With Ant-Man and the Wasp now out in theatres it’s hard to not see Scott Lang, Hank Pym,
and Hope and Janet Van Dyne as the heroic characters they’re portrayed as in the MCU.
While the Ant-Man and Wasp characters have typically always been on the side of good,
in the comics, they’ve got a complicated and sometimes dark past that didn’t make
it onto the big screen, and probably never will.
There’s many a good reason why the Ant-Man we’re watching in movie theatres is Scott
Lang rather than Hank Pym.
So today, we’re diving into those details and taking a look at the skeletons in their
closets with our list of the top 10 things Marvel doesn’t want you to know about Ant-Man
and the Wasp.
10 Yellowjacket In the first Ant-Man film, the villain was
Yellowjacket, aka Darren Cross, who worked for Pym Technologies and was obsessed with
proving himself to be better than Hank.
But, in the comics, the first Yellowjacket was actually Hank Pym himself.
While he’s had many an alias in the past, Pym became Yellowjacket as a result of his
declining mental health; he had a mental breakdown that was attributed to schizophrenia, a condition
he apparently gained when accidentally inhaling some mind-altering chemicals which led him
to creating this more bold, cocky and confident hero.
When he first hit the scene, after stopping a robbery and advising the press on how to
spell his name right, he went to the Avengers Mansion, demanded membership, claiming to
have killed Hank Pym.
He then fought the Avengers, kidnapped Janet, and then back at his secret lair, he makes
out with her, which is how she figures out he’s Hank.
9 Ultron The reason why Hank had a mental breakdown
and eventually turned into Yellowjacket is because of Ultron.
In the comics, Hank Pym is the one who creates Ultron rather than Tony Stark as is depicted
in the MCU.
There was a point when Hank began working more in the field of robotics, and decided
to creating a living robot.
That robot was Ultron, who soon intellectually surpassed Hank, rebelled against him, and
fought the Avengers.
As you can imagine, it cause Hank a lot of grief and stress, but at that point, the Avengers
didn’t know he was the one responsible for the robot’s creation, and Hank had blocked
it out of his memory.
Ultron would then surface again, part of a super villain team he brought together known
as the Crimson Cowl.
This is when The Vision showed up, created by Ultron, who would then help them defeat
Ultron, all while unraveling the truth that Hank had been the one behind the homicidal
robot’s creation.
This truth forced Hank into a nervous breakdown; the second in his history in the comics.
8 Pymtron In Uncanny Avengers issue 4, vol 3, we see
the return of Hank Pym, who, during the Avengers Rage of Ultron story arc, had been merged
with Ultron, creating Pymtron.
At the time, it was ahead of secret wars and the all new all different reboot that Marvel
did, so many were unsure as to whether Pymtron would actually exist moving onwards.
But turns out it, he did, and he returned as one of the good guys.
And it was weird as f***.
Ultron was basically using Pym’s body as a vessel.
He’s essentially wearing his ‘fathers’ skin over his body and pretending to be him.
So yeah, probably not gonna make it into a MCU film anytime soon.
7 Hope’s Origins In the main Marvel continuity, Hank and Janet
never have kids.
Their marriage is turbulent at best, and it never actually results in them having any
children.
So where does the name Hope come from?
Hope actually exists in a different line of continuity; the MC2 universe, where she’s
initially a super villain known as the Red Queen.
She’s also the daughter of Hank and Janet, and has a twin brother named Henry Pym Jr
who operates under the alias Big Man.
These two have been with a team called A-Next, who the public refer to as the next generation
of Avengers.
After Hank and Janet have died, the twins go after A-Next, use their parents fortune
to put together a super villain team known as the Revengers, and ambush them.
Hope in particular doesn’t like Cassie Lang, Scott Lang’s daughter, feeling that she
deserves to be the rightful heir to Ant-Man’s legacy instead, so she tries to torture her.
6 Their Marriage Speaking of Hank and Janet’s marriage, the
two tied the knot again when he returned as Yellowjacket.
But, like all things Yellowjacket, it was under weird circumstances.
So remember how Hank as Yellowjacket kidnapped Janet?
Well, when the Avengers finally caught up to them to rescue her, she announced she was
going to marry him.
