The Giant Ant Invasion (comic story)

The Giant Ant Invasion
Main character(s):	Steve Zodiac
Featuring:	Venus, Matic, Zero
Main enemy:	Piil, Truen
Main setting:	Washington DC and New York City, 2065
Key crew
Publisher:	City Magazines
Editor:	Alan Fennell
Release details
Printed in:	TV21 27-33
Release date:	24 July - 4 September 1965
Format:	7 parts - 14 pages
Fireball XL5 crossover stories
← Previous	Astra's Final Battle
Next →	Icemen of Space

The Giant Ant Invasion was a Fireball XL5 comic printed in TV Century 21 in 1965.

Continuing directly on from the previous crossover Astra's Final Battle and resolving the cliffhanger from that story, The Giant Ant Invasion also mentioned the planet Astra, first introduced in The Rescue.

Summary

to be added

Characters

• Steve Zodiac
• Matthew Matic
• Venus
• Commander Zero
• Piil
• Truen
• Mouse

Worldbuilding

• After killing a giant butterfly and a giant mouse in AE7, which both soon revert to their normal sizes, Steve comments that the whole ship reeks of death.
• Space City is five thousand miles away from New York City.
• Steve uses a hoverjet to reach New York after hearing about its enlarged animals.
• Dogs, seagulls, sparrows and ants are among the creatures affected by Piil and Truen.
• K106 is one of the aircraft kept in the Air Museum near the heliport, but Steve and Venus elect to use a 1965 jet fighter to escape the horde of ants.
• As Washington DC is being beseiged, Steve proclaims that the war with the ants is the "deadliest [they'd] ever fought".
• Matic pinpoints Piil and Truen's space station to Area Green 11 in Sector 17. Robert pilots Fireball there and they use planatomic missiles to destroy it.
• Matic determines that the hyper-high frequency radio waves used in space communication counteracts Piil and Truen's beam thus protecting Space City.

Story notes

• Like most of TV Century 21's The Daleks comic stories from the same era, this comic serial was not given a title in the pages of TV Century 21 during its original printing; the title instead comes from later reference sources.
• By featuring Piil and Truen, as well as by containing references to a previous meeting between Steve Zodiac and the duo, The Giant Ant Invasion is a sequel to the earlier comic story The Vengeance of Saharis!. As it contained no DWU elements, however, it is not covered by this Wiki.

Continuity

• Fireball XL5 is returning to Earth from Astra. (COMIC: Astra's Final Battle)
• The Press Agency reported sightings frogs twenty-five feet high and mass battles between twelve foot rats and twenty foot cats during the crisis. (COMIC: The Penta Ray Factor)