About
Eric O'Grady is a low-level agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who stumbles upon Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym's latest incarnation of the Ant-Man suit in the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. A man of very few morals and willingness to lie, cheat, steal and manipulate in order to get ahead in life, O'Grady immediately steals the armor for his own selfish plans, which include using his status as a "super-hero" to stalk women and facilitate his thievery. A running theme with the character is his evil side clashing with a desire to be accepted by others, which leads to Eric vowing to renounce his evil ways and become a proper hero, leading to a cycle of the character relapsing and vowing to "change".The Irredeemable Ant-Man
Mitch Carson is a S.H.I.E.L.D. security agent under Dum Dum Dugan and someone whom Eric O'Grady looks up to. During the "Enemy of the State" story, Wolverine attacks the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier and Mitch order Eric and his roommate Chris McCarthy to guard Hank Pym and the new Ant-Man suit. Pym walks out and they panic and knock him out. McCarthy accidentally runs off with the suit to escape Wolverine, but later when Electra attacks the Helicarrier a month later Eric finds McCarthy and steals the suit from his dead body, after being shot by a HYDRA agent Instead of returning the suit, he steals stuff, peeps on the woman's showers and tries to seduce, and accidentally impregnate McCarthy's girlfriend. Carson, originally trained to be the stolen Ant-Man suit's wearer, was forced to wear a hastily built prototype suit and track down the thief. Carson is able to track down O'Grady, but in the ensuing battle, Eric disfigured Carson's face by accident with his suit's jets, burning the left half of Carson's face and leaving Carson deaf and blind on that side as well. O'Grady took Mitch to the infirmary nearby to help the injured Mitch, but he still vowed revenge.
After escaping the helicarrier he then uses his powers to continue peeping and only saves attartracive woman who he then tries to bed. He eventually tries to sneak into Ms. Marvel's purse, now leader of the Mighty Avengers.
During a battle, Eric tries looting a jewelry store and encounters the thief Black Fox and steals his stolen bag of jewels. He reluctantly saves a girls life from rubble and encounters Damage Control's new "Search and Rescue" team.
After he obtains a fake ID under the name Derek Sullivan and comes up with the new superhero name Slaying Mantis, this organization offers him a job and he consents. He meets a woman Abigail and they start dating. He leases an apartment under his new name, and with Damage Control's help, begins to establish a new identity while continuing to hide from S.H.I.E.L.D. However, as Abigail begins to fall in love with Eric, she reveals to him that she is a single mother with a son. This in turn triggers Eric dumping Abigail over keeping her son's existence a secret from him while pursuing a romantic relationship with him.
Black Fox later shows up looking for the jewels. O'Grady, however, had already sold them to a pawn shop. The two work together, getting the $150,000 back and splitting the proceeds, with O'Grady keeping 15 percent. They form a close friendship afterward.
During a later confrontation with Abigail, she reveals that she possesses the power to read people's emotions telepathically. She promptly then accuses Eric of truly loving her, through use of her powers to scan Eric's mind for his true feelings about her. Before he can answer though, the Hulk attacks Manhattan. Eric reluctantly joins the fray by attacking Hulk from the inside of his body. However, Hulk's stomach and innards proved to be just as tough and Eric ended up being discharged through one of the nostrils. He awoke in a S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary, with Mitch Carson standing by his bed, stating that he was under arrest.
Carson takes Eric to a secret room aboard the helicarrier, and proceeds to torture him. While doing so, Carson reveals shocking secrets to Eric regarding his own sociopathic nature and how he has abused his position as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to cover up murders he has committed over the years. Just as Carson is on the verge of burning Eric's face with the suit's jet boosters, Iron Man arrives and subdues him. Eric uses Carson's confessions of past misdeeds to frame him for the whole stolen-suit fiasco, saying that he was only trying to stop him from using the suit for evil. Iron Man refuses to believe Eric, though Iron Man is quickly sidetracked by the arrival of the Black Fox (now friends with Eric after their first encounter). Black Fox demands that Eric be released and claims to have placed explosives on the helicarrier in order to extort his friend's freedom. Eric refuses Black Fox's claims to protect him from Iron Man, leading to Black Fox being arrested.
