Ant-Man is a forgotten Avenger. And he is incredibly underrated despite being instrumental in the founding of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes: The Avengers.
Ant-man origins
Ant-man made his first appearance in Tales to Astonish 27 but first as Hank Pym. It wasn’t until Tales to Astonish 35 that he debuted as Ant-Man.
Ant-Man was created by the legendary Jack Kirby and that other Marvel legend Stan Lee back in 1962. The character went on to have a large role in the Marvel Universe on different platforms. In comics, animation, and eventually the movies.
What makes Hank Pym so special is that he can shrink to the size of an ant or become as huge as the Eiffel tower. The Pym particles play a huge role in the Marvel Universe in all its variations so you could say that Hank Pym is one of the characters that form the backbone of the Marvel Universe because his inventions are needed everywhere.
But with that comes a dark side: Pym is also responsible for creating the mighty Ultron, an android made of the strongest metal alloy in the Marvel Universe: Adamantium.
Throughout decades Hank Pym has been several characters in the Marvel Universe ranging from Ant-Man to Goliath. The various incarnations also show the various phases of his life. There are incarnations, like the Yellowjacket, where he was depressed and emotionally distraught.
Together with the Wasp (his girlfriend and later wife), The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man, they form the Avengers and take on Loki in the very first comic of The Avengers. This makes him a founding member of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Differences between comics and movies
The Marvel Cinematic Universe uses the character of Scott Lang to portray Ant-Man. He’s a criminal gone good and just like in the comics he is an inventor and highly educated.
One of the differences is that Scott from the movies isn’t a movie buff as opposed to his comic book counterpart who would often cite movie quotes during a fight.
Hank Pym also features in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but this version, played by Michael Douglas, is an old man who cut ties with SHIELD. He’s lost his wife Janet van Dyne to the Quantum Realm and for 30 years he tries to find and release her back in the normal world.
Pym recruits Lang by putting the word on the street about a high-profile safe that needs to be cracked for valuables. When Lang cracks the safe, he only finds a motor suit.
When the police are on their way because of a tripped alarm, Lang puts on the suit and shrinks to the size of an ant, and runs for his life. He is picked up later by Hope van Dyne and Hank Pym.
They train Lang in hand-to-hand combat and to control ants. It turns out that Pym recruited Lang in order to steal the Yellowjacket suit because it was created by evil and was supposed to be used for evil purposes.
The Ant-Man’s partner is not Janet van Dyne but Hope van Dyne. The daughter of Hank Pym and Janet. Hope is a feisty woman who’s got smarts. She’s a great fighter and masters a combat style that integrates shrinking and blowing up during a fight. She completes Scott’s skills in terms of fighting. Scott uses his environment more rather than engaging in hand-to-hand combat.
Together they take on Yellowjacket, Ghost, and Thanos alongside the Avengers. The upcoming movie Ant-man: Quantumania will premiere in February 2023.
Ant-man, an underrated character in the Marvel Universe
Although the character is essential and hugely important to the Marvel Universe in all its variations, his own comic was never a big success. There are several reasons for that. People don’t like ants. Imagine going out in summer and you are swarmed by ants. That’s what ticks people off.
The second reason is that many of the artists were unable to portray the character in the comics. For instance, Ant-man shrinks to the size of an ant but it looks like he’s standing next to a table. In order to make clear that he is as big as an ant, the table should be gigantic rather than the regular size.
Stan Lee had the following theory about the low sales of the comic book of Ant-Man.
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 Conversations.
Ant-man comics that are worth picking up
Ant-Man works best as a team member which is what he is in The Avengers but also in The Ultimates. There are also comics, although few, where he shines as a solo character. Here are two of the comics that you should definitely read if you want to gain insight into the Ant-Man character.
Ultimates
In the Ultimates, an alternative universe, Hank Pym is a brilliant but arrogant superhero. And still one of the founding members of the Ultimates/Avengers. He is also a brilliant scientist but he has a very dark side where he’s prone to abusive behavior.
