Janice and I got out to see Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania a few weeks ago. As Marvel fans, we knew to stay for the mid-credits and end-credits scenes. I enjoyed what I saw. But it’s the start of the credits that brought the biggest smile to my lips.
Footage from these end credits is not yet available outside theaters, so I’ll approximate the effect as best I can from what is available. The end credits started with ANT MAN…
And then got to this…
Do you see it?
The title of the franchise as a whole is hidden inside the movie’s subtitle. QUANTUMANIA. What’s more, it’s hidden symmetrically, with two letters on either end and a “U” taking the place of Ant-Man’s usual hyphen.
This is similar to what word lovers call a kangaroo word, a larger word that contains a smaller word’s letters in order but not necessarily all together. The kangaroo’s “joey” is usually a synonym for it, as in accustomed to/used to or feasted/fed…and also feasted/ate. But I think we can broaden the definition to two words or phrases, one containing the other, that have a relationship of meaning.
As it turns out, Ant-Man has a history with kangaroos! In the comics, Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, changed his own code name to GIANT-MAN for a while.
Hank may have been the first superhero to shift into a shorter or longer version of his codename. He’s not the only one, though. Wally West began his hero career as Kid Flash, a junior partner to the Flash; he eventually took the Flash name as his own. Tim Drake started out as the third Robin, then went by Red Robin for a while. And when Captain America was at odds with the U.S. government, he went through a phase of calling himself just “the Captain.”
What is unique about Hank’s changeover, to the best of my knowledge and recollection, is that his kangaroo codename had a nearly opposite meaning from its joey’s. If you’ve watched the later movies, you know Ant-Man gets big as well as small, but the name “Ant-Man” suggests “this hero gets small,” whereas “Giant-Man” says only “this hero gets big.”
(DC Comics came close to copying this, decades later. One of its giant heroes goes by Atom Smasher, and he’s the son of a notably short superhero called the Atom.)
It’s as if Superman decided to stop being a humble servant of humanity and became Supercilious Man. Or it’s like a version of the Joker who didn’t kill people for funsies and was just trying to make a living: the Job-Seeker. Of course, neither of those things would ever hap—
Well, you get the point.
Today we have a special two-part update! Part 2 will be arriving about an hour after this one!