Choice one: unite with earth's Mightiest Heroes to fight the evil-est super villains. Choice two: lurk in a shower to voyeuristically peep on Ms. Marvel as she's soaping up her naked superhero body.

It's been nearly a decade since our ground-breaking investigation, "Sex Crimes of the X-Men." But now let me ask you this. If you had a superpower -- say, the ability to shrink yourself down to ant size -- how would you use it? (Remember, choice one is unite with earth's Mightiest Heroes to fight the evil-est super villains. And choice two? Lurk in a shower to voyeuristically peep on Ms. Marvel as she's soaping up her naked superhero body.)

Marvel Comics thinks the correct answer is #2, at least judging from The Irredeemable Ant-Man #7. "My 'Ant-Senses' are telling me that sounds unmistakably not unlike a shower running," announces the very bad teenaged superhero, Eric O'Grady. "I must go immediately -- to investigate." And then the gratuitous voyeurism begins - to the amazement of bloggers everywhere. ("It's followed by eight small panels of Eric O'Grady, sitting motionless on Ms. Marvel's showerhead and smiling....")

Marvel Comics was so proud of the scene, they put it on the cover of Ant-Man #7. (Note the phallic-shaped shower nozzle where Ant-Man is crouching...) For 20 bucks, they'll even sell you a 10-inch print of the infamous scene. In this 2007 "re-boot" of the Ant-Man character, the classic size-changing costume had now fallen into the hands of a horny teenager.

It wasn't even the first time Eric had pulled the peep-in-a-shower trick -- though the gimmick failed to boost sales, and the comic book came to an end just five issues later. But a few months later, Eric O'Grady somehow winds up at the superhero training academy in "Avengers: Initiative #8." He reminisces about his naughty ways with a supervillain-turned-drill sergeant named Taskmaster. And just to be a jerk, he attributes everything he did to his predecessor in the Ant-Man costume, the honorable scientist Henry Pym.

"They wouldn't let him join the Avengers, 'cause he was so lame, so... he hid in the mansion and pretended to be on the team. So he's sitting on the showerhead, watching Ms. Marvel soap up! I mean, what a perv, right?"

Unfortunately, Henry Pym's daughter is standing next to him, and her superpower is to make herself enormous. Soon she's stomping towards the teenaged jack-ass -- "thoom, thoom, thoom..." -- shouting "Stop telling lies about my dad!"

"Stomped by giant jailbait," mutters Ant-Man. "I know guys who'd pay to die like this..."

But ironically, now that it's three years later, somehow Eric O'Grady has teamed up with Henry Pym -- the old Ant-Man and the new one -- in a triumphant three-issue return of the Ant-Men. ("I couldn't be prouder that the heir to my Ant-Man identity is a man of such varied interests," scientist Pym says sarcastically.) But by issue #3, Pym is trapped in a laser-shaped box, and his only hope is O'Grady, who floats as a mind-controlled avatar in a strange virtual reality world. So what's the first thing O'Grady does? He turns his avatar's body into Ms. Marvel. "Yes!" the superhero smirks delightedly.

"If only I had time for a shower..."

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burton@pigdog.org