From Little Bugs, Big Things Come

Ant-Man: World Hive was a 5-issue mini-series that came out in 2020, focused on Scott Lang and his daughter Cassie, formerly the Young Avenger Stature, now going by her MC2 Universe codename of Stinger.

Dylan Burnett (artist) and Mike Spicer (colorist), stick close to the MC2 version of the outfit, although Spicer varies the colors a bit. Yellow for the eyes and the bio-electric stingers, darker purple on the chest and arms, more black than lavender everywhere else. She gets an upgrade to her helmet halfway through that enhances the strength of the communication with insects, conveyed by making the words fill the panel, and by having her helmet sprout also sorts of Jack Kirby Hat-style accessories.

Zeb Wells' version of Lang follows Nick Spencer's version from his two Ant-Man ongoings (and probably the movie to an extent). Scott lives in Florida (in an ant hill) to be close to his daughter, he has had a security company, and all the other heroes treat him as a joke or embarrassment. He doesn't keep his cool at basically any point, and is constantly sporting stubble and bags under his eyes. Not quite "Demon in a Bottle" Tony Stark, but halfway there.

Scott is asked to locate a lot of missing bees by the Florida Beekeepers Association, which disappoints Cassie, but depopulation of bees is a big deal! That leads him to The Swarm, who is himself running from more creatures made entirely of types of arthropods, who are controlled by a creature called Macrothrax, who is tired of these damn apes running things. It's a bug's world!

Recognizing this may be a big deal (and wanting to impress Cassie so she doesn't move to Cali to join Kate Bishop's shitty West Coast Avengers squad) Scott takes her to New York, where the Avengers basically treat him like a waste of their time.

I mean, I expect Blade to be a dick, not to mention Stark, and Lang did put his foot in his mouth saying everyone liked Tony better before he stopped drinking. But T'Challa literally laughs at the notion Scott could help improve his helmet in front of Cassie. No wonder you aren't king of your stupid, cancer-cure hoarding country any longer, if that's your level of diplomatic skill. At least when Spider-Man spends most of issue 3 bagging on Lang and Florida - justified on the grounds Florida's a shithole, says the guy visiting his friend in Florida as this post goes up - it's because he's jealous the Black Cat seems to like Ant-Man.

Wells justifies what feels like an otherwise gratuitous guest appearance by tying this story into some of his plots from Volume 2 of Heroes for Hire. The one where Black Cat was on the team. Had that one hentai cover with the ladies being menaced by dripping tentacles? Anyway, someone had to explain what happened to Humbug and I guess Paladin and Colleen Wing are too busy. Yeah, I don't buy that either.

That said, one thing Wells does with Lang that I like is use the idea Lang actually cares about the insects he works with. When the Swarm orders bees to attack Scott, most of the bees shield him and he points out he didn't even have to ask that hard. The use of the word "ask" feels important. Scott mourns the deaths of the ants whose colony he was living in, even if Wells frames most of Scott's interactions with the queen ant, "Pam", as being like an old married couple where she's always on his case about something. But when he's looking for bees, one of the bees is happy to help lead him to the others, or help him escape. And that compassion plays in the climax, helping Scott save the world.

I like Burnett's designs for the various bug monsters. They're mostly humanoid shapes made up of a lot of a particular type of insect, but there are enough different types of insects your can go different ways with that. Thread is made of silkworms and has a loose, almost decaying look, while Vespa is hornets and so more sharply defined. Sharp projections, angular body, sleek.