Several weeks pass and while Carson's fate is left unresolved, it is shown that Eric has resumed his post upon the helicarrier, having been offered his own job under unknown circumstances.Feeling guilty for Black Fox being in jail, Eric helps the elderly thief escape from the helicarrier, with Eric admitting that he was sorry for putting Black Fox through the ordeal of being arrested. Later on, Eric refuses Veronica's attempt to work out an arrangement for raising their child together, in part because of Eric's inner fear that he would be a horrible father due to his utter lack of morals or ethics. Meanwhile, despite their misgivings, Iron Man and Hank Pym reluctantly offer Eric his old Ant Man suit back after determining that none of the other candidates can control the suit to the degree that Eric has already demonstrated, on the condition of him becoming part of the Initiative, which Eric accepts.
Eric also has one last meeting with Abigail and tells her that he does, indeed, love her. However, he tells Abigail that he will be leaving for a while and wishes to be with her. While doing so, he hopes that he can be a better person. Before leaving, he tells her his real name.
The Initiative
In spite of his vows to Abigail though, Eric O'Grady continues his lewd and irredeemable ways upon joining the Initiative. He appears in Camp Hammond, as an official recruit for the Initiative, along with Crusader, Melee, Geldoff, Dragon Lord, Geiger, Red Nine, and Diamondback.
In particular, during his first meeting with Taskmaster, Eric attempts to slander the Ant-Man name of his predecessor Scott Lang by passing off stories of his lewd stalker behavior regarding Ms. Marvel onto Scott, as well as claiming that Lang was never really an official member of the Avengers and that Lang was simply hiding inside the Avengers mansion during his tenure with the team and following the group around as a hanger-on. Unfortunately, Scott's daughter overhears Taskmaster and Eric laughing at Eric's lies and attacks by growing to giant size and attempts to step on the human-sized Eric. Using his suit to increase his size to fight the giant-sized girl, Eric tricks Stature into thinking the hero Stingray had been stepped on and killed in order to knock down with a cheap shot, mocking yelling "Who's Your Daddy Now?". This in turn causes Hank Pym to grow giant-sized and attack Eric. However, as their fight begins to attract the attention of people outside the Initiative compound, Taskmaster brings all three of the giants down with his shield.
O'Grady is defeated by a clone of MVP, along with most of the recruits in his class.He hid under an unconscious Geiger and survived mostly unharmed. He hid from the rest of the action along with the Taskmaster.
Eric is later seen having a counseling session with Trauma helping him with a repressed "naked Santa" memory from his childhood.
When the Skrull invasion occurs in New York City, the Initiative are ordered to fight. Eric decides to avoid this by shrinking down and hiding. He soon discovers, however, that the Skrulls have taken over Camp Hammond. He aids the Shadow Initiative in a failed attempt to assassinate Queen Veranke.Escaping by once again shrinking down, Eric discovers the Skrulls' last resort plan: to open a giant Negative Zone portal, and have the entire United States removed from this dimension. During this time, Eric muses that the Skrulls planned for every possible complication that Earth's heroes might have created, but did not plan on a "one-inch tall coward" running around underfoot. Escaping the Skrulls on the back of one of their shock troopers, Eric brings the information to some of the remaining Initiative members, and they set out to stop the plan from happening.
Following the Skrulls' defeat, Eric is commended for his good work, and is promoted to a position in the Thunderbolts.
Thunderbolts
In their first mission, Ant-Man and Black Widow (Yelena Belova) sneak aboard, Ant-Man hidden in Black Widow's cleavage and take control of Air Force One with Norman Osborn, Doc Samson and the new President aboard. He secretly plants a gamma emitter on Doc Samson, causing the doctor to increase in strength and anger, and attack the President.
