Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week Bennett takes a look at Ant-Man, Antboy, and two new animated series.

I didn't see Ant-Man, but then, apparently a lot of other people haven't seen it either (see "'Ant-Man' Posts 2nd Worst Marvel Opening Ever").  Oh, it "easily won the weekend" with "a $58 million debut," but in today's high stakes, never-ending battle of the brands, merely winning is no longer nearly good enough.  In "'Ant-Man' shows power and limits of Marvel brand, " a piece by Brent Lang of Variety, it's suggested that the film's relatively low opening weekend takings were due to the fact that its "lighter tone was intended to bring in younger audiences" and that audience segment was already happily attending Minions and Inside Out.  But I don't believe we can entirely discount that at least part of the problem was due to the fact that it was a movie about, you know, Ant-Man.  I mean, even us comic book types have never been all that crazy about Ant-Man.

The character has always been the problem child of the early Marvel Universe, being unable to sustain an ongoing title.  And that's not just because his superpower, "Getting Small," puts it into the top three of superpowers which have the lowest wish fulfillment yield (ranking just above "Breathing Underwater" and below being "Uncannily Good at Novelty Archery").  He's never really fit into the Marvel paradigm of "heroes with problems;" while Stan and company were innovating on most of their other titles, Ant-Man was pretty much a standard superhero circa 1962.

For him there was none of that "feared and hated" or "threat or menace" stuff; he was beloved by the general public and trusted by the police; he even had his own fan club, at least in the pages of Tales to Astonish.  The menaces he fought, a prosaic parade of gimmick suit crooks, aliens and monsters, made the character seem like he would have fit in better over at DC Comics.  Ant-Man even had an arch-nemesis named Egghead that predates the one from the Batman TV series by several years.

Not even its star was an Ant-Man fan; according to a story on the Irish Examiner site, "Paul Rudd: I prefer Bean to Marvel comics" the actor's parents were originally from London and English relatives got him into British boys weeklies like The Beano and The Dandy.

Since I'm not among the younger intended audience the producers were looking for I don't suppose it really matters why I didn't see Ant-Man.  The reviews have been mostly positive, as has the word of mouth, so for the record what stopped me from rushing out to see it isn't the highly anticipated (by some) "superhero movie fatigue," but rather a form of "repetitive film disorder," admittedly an occupational hazard for regular moviegoers, because no matter how well these movies are made superhero origin stories tend to have identical character arcs and story structure.  Though I'm still hoping that the lead characters of Black Panther and Doctor Strange will be intrinsically original enough their films will be that thing I'm always looking for: something I've never seen before.

Anyone who's interested in an ant-based superhero movie intended for a younger audience should go to Netflix and rent Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury.  It's the second in a Danish film series about a preteen superhero based on a popular comic book series by Kenneth Bogh Andersen.  I haven't had the chance to see it myself yet (I'll be waiting for it to be available via Instant Streaming), but I have seen the original (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--We Need A Science Hero") and found it to be a fun and well done kids movie.  It also manages to skillfully play with superhero conventions while remaining relatively respectful to them.

And while still on the subject of Netflix I feel compelled to point out a couple of interesting new additions to their streaming service.  First, Invizimals: The Alliance Files, an internationally produced CGI series based on "a PlayStation Portable augmented reality video game" I've never heard of.  It's got a fairly standard premise about preteens who can merge with the cool looking Invizimals, and while I generally don't care for TV level CGI I must admit the animation here is pretty good.  The prerequisite battles are definitely on the sluggish side, but the human characters, which is usually the weakest aspect of these sorts of series (i.e., that whole Uncanny Valley thing), come off as fairly convincing.

And, finally, while it's always dangerous to judge something sight unseen, in this instance I will be doing just that for a Canadian cartoon series titled The Day My Butt Went Psycho, which is described as being about "A boy and his best friend--his newly detached butt--embark on wacky adventures in a world where humans and their butts live side by side."  I sometimes think I may have lived too long.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.