"I loved Ant-Man, but the stories were never really successful. In order for Ant-Man to be successful, he had to be drawn this small next to big things and you would be getting pictures that were visually interesting. The artists who drew him, no matter how much I kept reminding them, they kept forgetting that fact. They would draw him standing on a tabletop and they would draw a heroic-looking guy. I would say, 'Draw a matchbook cover next to him, so we see the difference in size.' But they kept forgetting. So when you would look at the panels, you thought you were looking at a normal guy wearing an underwear costume like all of them. It didn't have the interest."
-Stan Lee
HANK PYM- A LEGACY OF SUCK:
-Poor, poor Hank Pym. His auspicious origins as "The Man in the Ant Hill" made him one of the goofier Avengers right away, and I feel like ever since 1962, Marvel has had issues trying to fix their "Pym Problem". First off, they turned him into "Giant-Man" to make him tougher, but still jobbed him out. Then he left the team, came back, created one of their worst enemies, got marked forever as a wife-abuser thanks to a hilarious set of circumstances (he was literally mentally ill and ONE TIME slapped his wife, a professional superhero!), the writers have not been able to let that go ever since. And now his iconic Marvel Cinematic Universe self is... an elderly Michael Douglas playing him as an action-free inventor. He's the worst character on the original Avengers- a mediocre-to-good character amidst a cast of excellent ones, and comic book writers have spent 50+ years trying to fix that.
So let's do a deep dive into HANK PYM, shall we? Is he salvageable? Is the running gag of Thorpocalypse and I making fun of him fair, or unfair? Will the tears of his fans trying to defend him ever stop being delicious? WE WILL SEE!
The Origins of Hank Pym:
-Hank actually got his debut in a story OUTSIDE of superhero comics-
The Man in the Ant Hill, a seven-page science fiction tale featuring Hank as a scientist who is abducted by ants after he shrinks himself to their size. Created by the murderer's row at the time- Stan Lee, Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby- it sold well enough that Stan was like "well let's make a superhero out of him!". And so Hank Pym (note the non-heroic name) became "Ant-Man", one of many Shrinking Heroes (DC's The Atom was then a name), eight issues later. About a year later, Ant-Man received a sidekick/girlfriend, as his socialite gal-pal Janet Van Dyne became "The winsome Wasp". Later that year, in 1963, Ant-Man and the Wasp became inaugural members of The Avengers- a collection of all Marvel's biggest solo acts (aside from Spider-Man). So yes, oddly, Marvel's most powerful team now had TWO shrinking-themed members on it.
But things, of course, shifted rapidly. Stan & Jack almost immediately shuffled Pym's identity, as the very next month, he became GIANT-MAN, having used his "Pym Particles" to grow. He had a weird costume (little tiny "antennae" above his nose), but was at least powerful enough to gain respect... except from this point on, he became "The Third Strongest Avenger", at-best. The problem? "Growing Guy" is one of the biggest fall guys in comics. Because he's NEVER just "Team Powerhouse" (too many characters are Flying Bricks in this business), so he's always got to be the first guy getting his ass kicked by the new big super-villain. I mean, you can't just have Thor or Iron Man job out to Namor right away, because they're big-league heroes known for their great powers. Giant-Man, on the other hand, has the low-selling book, so you can cart his giant ass on out there to job out HARD to the Sub-Mariner, while he gets mocked for not being as strong as him, because hey, it still looks pretty impressive to send a 30,000 pound man out on his ass, right? Not helping things was the fact that Pym's OTHER key aspect- his Scientific ability, was not only equaled, but SURPASSED, by his teammate Iron Man.
The duo's
Tales to Astonish feature was easily the weakest of Marvel's '60s output, and saw such luminaries as talking ants, Communist gorillas and the Living Eraser. Problematically, while the Avengers was initially an "All Our Solo Guys in a Team Book" team, they cancelled the Giant-Man & The Wasp series in the middle of 1965 (their book NEVER sold well, even at the height of the Silver Age- they're like Hawkman & The Atom in that sense), meaning they essentially got demoted to "always Avengers" guys, meaning that if they weren't in an
Avengers book currently, they were out of comics PERIOD, like Hawkeye, Black Knight, etc. Not that many of these characters are BAD, it's just that if the current Avengers scribe doesn't care for them, they're up shit creek without a paddle, because you won't read ANY stories featuring them.