When the wedding took place, Hank was still in a very unstable condition, not even really
certain of his identity as Hank, which would later led Janet to feel a lot of guilt towards
having him marry her, despite constantly reminding him that their marriage was in fact legal.
There’s even some great panels of Janet oddly kissing Hank who had enlarged his body
while explaining to a reluctant Hawkeye that everything was totally fine and okay and he
should just really chill out some more.
5 Hank’s Origin Hank Pym’s origin story could help explain
why he’s had such a rough time in terms of his mental health.
His father was cruel to him, his grandmother was the only family member who ever believed
in him, and when he fell in love for the first time with a biochemist, she ends up getting
murdered on a trip to Hungary.
This is when his first nervous breakdown happened, which actually gave him the drive to create
the Pym Particles.
4 Suicidal While Hank in the MCU was going through a
tough time during the years that Janet was lost in the Quantum Realm, his struggle arguably
hasn’t been as messy or complicated as his comic counterpart’s.
It’s even gotten to the point where Hank became suicidal.
Back in West Coast Avengers vol 2 issue 17, after all of that craziness occurred when
Hank was Yellowjacket, Hank had moved on to the West Coast Avengers to act as an advisor.
Seems fairly restrained, right?
Compared to fighting crime.
But turns out it still had its fair share of turmoil; Hank ended up being taunted by
an old adversary, Whirlwind, who got under his skin by calling him a failure.
This prompted Hank to want to commit suicide, and he even wrote goodbye letters, but he’s
prevented from carrying through with it when Firebird sends him off on a mission.
3 Eric O’Grady While Hank Pym and Scott Lang are the most
well-known individuals to take up the Ant-Man mantle, there’s actually been a third character
in the comics to shrink down to the size of an insect.
That individual is Eric O’Grady, and he’s a complete piece of s***.
O’Grady has a pretty awful track record when it comes to being a superhero.
He also became Ant-Man by stealing the suit except for the circumstances he did it under
were significantly worse; he was a subpar agent who worked at SHIELD, whose best friend
and roommate Chris, another agent, was tasked with guarding the suit by wearing it.
When he died, he stole it off his corpse.
He would later go on to sleep with Chris’ girlfriend, get her pregnant, mutilate another
agent’s face with his jetpack, and then use his powers to get laid.
If he couldn’t get a girl to sleep with him after their date, he would shrink down,
follow them home and watch them undress.
At one point, he even snuck into Carol Danvers shower when she was Ms Marvel.
So yup, he was a mega perv.
He also got killed in battle, but no big loss there.
2 Kill the Avengers Hank’s history of poor mental health should
be pretty obvious by now.
In issue 212 of Avengers back in 1981, the superhero team went up against a villain known
as Elfqueen.
She had stopped attacking them and was speaking to Captain America when Yellowjacket attacked
her.
This led to the team court-martialing him, and fearing that he would be kicked off the
team that he actually helped found, he concocted a crazy scheme to make sure that he would
still remain as one of the members.
This involved creating a robot to attack the Avengers, with the intention of him swooping
in and saving them, therefore showing that they really needed him, redeeming himself.
When the robot did attack them, it turns on Hank as well, and Wasp ends up being the one
who disables it.
1 Wife Beating That’s definitely something we’ll never
see in a Marvel movie.
But it’s something that happened in the comics.
In that same Avengers issue 213, Hank Pym struck his wife Janet.
This was because of our last point; when Janet found out about Hank’s plan, in retaliation,
he struck her.
She had been begging him not to go through with it, and his response was to backhand
her, telling her to shut up, and that he had to do it and “save the say right before
their eyes!”
After his plan fails, he ends up leaving on his own, disgraced by his actions.
Years later, Jim Shooter, who was the editor in chief at Marvel at the time, would write
an article for his blog titled Hank Pym Was Not a Wife Beater, claiming that the initial
plan for the comic was that him hitting Janet was meant to be an accident, but the artwork
came out much stronger than he wanted and it was too late to change it.
But considering that Hank literally says, “All you’ve got to do is play along and
keep your mouth shut!
Got that?”
after he beats her, and shows zero remorse, the panels beg to differ.
There we have it friends!
How many of these facts about Ant-Man and the Wasp did you already know?
And how many of them surprised you?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know all of your feels.
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