Ant-Man Rides a Flying Ant Through the City — Print & Oil Painting

The viewpoint is the trick. We are down at kerb height and tilted, looking along a street that runs away and upward to the right, and the thing coming toward us is an ant the size of a horse. Its head fills the lower centre of the frame, the mandibles are open, a highlight sits on the compound eye, and six legs are braced across the roadway.

The rider sits astride the thorax with his knees gripping and his upper body twisted. He is bare headed and blond, in a suit of red panels over black with a silver ring at the collar and banded silver forearms, and he holds his helmet in both hands in front of him: a smooth silver shell with a dark visor. The moment chosen is the second before he puts it on.

He is not alone. Five more winged ants are drawn at different depths above and behind him, their wings blurred into pale transparent ovals, and one flies low enough to drop a shadow onto the road. The artist has used their scattered placement to build the depth of the street.

The city is drawn in cool greys and blue whites with the linework kept loose, and a pale vehicle with lit windows sits across the middle distance with two or three passengers sketched inside it. Everything behind the insects is a step or two lower in contrast, which is why the dark red bodies read so hard against it.

The helmet in his hands is not decoration. It is the piece of equipment that allows the wearer to signal to ants at all, broadcasting into their senses in a language they will answer, and winged carpenter ants are the ones this hero calls when he needs to travel. Painting him holding it, mid street, with the swarm already assembled around him, is a picture of a working arrangement rather than a costume. From our Marvel collection, beside the same hero paired with the Wasp in insect winged armour and the helmet closed and the lenses lit, in the white team suit.