Today is absolute hell. Tomorrow will be even more hellish. The only chance we have to survive is buried in the deepest, darkest depths of yesterday. 
- —Ant-Man[src]
History
Tony Stark grew up in the apocalyptic wasteland of an Earth conquered by the Black Skull of the Multiversal Masters of Evil. Disgusted with his father's coping mechanism of keeping his head down in an alcohol-fueled haze and his mother's distant "fairy tale" futurism, Stark took to obsessing over stories of the past, dedicating himself to studying ancient forgotten sciences and becoming the world's first archeologist. In his youth, Stark sought to relieve his loneliness by constructing his own friend, creating a robotic lifeform, Vision, to accompany him. During his many adventures, Stark would uncover the remains of a Celestial Head that he converted into a firearm attachment, and a miraculous size-changing particle which he dubbed Stark Particles, allowing him to explore greater depths and to fend off the Skull's forces as the resistance fighter dubbed Ant-Man.
At one point, Ant-Man was captured by the Wastelord's forces while looting the Temple of the Fist of Khonshu. Stark was tortured extensively until he broke and promised to build the Skull anything he wanted to make the suffering end- resulting in the creation of the War Machines, an elite force of mass produced, armored police force that extended the Skull's grip on the wasteland to a near inescapable degree. After some time working for the War Machines, Stark was eventually able to escape thanks to the intervention of Shellhead, the Iron Ant, a mechanical drone and protector Stark had built. Becoming the most wanted man on the planet in the escape, Stark teamed up with Vision, Infinity Thing, Moon Knight, and Wonder Man to form a disparate resistance group to battle the Skull's control of the Wasteland.[1]
Becoming an Avenger[]
Following up on another archeological lead, Ant-Man and Shellhead, uncovered the final resting place of Mjolnir, the mythical war hammer of the All-Father, Odin. While able to briefly lift the Hammer, Stark was quickly overwhelmed by its power and vowed not to try a second time, before shrinking it, and the piece of earth beneath it, down with his Stark Particles to safeguard. While his dig was quickly surrounded by War Machines, the armored units were called off when a Ghost Rider, Robbie Reyes, arrived from across time and space- drawing them into a larger fight and providing Stark the cover he needed to return to his team with the hammer.[1]
Agreeing that they needed to rescue the captured Ghost Rider and his Deathlok companion, Stark and his team devised a plan to break into the prison and make contact with the heroes. Ant-Man shrank down and was able to enter through the walls of the Ghost Rider's cell; only to be informed the Reyes and his Deathlok weren't interested in a rescue. Quickly changing gears, Stark shifted the rescue mission to instead support Reyes' plan to overthrow the Wastelord- while Wonder Man assaulted the War Machine garrison and Ghost Rider engaged the Black Skull one-on-one, Stark went sub-atomic, smaller than he had ever accomplished before, providing the wind-up running start to the "biggest punch in the history of the planet"- sprinting from sub-atomic to gigantic size and throwing all his momentum into a strike that left the Black Skull stunned long enough for Reyes to make his own move- using his newfound powers to pilot the Symbiote, stripping it from the Skull and finally defeating him.[2]
Any celebration of victory was short-lived, as the defeat of the Black Skull caused a coalition of the Masters of Evil's Red Skull variants to pour through the dimensional portal, having declared that whoever killed the Avengers and remained last Skull standing would take the original's place as the new Wastelord. Before the Skulls could overwhelm Ant-Man and his allies, the battle was joined by another third party, the Goddesses of Thunder, descendants of Odin whose own Mjolnir was called forth by the Mjolnir Stark had previously released. The Goddesses quickly tipped the scales in the resistance's favor, and Stark and his allies were able to repel the Skulls back into their portals and return them to their home dimensions. After supervising the complete destruction of the War Machines, Stark found that learned that the Masters of Evil were still out there planning to do to countless more worlds what they had done to his own. No longer feeling satisfied with saving only his own world, Stark chose to get into Reyes' Hell Charger and join the Ghost Rider and Deathlok on their odyssey across the multiverse, planning to stop the Masters of Evil one Earth at a time.[3]
Stark would later help recruit various Avengers throughout the Multiverse. He fought with the other Avengers to fight against the Council of Red when the attacked Avengers Tower.[4]Attributes
Powers
Abilities
Paraphernalia
Equipment
- Ant-Man's Suit: Ant-Man goes into battle wearing a high-tech suit of armor that includes a retractable helmet with numerous built-in HUD features, jet boots capable of flight and storage for his arsenal of shrunk down weaponry and gadgets.
Weapons
- Knowhere Gun: The severed head of a Celestial discovered by Stark on one of his digs, the Knowhere Gun has decayed and lost nearly all of its sentience and power; but still releases an incredibly damaging barrage of energy when the skull begins to scream. Weaponizing this, Stark carries the shrank down head in his arsenal, and has tinkered with it to form an attachment to his pistol, allowing him to fire the Celestial's waves with the pull of a trigger.
Transportation
- Shellhead: Serving as both transportation and bodyguard, Shellhead the Iron Ant is a mechanical drone constructed by Stark and operated separately by an artificial intelligence, allowing Ant-Man and Shellhead to operate independently in combat. The mechanical ant is capable of flight, relic storage and contains a number of excavation tools, making it a vital part of Ant-Man's archeological work as well as a combat tool or form of transportation.
See Also
- 18 appearance(s) of Anthony Stark (Earth-21170)
- 1 mention(s) of Anthony Stark (Earth-21170)
- 17 image(s) of Anthony Stark (Earth-21170)
- 4 quotation(s) by or about Anthony Stark (Earth-21170)