Pym Destroyed Forever- The Rise of Ultron and the Slapping of Jan:
-Hank & Jan left the Avengers in 1965, but he returned the very next year as "Goliath", with a blue & yellow el-generic costume. Hank creates a little device called "Ultron", and giving it full artificial intelligence... but it turns out to be an evil monster, brainwashes Pym into forgetting him, and returns as Ultron-5- a vicious, nigh-unstoppable menace. And in a completely bizarre set of circumstances, Hank develops schizophrenia after inhaling some chemicals from a failed experiment, and declares that he, as the new hero Yellowjacket, has KILLED Hank Pym, shocking the Avengers... and then he proposes to Jan, who accepts. This particularly asinine bit of "Superdickery" is explained that Jan realized it was Hank, and wanted to marry him, so jumped at the chance regardless. Yellowjacket went over REALLY well with some, as he used Blasts, acrobatics, had a smart-ass attitude (acting as a "Griefer", like many Marvel heroes before him), and had one of the best costumes of the era. Hank & Jan appear off-and-on through the 1970s, leaving the Avengers when H.P. Gyrich restructures them under government orders, returning and facing down Ultron yet again. Hank disappears from the book for a while, reappearing as Ant-Man and having one of his most iconic solo stories- a trip into the artificial innards of The Vision, making the most of John Buscema's art.
Eventually, however, Hank returns as Yellowjacket, but showcases a bizarre personality change, acting much more brutal. Yellowjacket had a further breakdown in 1981, eventually going mad and viciously slapping Jan in a fit of rage. And this right there destroyed the character forever. It's a hilarious bit of circumstances, too. Jim Shooter, who wrote the JanSlap in question, wanted a simple, accidental backhand to show Hank's continued mental degradation. But the artist, Bob Hall, trained to always go "Big Big BIG", ended up drawing a huge power-slap that rocked a lingerie-clad Jan across the room. Jan divorces him, and he is kicked out of the Avengers, and Pym is ruined for GOOD.
Pym Returns:
-A penniless, ruined Hank is manipulated by the villain Egghead and eventually imprisoned, but finally clears his name and is fully forgiven. The character retires from super-heroics "for good", and instead becomes a "Science Buddy" ally of the West Coast Avengers, wearing a red jacket and doing an interesting thing where he stops shrinking HIMSELF and instead shrinks a ton of tiny gadgets that he keeps in his pockets, and increases their size whenever he needs them. This unique approach to a "Gadgeteer Genius" hero was very inventive, and I liked it a lot. Hank stuck around in this form for a while, engaging in a short relationship with his teammate Tigra, but was eventually rendered suicidally-depressed and nearly killed himself- the heroine Firebird manages to bring him back from the brink, and he becomes mentally well again. By the end of the
Avengers West Coast book in the early '90s, he'd begun seeing Jan again!
But Wait!:
-The funny thing was... the '80s stuff tends to gloss over his complicated backstory and deal with him as a guy trying to make a new lease on life. So suddenly... he's guilt-ridden and navel-gazing again. He mopes over having invented Ultron, and has to deal with the shame of having slapped around his wife, with whom he's reconciled. Temporarily dying during the
Onslaught story-arc mererly puts this on hold, and he returns later, joining Kurt Busiek's
Avengers roster off-and-on. Here, Hank & Jan become side-members of the cast, with Busiek's most well-received story being the famous
Ultron Unlimited, in which an enraged Hank ends the battle by smashing his deadly "son" to pieces using the Anti-Metal brought by Justice. It's shown as a mentally-anguished man's lashing out at his greatest failure, and it was EPIC.
