.
Another early movie on the theme was Doctor Cyclops (1940).
I think an honorable mention should go to the Colossal Boy from Mark Waid's run on the Legion who actually went by Micro Lad. He was a giant who shrank to the size of a human. That always amused me.
I'm pretty sure if we were picking super-team members, the majority of us would pick the Atom over Ant-Man. He's more versatile and won't ruin your picnic.
Other shrinking heroes, off the top of my head:
And didn't Tarzan meet some Ant-Men?
I'm split over which I'd choose. The Atom should be able to kill just about anyone. He once defeated superior duplicates of the complete roster of the JLA essentially by himself.(1) Ant-Man is less dangerous but his information-gathering resources could come in handy.
Thanks for the extra suggestions, Philip.
(1) In "The Super-Exiles of Earth!" in Justice League of America #19.
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