The Ultimates was supposed to be a restart of his life. But instead, when Janet gets a bit too close to Captain America, the two of them started to get into heated arguments.
I have to note here that this version of Captain America is a very aggressive one. Whereas the Captain America we are familiar with would stop when an enemy is down, this version would kick a man when he’s down because he considers it the only good moment to kick a man. This is what he does to Bruce Banner, who as the Hulk, trashed half of Manhattan.
It’s the same Hulk who humiliated Hank on national TV by beating him up severely.
So when Janet is in the hospital for domestic abuse, she was first sprayed with bug spray, and then she was beaten up, Captain America goes out to find him. Captain America beats the crap out of him and stripped him of his clothes and kicked his ass, once again on national TV. This made Captain America a hero for Janet and the two of them started a romance.
Hank was kicked off the team by Captain America and after the big humiliation, he started to date Valkyrie. Eventually, he was let back into SHIELD and did work for the Ultimates team but never again as a member.
When he caused the death of Magneto’s children by creating Ultron, Magneto retaliated by flooding the entire city killing millions of people. When SHIELD headquarters was overrun and he spotted Janet getting eaten by the Blob, he bit off his head and took the body to Tony Stark and requested to start up project Jocasta. This basically means that Janet’s mind was going to be transferred into the body of an android named Jocasta.
His fate is as tragic as the events described here because as soon he hands over the body of Janet, Hank takes on the invaders by letting them climb his body and drop into the sea. The explosion that follows kills Hank but he died knowing he did the right thing.
Avengers Origins: Ant-man and Wasp
There are other comics that are worth picking up. In Avengers Origins, for instance, Hank Pym is a loser who can’t get investors for his inventions. When he invents the Pym particles for shrinking and growing, he starts working as Ant-Man to fight crime with the ants.
His trusted friend Janet van Dyne, who he casually dates, becomes the Wasp when he implements her with special cells in her epidermis, she can shrink and she will have an antenna to communicate with insects and she will have wings on her back.
The comic is great because it is a prelude to what eventually led to the founding of The Avengers back in 1963. The comic is worth a read because it shows how the romance that led to the marriage of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne. And of course, Janet’s obsession with fashion is established.
Through decades Wasp always clothed herself fashionably because when you do catch baddies then why not do it while wearing high heels? Right?
The comic was released in 2011 as part of the Avengers: Origins series. It was written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and penciled and inked by Stephanie Hans.
Why I would recommend Ant-Man comics
I am a moderate fan of the character Ant-Man. I also enjoy the Wasp. The two of them together make for a lot of great stories but after so many comics where I have read that they are together, split up, got married, one died, and the other resurrected, I would say that everything you can do relationships-wise has been done.
And even if you do choose to have a variation on the character by swapping from Hank Pym to Scott Lang, you may have a different dynamic but the end result is just the same.
Having said that, the comics are a lot of fun. I enjoyed reading The Avengers when I was growing up. My favorite incarnation of Hank Pym is Yellowjacket. Especially when he is penciled by the late George Perez. That version of Hank Pym had determination and was a brilliant inventor. Despite his flaws, he was amazing.
The Janet van Dyne of that era was equally amazing. She wasn’t just a damsel in distress or a disguised sidekick but she was her own person and feisty. At some point, she was even leading The Avengers in an era where female leadership was unheard of. This makes Marvel once again ahead of their time and very progressive.
For that reason alone, I would recommend you read The Avengers from the 1970s and 1980s era. If you can get past the theatrical and dense way of writing then you are in for a blast. Mind you, the comic book writing that we know today was fairly new in that era and it just started out.
Scott Lang, the Ant-man that was used in the movies, is just as goofy as he is in the movies. Except that the comic book version has more depth when it comes to his personal life. For instance, the custody battle for Cassie spans quite a few issues while the training also takes more time. Ant telepathy and the shrinking and the combat take a while longer.
While I like Scott Lang for his movie trivia, I love Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne. And that’s just because I grew up with the characters.