Despite that, he didn't really do that much afterwards. He and his "Yellowjacket" self were split up, but proved to work best combined, as Giant-Man was too emotionally bland and Yellowjacket too impulsive- the two were combined once more. And then... some weird stuff started happening. The JanSlap was never brought up in any of the issues I've read... but by the 2000s, suddenly it's a THING again. A generation of comic readers growing up having read him blasting his wife across a room, perhaps? Or maybe just people realizing that was the only interesting part of his decidedly mediocre career? Or maybe the rising internet fandom kind of looking back on this as a "Holy SHIT, remember THAT?" moment, when before fans would have less access to back-issues and wouldn't know the full story. In any case, the internet fandom would suddenly never let the JanSlap go, and neither would the writers, chief among them Brian Michael Bendis- THE new writer at Marvel.
Hank in Civil War & The Mighty Avengers:
-Hank later becomes an instrumental character during
Civil War, having had his relationship with Jan fail in a side-story. He would help build a "Clone Thor" that would cause great devastation, side with the Pro-Registration side as one of their top names, and lead up Camp Hammond, which trained new heroes. Oh, and he would soon be revealed to have been a SKRULL. The Skrull Criti Noll had taken over Hank not too long after Busiek's
Avengers run ended, and most of his actions since then have been about setting the stage for the
Secret Invasion story arc. At the end of the story, Noll is defeated, but The Wasp is killed in the battle. In mourning, the real Hank soon adopts her codename, becoming the Wasp instead.
So as I said, this was around when the JanSlap became ALL people talked about with Pym. Norman Osborn taunted him about it ("You still slapping women around?"). So then a writer tried to renovate the character a bit with
The Mighty Avengers. And unfortunately, it was that weird combination of "Trying WAY too hard" and "Everyone forgot about it as soon as the run ended". So Hank Pym is chosen, BY ETERNITY, to be the new "Scientist Supreme" of Earth. This ridiculous notion is because... I dunno, they didn't want it to be Reed or Doom or someone smarter. And Wasp-Hank is now this brave, smart, creative Leader Guy, leading the Avengers, winning tons of respect, and even having a bit that was infamous with another poster- a scene where Hawkeye cries out "Don't worry, everyone! HANK PYM is here!", and another where Jocasta, his new girlfriend, points out that dating the father of Artificial Intelligence is like "dating GOD". This ran around the same time as
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was on TV, and it was an excellent cartoon series that nonetheless was besotted with Hank Pym, pushing him constantly and giving him all sorts of ways to save the day compared to his more hapless teammates.
In the end, though, that book didn't make much of a difference. Hank was back teaching students in
Avengers Academy and seemed pretty normal there. "Eternity" was revealed to have been a deception by Loki, too. The awful, AWFUL
Age of Ultron story involved Ultron taking over the world in a dystopian future, ending up with Wolverine & Invisible Woman plotting to murder Hank instead- instead, Hank is able to create a computer virus to break Ultron in the future. Pym starred in
Avengers A.I., a book that couldn't have been cancelled any faster- it featured him, Victor Mancha, The Vision & a Doombot. The book's quick failure may have been the "last straw" for him, though, as...
Hank Dies, Then Dies A Couple More Times:
-Hank Pym is merged with Ultron during an accident during an attack, and is considered dead by pretty much everyone. An Ultron/Pym merger is a new villain and pops up a few times- it's shown that Pym is within him, fighting Ultron's influence. And then suddenly it's revealed that Hank had a daughter with his Russian ex-wife- the one he had married before meeting Jan, and this new girl, Nadia Pym, becomes the new Wasp. And Hank is now diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder, finally naming something instead of using all that "he inhaled bad science" explanatory stuff. But he's also totes dead, as Ultron/Hank is revealed to have wiped out Hank's entire life force, AND Hank's soul was absorbed into the Soul Gem! With it being stated that now he's totally at peace and thinks he's been freed, except he's NOT, as his "Soul Fragment" was devoured! So Hank is LITERALLY dead, his soul is obliterated, and he's almost in a factual form of Heaven. Now THAT's dead!
