Hidden Details: Ant-Man and the What? (Patreon)

After last week's very long blog post, I'm glad I managed to contain myself this week. I sprinkled just a few, but tasteful hidden details in the Ant-Man and the Wasp comic. I'll break 'em down for ya:

First off, I want to talk about smiling Cap in the background. I suppose I could say this is some form of intelligent absurdist humor, but the truth is as follows: while I was overviewing the comic after finishing it, I noticed Scott (Ant-Man) said "hey guys!", while only Tony was standing there. I could have changed the text, I suppose, but I wanted to have him talk to "the Avengers" in general. So I let the lazy artist get the best of me and I drew a single smiling Captain America and copy-pasted him in all the panels. Feels good to get that off my chest!

Anyone who's even a little into Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe will understand Tony is referencing actual heroes here, but for those less geeky, I created this beautiful artist impression to explain why Tony chose those insects as arguments, particularly:

The ant is, of course, Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), the mantis is... well, Mantis (Pom Klementieff), the spider is Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and the wasp is The Wasp/Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly).

"But wait, if all those insects have a real counterpart, who represents the bee?", you ask? Well, there's this animator who I greatly admire and this panel provided an excellent chance to reference him. I'm talking about Harry Partridge, creator of many awesome animations, among them Dr. Bees (here's part one and part two).

I even made Tony Stark call Doctor Bees by name. It'd be mighty cool if Harry ever sees this himself!

A final reference in this panel, which has already been called out by many, many Instagram users, is the mosquito saying he doesn't feel so good. Which is a reference to the famous line from Avengers: Infinity War. If you haven't seen Infinity War yet, I won't spoil it, but I'll also ask you: why the hell not?!

And lastly: the background in this comic (which I also copy-pasted) is a reference to Captain America: Civil War. Here's the full background I created:

This is supposed to be the kitchen/living room of the Avengers facility where a bunch of Avengers are discussing the Sokovia Accords in Civil War. I tried my best to recreate it. You can judge for yourself if I succeeded or not:

Also, in this scene, while explaining his stance on the accords, Tony Stark asks the other Avengers "who's putting coffee grounds in the disposal" (YouTube link). I decided to reference that one (kinda obscure) line by making the sink completely clogged with a huge pile of coffee. Looks like the Avenger with bad coffee-manners still hasn't changed his/her way. I only hope people didn't mistake it for a huge pile of shit.

As a few final words, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm still experimenting a bit in terms of visual styles. Nobody has said anything about it yet, but I think this comic looks a bit like Adam Ellis' comics. I'm still not 100% happy with the way I draw. I think it's a bit "bland". It's not horrible, but it's not "iconic" either. It needs more authenticity, or flair or something. I'm rambling. But the point is that I hope you don't mind me experimenting a bit, and hopefully I'll find a style that suits me soon.

See you all next week!

- Abel