However, O'Grady began to regret his actions in the Thunderbolts but can't do anything since Osborn would have him killed. Paladin advised that he wait until Osborn inevitably goes insane and is taken down.Ant-Man later secretly witnesses Paladin, Ghost and Headsman turn against Mister X and Scourge when they are ordered to execute Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) and Songbird, then erase their teammates' memories. He later assists in the capture of Luke Cage by entering Luke's nervous system. However, when his teammates make no effort to extract him, O'Grady helps Cage to escape, later leaving his body while he is eating.
O'Grady becomes increasingly disgruntled with the Thunderbolts, and concerned for his future. In order to earn some goodwill, he helps Captain America escape from custody, asking that he keep this in mind in the future. Later, when sent with the rest of the team to infiltrate Asgard and steal Gungnir, he once again faces off with Stature.
After Scourge finds Gungnir, he attempts to take it to the Iron Patriot, but is stopped by Paladin finally having enough of serving a madman. Grizzly attacks Paladin and attempts to kill for treason but O'Grady shrinks down and enters Grizzly's ear canal, incapacitating Grizzly and saving Paladin's life. As the Mighty Avengers defeat what remains of the Thunderbolts, O'Grady finds Gungnir and gives it to Paladin deciding to take it to a safe place where Iron Patriot cannot find it. After the battle, O'Grady decides to re-evaluate the choices he has made and to do something good with his life.
Secret Avengers
Eric O'Grady is later seen to be a member of the Secret Avengers, using Hank Pym's classic gear. He was invited by Steve Rogers believing that O'Grady can be a better person.He's positioned as the rookie of the team teamed up with War Machine, who believes Eric's not worthy of the Ant-Man name.
In the arc of the opening four issues, Eric inadvertently stumbled upon a group of Shadow Council agents planning to blow up his team mates with a bomb, but was able to defeat them by detonating it early.
Ant-Man and Wasp
The story opens to Eric O'Grady riding high off his position with the Secret Avengers as a tool for sexual encounters with various women. Black Fox comes to him with info regarding A.I.M. to hopefully boost Eric's relationship with his own predecessor Hank Pym. When Abigail comes by, Eric admits his longing for a relationship with the intention of starting one, only for Abigail to find evidence of him being unfaithful. She leaves commenting he's improving as a superhero but sucks at being a person. O'Grady goes to Pym's lab, as Hank and Reed Richards discuss how to save their reality from being overwritten. Eric offers to help but is told to wait with his info. Eric waits and talks with Tigra knowing about his power abuse to peep on women and warns him not to test Tigra. Running into Striker, Finesse and Veil, Eric talks the ladies into private drinking party, where he passes out and they put shaving cream on his face before leaving him.
After a bizarre break-in, Eric is awaken to find Striker standing over him, who he blames for the shaving cream and starts a fight with him. Tigra saves O'Grady from Striker's powers, just as Pym then finally explains the situation believing Eric brought in an alien who stole from Pym. It's revealed Fox used Eric to create an entrance and exit for a thief to steal an object from Hank's lab, Eric takes responsibility and teams up with Pym to retrieve the stolen object. They travel together into the mindscape and awaken through an old man's dream. The thief uses dreams to travel and is being manipulated by A.I.M. agent Monica Rappaccini to steal "Heaven" (a virtual reality created to protect Bill Foster's consiousness) and to recruit Hank Pym into A.I.M. Hank spends hours escaping Monica's traps and torture devices, while Eric manipulates Anethesia into helping him save Foster by pretenting to sell out the Avengers. They stall enough for the Avengers to attack the cell and rescue them before Pym causes the enemy ship to teleport to Earth-9939.
Death and replacemen
On a mission against Father (the creator of the World facility) with the Secret Avengers, Eric is seemingly beaten to death by Father's henchmen while defending a child's life. He later appears to be alive, but is revealed to be a Life Model Decoy working for Father and helping him in a yet unknown plan, with the new name of the Black Ant.Black Ant is ultimately defeated alongside the other Descendants.
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