This not-so-coincidentally coincided with the Marvel Cinematic Universe's COMPLETELY different take on Hank & Co. In the movies, Hank is a bit of a weird scientist played by the very elderly Michael Douglas, and SCOTT LANG is the titular
Ant-Man. And Hank's adult daughter is the new Wasp, and Janet Van Dyne is a MILFy Michelle Pfeifer. And as Scott Lang moves into the
Avengers stuff, including getting the "Giant-Man" powers, it becomes a lot more clear why the comics wanted to de-emphasize Hank and push Scott.
So, Like, What's The Deal With Hank Pym?:
-Ultimately, the issue with Hank is what I said- he's a mediocre character in the position of a GREAT one. His powers are plain, and at best ended up with him being a huge Jobber, because his teammates were so much greater. His personality was bland and forgettable, so writers often resorted to a form "Self-Loathing" extreme even for MARVEL (being at various points navel-gazing, suicidal, schizophrenic, bipolar or guilt-ridden). The one-off JanSlap, never repeated, ended up sticking to him permanently for the hilarious reason that the character just wasn't good enough to surpass it. No, Hank is such a low-end character that he just
never ended up doing anything more notable than this.
It just goes to show you... you gotta be careful as a writer, or you'll accidentally ruin a guy forever, ESPECIALLY if they're one of the least-popular Avengers. Technically he can excuse it with the breakdown thing, but nobody's really buying it. Hell, this is actually COMPLETELY HARMLESS compared to the actions of many other superheroes- The Civil War resulted in a ton of death as the Pro-Registration side was beholden to numerous atrocities (ironically, Pym gets a pass for this since It Was A Skrull), and both Stark & Reed Richards have done many things that were morally-questionable. Several heroes have committed murder. Hell, PETER PARKER once slapped HIS, and not only was Mary Jane NOT a professional superhero and a good fighter (like Jan was- I mean, The Wasp can be relatively-expected to take a backhand to the jaw in stride, considering her job), but HE didn't have a legit psychological disorder at the time- he was just buggered-up from the Clone Saga!! But because Peter was such a strong character, and because that was only like the TWENTIETH most-retarded thing to come out of
The Clone Saga, Pete has since been given a 100% pass on that, and it's been wisely ignored since then. Not so for Pym.
So in the end, Hank's big problem isn't that he's a TERRIBLE character, because he's really not- there are hundreds of worse characters out there, and a dozen worse Avengers. The Problem With Pym is that he's just not a GOOD ENOUGH character- his comrades in the '60s were iconic guys like Iron Man, Thor & Captain America. He was replaced by Hawkeye & The Scarlet Witch. The Wasp separated from him and actually got upgraded to LEADER of the team. Later Avengers writers all threw in their iconic characters (Black Panther, Vision), Mary Sues (Mantis, Monica Rambeau) and assorted rookies... but Hank Pym just wasn't the equal of any of those characters. Not EVERY character could be a great one- Hank is hardly worse than Triathlon, Silverclaw or (barf) Deathcry, to say nothing of Gilgamesh or Dr. Druid. And because he's such a mediocre character, the only INTERESTING stuff he's ever done has been creating the evil robot Ultron, and slapping his wife.
He's just mediocre, often mis-written, and way too poor to be in the position he's in, as a founding Avenger and a guy who frequently gets brought up onto the roster. His legacy of failure, slapping Jan, and well... being a JOBBER? It's sucking to the point of legend, and that's why it was so much fun to trash the character. Thorp and I reveled in the "PymSuck" and how awful he was.
Another problem: Hank is redundant. Like I said before, he's nowhere NEAR as strong as Thor, despite being larger. He's a super-scientist on a team with Tony Stark on it, and later there are other smart Avengers. He's not a good tactitian, he's not a good leader, and he's not the best fighter. For character purposes: he can't be the Team Rebel (Hawkeye), Team Bad-Ass (Cage, Wolverine) or Team Joker. In short: Hank has NOTHING TO OFFER THE TEAM, as a fighter or as a character, other than being a big warm body who can possibly act as a Secondary Scientist and object of pathos & drama for his "hard luck" life.