Many of us are old enough to remember Disney’s 1980s hit movie “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” Pitched to Disney as a kid-friendly horror movie originally titled “Teeny Weenies,” this campy, low-budget, kids B-movie about a hapless inventor who mistakenly shrinks his children with his “miniaturization ray” became one of the top grossing live-action Disney movies of all time. The grammatically incorrect title won the Dunce Cap Award from the Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature, also known as SPELL. When the scientist father accidently throws his shrunken kids out in the trash, the children’s ensuing adventures with enormous-looking ants, sprinklers, a sea of Cheerios, and the jungle of their backyard is pure genius. What made the movie so engaging was the revolutionary (at the time) special effects without the use of computer graphics of the miniaturized children in the real-sized world around them.

Fast forward to 2015 when Disney released another movie about miniaturizing a person from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Ant-Man.” Instead of a miniaturization ray, the size-changing particles were called Pym particles that bypass laws of physics to allow users to change their size at will. The particles were developed by the brilliant, but emotionally unstable, biophysicist Dr. Henry “Hank” Pym, who was an original Avenger. Along with Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man, Ant-Man appeared in Issue #1 of The Avengers in 1963. Ironically, Stan Lee tried to get the Ant-Man film made in the 1980s, but Walt Disney passed on the film in favor of “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”

Ant-Man’s superpower is to go “subatomic” and see things that humans normally can’t see. In this imaging issue, we explore our own ability to image smaller and smaller structures in our eyes. Our technology is evolving to image photoreceptors and even the health of mitochondria within our retinal cells. By imaging flavoproteins we can “see” mitochondrial dysfunction, which may help us image the biologic effect of newer therapies for age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. In another article, we explore the “sukima” between epiretinal membranes and the internal limiting membrane. Finally, the artifacts that can make interpreting optical coherency tomography angiography (OCTA) images are explored. Recognizing these patterns will help you interpret your OCTA scans.

For those of you who remember the 1990s, there were sequels: “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid” and “Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves,” and even a TV show! And for everyone reading this, get excited, because there is a reboot movie being made, tentatively entitled “Shrunk,” which brought the original star, Rick Moranis, out of retirement. Not to be outdone, the microscopic Avenger is also due for another movie in 2023. RP