Issue(s): Tales To Astonish #42 (Ant-Man story only)
Cover Date: Apr 63
Title: "The Voice of Doom!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Plot
Larry Lieber - Script
Don Heck - Penciler
Don Heck - Inker

Review/plot:
Ant-Man fights a prototype of the Purple Man. Jason Cragg was a poor quality radio announcer who got hit with what i guess was radioactive radio waves.

Ant-Man defeats him by giving him laryngitis, which you can apparently pick up in bottle form at your local hospital.

As with the Purple Man, i question this guy's need to fight super-heroes. He can have anything he wants just by asking for it.

So why even bother provoking a fight with a super-powered foe? Cragg deliberately sets up a confrontation with Ant-Man, too: "I must test my mettle against Ant-Man!"

There's a cool sequence in this story. Ant-Man's helmet is what protects him from Cragg's mellifluous voice. But Cragg turns the crowd against him, so he has to hide in the grass. Then Cragg gets the brilliant idea to bring out magnets to pull up Pym by his helmet. Pym responds by taking off the helmet, but once the crowd finds it, Cragg knows he can now use his voice.

Pym is only saved because his ants apparently really are loyal to him (despite my previous suspicions to the contrary) and rescue him even though he's not wearing the helmet to control them.

We're left with the probability that Cragg's bout of laryngitis will leave him with a normal voice...

...but this guy will return years later as part of a group that includes a bunch of Pym's foes from these early Tales To Astonish stories. Since Lee and company didn't think Cragg was worth a super-villain name (unless you count the story's title, "The Voice of Doom!"), he winds up with the rather uninspired name "the Voice", so that's how i've listed him.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Voice

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Ant-Man vol. 1

He will also come back in the late eighties as an employee of the red skull in the skeleton crew (but I think he gets choked to death by the black queen)

Seems like a fatal error to put too much thought into these old Ant-Man stories, but it almost feels like Lee/Lieber are trying to illustrate the exact nature of Pym's influence with the ants--by having them save him without his command helmet but also by using Cragg as a foil ("see, this is what mind control looks like!")

Ah yes, the Voice. Prefer the Word a bit more (due to Ultima I suppose), but considering he commanded Captain America to "wank", he does have notoriety for what was originally a one-off Ant-Man villain.

Still surprised no one used his powers in some sort of "turn the media against the heroes" aspect, but I guess it would be too easy in a universe with JJ Jamison...