Recapping Egghead's first battle with Ant-Man (In Tales to Astonish #38), we find that Egghead is still living in the Bowery flophouse where he ended up after his first defeat. There he is stirred out of his rantings when he overhears some crooks talking about Ant-Man and the Wasp. He approaches them asking them who the Wasp is, and after being informed in his old foes activities, Egghead talks the two thugs into helping him devise a plot to defeat Ant-Man, using his partner the Wasp as bait.

Egghead builds a device that scrambles the messages that Ant-Man's ants transmit and then develops the disguise of Professor Carl Striker, a Zoologist that specializes in insects and begins giving lectures to rouse the interest of Ant-Man and the Wasp. Later, after hearing about a local diamond cutter being given the Middleton diamond to turn into a pendant for Princess Elisabeth, Egghead formulates his plan. Planning a wasp exhibit at the local zoo for the next day, Egghead has the thieves steal the pendant (using his device to scramble the ant's impulses so that Ant-Man doesn't learn of the theft until later.)
The next day, Egghead stashes the pendant in the wasps' nest he has on display in the hopes that the Wasp -- intrigued by the exhibit -- will visit the zoo and hopefully discover the pendant and attempt to get it back. Doing so by herself (Because she wants to show Hank that she is a woman, "A woman in love!",) the Wasp is easily kidnapped. As per Egghead's plans she sends out a distress to Ant-Man who comes to her rescue.

Lured into Egghead's trap, Ant-Man battles a lizard, an ant-eater and Egghead's hired thugs, and manages to free the Wasp and the two of them defeat the crooks. However, during the battle Egghead manages to escape to plot his revenge anew.

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