Ant-Man, featuring a superhero that has the power to shrink/grow in size and gain strength as you do, comes out on July 17, 2015. The comic book superhero was created in 1962 as the character Hank Pym by Marvel Comics, and was one of the founding members of the Avengers team.
The quick and dirty of how his powers came to be: he discovered a sub atomic particle that allows for mass to be lost or gained to another dimension, and after a good deal of self experimentation he harnessed this power to manipulate his mass on command. As he shrinks, his human strength stays the same; but as he grows, his strength and stamina increases (1).
The name Ant-Man comes from the idea that he can shrink to the size of an ant, and after a comical run in with an ant colony when he was first experimenting, Pym decided to make a helmet that would allow him communication with ants and control their movements. This is achieved by a cybernetic means.
Now, what are the scientific similarities between Ant-Man and the actual insects? To communicate, Ant-Man would have to use chemical signals between him and the colonies to get them to listen to his demands, which conceivably could be apart of his cybernetic helmet. As for the strength disparity, ants can lift and carry things up to over ten times their own body mass, so as he gets smaller and the ratio of body mass to strength increases, it gets closer to that of ants. To address this as he gets larger, Ant-Man's strength and stamina increase as his mass increases.
Ant-Man is not our only insect inspired superhero! Ant-Man's partner in crime fighting and in his personal life was The Wasp, Janet van Dyne (2).
Pym used some of his technology to give van Dyne the ability to grow wasp wings, change in size as he could, and fire bio-electric bolts (which acted as her sting). The interesting insect parts of her are her wings, which are sometimes drawn correctly being a singular continuous wing, or drawn as a split smaller wing underneath. The class name for wasps is hymenoptera, literally meaning membrane wing for the way that their upper and lower wings are connected. She was also a founding member of the Avengers, and in November of 2013, Marvel.com rated her at number five out of fifty of the top Avengers, beating Ant-Man who ranked at number seven (3).
(1) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Pym
(2) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Van_Dyne
(3) - http://marvel.com/news/comics/21526/the_50_greatest_avengers_of_all-time_pt_5
All images are the property of Marvel Comics
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