'Ant-Man and the Wasp': Who Were the Comic Creators Thanked in the Credits?

Ant-Man and the Wasp, starring Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, is in theaters, and you know what that means: a look back at the names who made the characters great.

But the corporate overlords at Warner Bros. and Disney bristle at using phrases like "created by" in the credits, so down toward the end of the music, before the last post-credits scene, each movie tends to have a "special thanks" section dense with the names of comic book writers, artists, and editors.

So, who were the comic book creators named in the Ant-Man and the Wasp credits?

John Byrne and David Michelinie may not have created Ant-Man, per se, but they did create the Scott Lang version of the character who serves as the lead for the movies. Both of them have long, storied careers, with Michelinie best known for his runs on The Amazing Spider-Man and Iron Man, while Byrne had legendary runs on Uncanny X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and Superman. Byrne was responsible for the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman reboot The Man of Steel, which set a new standard for the character (and years later, Michelinie would write Action Comics with artist Kieron Dwyer, whose mother had briefly been married to Byrne.

Olivier Coipel is a longtime Marvel artist who has worked on things like Brian Michael Bendis's run on New Avengers, the event miniseries Siege, and Civil War spinoffs.

Longtime Marvel editor Tom DeFalco wrote the Ant-Man Season One graphic novel in 2012, which has a bit of a symbiotic relationship with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. An original story set outside of, but essentially compatible with, either the movies' or the comics' continuities, Season One was one of a number of books released around the time of the Avengers movie in the hopes of getting casual fans who enjoyed the movies to give the comics a try.

Al Feldstein and Joe Maneely, Golden Age creators who worked with Marvel's predecessors Atlas Comics and Timely, created the character of Jimmy Woo, one of the first Asian heroes in comics. Woo, played in Ant-Man and the Wasp by Randall Park of Fresh off the Boat fame, was the FBI agent who squared off with The Yellow Claw in a comic named for the villain rather than the hero. While many Golden Age characters have fallen into disuse and/or the public domain, Jimmy Woo never did, appearing sporadically in Marvel's superhero titles over the years. He worked at one point for SHIELD and was notably a member of the anti-Godzilla task force in Marvel's Godzilla comics. Maneely died young, the victim of a commuter train accident in 1958, while Feldstein lived until 2014 and made his reputation not with Marvel but with EC Comics, where he was the soul of MAD magazine.

Ron Frenz worked with Tom DeFalco on A-Next, a series launched in the '90s as part of Marvel's MC2 imprint ostensibly featuring "the next generation of superheroes." The series featured, among other things, Cassie Lang's first outing (even if it wasn't canonical) as the costumed heroine Stinger.

Along with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Ernie Hart is credited with the creation of The Wasp, one of Marvel's first major female superheroes. Her legacy of firsts carried over into the feature films, where The Wasp was the first woman to have her name in the title of a Marvel film. Hart provided scripts over Stan Lee's plots and Jack Kirby's art in the early Ant-Man stories, but left the industry in 1969.

Iron Man co-creator Don Heck, who also drew several early Ant-Man stories and had a long run on The Avengers that featured characters including Ant-Man and the Wasp at various points, gets a mention in the credits -- a relative rarity for older creators not thought of as creating or originating a character or storyline.

Prolific writer and editor Tony Isabella, best known as the credited creator of Black Lightning, also brought some diversity to the Avengers when he reinvented Dr. Bill Foster (originally created by Stan Lee and Don Heck) into Black Goliath (later, just Goliath). Credit for the creation of Black Goliath goes to Isabella with George Tuska, an artist whose contributions go back to before Marvel was called "Marvel" and who drew for the notorious pre-Comics Code publication Crime Does Not Pay. He also, later and less controverisally, drew DC's Masters of the Universe.

Bob Layton and David Michelinie (more on him above) created the character of Ghost (the film's main physical villain) during their run together on Iron Man. Layton, also a longtime writer and editor, is responsible for co-creating some of the most important Iron Man characters in the canon, including some who have made it into previous Marvel films.

Comic book artist Jorge Lucas has worked on characters like Black Panther, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and more. He and writer John Jackson Miller were responsible for the creation fo sleazy businessman Sonny Burch, played here by Walter Goggins.

Nick Spencer wrote a recent (beginning in 2015) and acclaimed run on Ant-Man comics for Marvel, including transitioning the character of Cassie Lang into "Stinger." Much of Spencers' work has been done with artist Ramon Rosanas, who also made the credits.

Iconoclastic comics artist Jim Steranko defined how spy stories work in Marvel for years to come with his beloved run on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. During his time drawing stories in Strange Tales, he helped shape the visual language of minor Marvel characters like Ant-Man.