By Zack Quaintance — I must confess that I don’t often like superhero comics that are trying to be funny. Or rather, trying too hard to be funny. I tend to think of these as books that require really voice-heavy writing to have anything offer. Strip away a couple pithy one-liners, the pop culture references, or whatever else — and these books have pretty much nothing of value. Not for me.

But! This new Ant-Man mini-series is not that at all. Look, I know humor is subjective, but this book is actually funny. It walks that fine line of superhero joking that I actually like. It’s not like this book is trying (too hard) to be funny. Instead, it’s mostly leaning into the utter ridiculousness that is inherent to superhero comics and not taking itself too seriously, while at the same time still working away at the usual structures, motivations, and tropes that make these soap operas with flying and punching such a fun and silly little hobby to follow.

Anyway, that’s my broader look at funny comics like Ant-Man #2 from writer Zeb Wells, artist Dylan Burnett, colorist Mike Spicer, and letterer Cory Petit.

Specifically, let’s start looking at the uh, hot panels (man, I need a new name for this thing). Panel 1:

This issue had me at the line…”I wasn’t always a sentient swarm of bees…I once was Fritz Von Meyer: Nazi Beekeeper.” What made this line even funnier was Ant-Man inadvertently teaming up with this character against a bigger evil while loudly telling everyone around they weren’t actually friends despite what it looked like. These are the types of jokes that can only work in self-aware comics, and I like them.

I also really liked a bit where Ant-Man made a friendly bee gigantic and it didn’t really go well for anyone. See below…

So yeah, I liked the first issue and now I’m still into this book because its jokes continue to hit my own incredibly specific tastes for what is funny in these books.

Click here for past installments of One Hot Panel.

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.