Ant-Man
Hank
Pym/Ant-Man (?) – “Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym was a brilliant scientist who
spent much of his time in his lab. At one point, he met and married the
beautiful Maria Trovaya. Unfortunately, when travelling in her home country of
Bratislavia, she was captured by revolutionaries, and, despite Pym's efforts,
she was killed.
One
day he discovered a process in which he would manipulate a newly discovered
group of subatomic particles through magnetic fields. Pym tested the serums on
himself, and had accidentally shrunk himself to the size of an ant and was
trapped inside an anthill. Once normal sized, Pym destroyed the serums,
thinking that they were too dangerous . He rethought his decision, and
recreated the serums, dubbing them "Pym Particles" and developing a
formula that would enable himself to shrink and return to normal size. He also
worked on a cybernetic helmet to enable him to communicate and study ants. Pym
was also working on behalf of the government to find to work on a formula to
help provide immunity to low-level radiation. It was then that several Soviet
KGB Agents broke in, attempting to kill Pym and destroy his work. Pym donned
the cybernetic helmet and newly designed protective suit, shrank himself, and
escaped outside, to the anthill. There, he gained control of the ants, and
attacked the agents and freed his assistants.
Pym
began to adventure as the hero Ant-Man, often running up against the villain
Egghead. About the same time, he created the robot Ultron-1,who brainwashed Pym
into forgetting this achievement and only revealed itself many months later,
becoming his archenemy. In the meantime, he was contacted by the father of
Janet Van Dyne to help him in his scientific experiments. Pym soon fell in love
with Janet, who reminded him of a young Maria. When her father was captured by
the aliens he was trying to contact, Pym as Ant-Man came to rescue him. Ant-Man
revealed his identity to Janet, and Pym convinced her to join him as his
partner, engineering her body to become his sidekick, the Wasp.
Ant-Man
and the Wasp were mistakenly called to battle the Hulk with heroes Thor and
Iron Man. When the heroes discovered that the Hulk was innocent and it was all
a trick formulated by Loki, Pym and the Wasp suggested they form a team,
combining their different powers to fight evil, and the Wasp named the team the
Avengers. Pym continued to fight alongside the Avengers, but soon felt
outclassed by the powerhouses of the team and created the identity of
Giant-Man. Later still, Pym proposed to Janet, and the two briefly left the
team for their marriage. Pym found himself back in the Avengers, creating
another identity of Goliath. Although he usually preferred abstain from
adventuring to stay in his lab, he continued to fight off-and-on alongside the
Avengers because the Wasp always wanted to.
Years
later, Pym, who was undergoing severe mental stress, had an accident in his
laboratory, breathing in chemical fumes. His sanity warped, and created a
fourth identity: Yellowjacket. He returned to the Avengers, kidnapping Janet
and forcing her to marry him. When he was confronted by the Avengers and
brought back to his right mind, Pym and Janet decided to let the marriage
stand. They adventured with the Avengers, and later, they enjoyed a brief
tenure alongside the heroes of the Defenders.
Pym's
mental problems continued to worsen. He returned to the Avengers, determined to
prove himself alongside the heavyweights of the team, which only added to his
stress. At one point, he struck Janet, and later, during battle with the
misguided Elfqueen, Pym lashed out at her just as she was about to surrender.
The Avengers began a court-martial process for Pym, who, losing his sanity,
created a robot to destroy the Avengers-- but built with a failsafe that Pym
would activate to "save" his friends and regain his status. The ploy
failed, and the Wasp, who discovered Pym's treachery, saved the team. Pym
promptly quit, and the Wasp filed for divorce. Pym was further oppressed as his
old enemy Egghead framed Pym for stealing nuclear devices, leading to Pym's
arrest. Egghead led the Masters of Evil in freeing Pym from his trial, further
implicating him in villainy. Pym soon defeated the Masters single-handedly,
redeeming himself, but he decided against rejoining the Avengers. Pym later
would ally with them when his expertise was needed. Over time, his relationship
with the Wasp was reconciled.
Later
still, Pym found his body could not handle the stress of constant
size-changing, and he retired from costumed crime-fighting. He still joined the
Avengers, however, when they opened their West Coast branch, in order to
oversee the facilities and the scientific research. Growing more despondent,
however, he soon decided to commit suicide but was stopped by their associate
Firebird (then Espirita,) who helped him to reconcile the two areas of his
life-- costumed crime-fighting and scientific research. As Hank Pym, Scientific
Adventurer, he would use the aura of Pym Particles his body produced in order
to shrink and grow objects around him, and he rejoined the Avengers full-time, often
acting as field leader.
Although
he stayed with the West Coast branch for some time, Pym soon found himself
actively adventuring from the New York mansion. Later still, Pym and other
size-changing heroes and villains were caught up in an invasion attempt from
the natives of the dimension Kosmos, the place where Pym particles stem from.
The outcome left Pym able to grow again but not to shrink, and he resumed his
old Giant-Man identity.
Continuing
to adventure alongside the Avengers, his relationship with the Wasp steadily
improved, becoming very platonic romantically. Their relationship hit a rough
spot during the battle with the time-traveling villain Kang (in actuality, Kang's
rival Immortus posing as Kang) when, in order to save the Wasp's life, Pym
performed radical life-saving experiments which transformed her into a
bug/woman hybrid.
Pym
was on hand with the other Avengers who seemingly sacrificed their lives to
absorb the energies of the being known as Onslaught. In reality, he was shunted
to another dimension. When he and the other heroes were restored to Earth, Pym
found that he was capable of his full range of size-changing abilities,
although he could not shrink and grow other objects unless he specifically
treated them in his laboratory. He and the Wasp also returned to their previous
romantic relationship.
Pym
helped reorganize the Avengers with the Wasp and their teammates, stopping the
menace of the sorceress Morgan Le Fay. He then agreed to stay on as a reserve
member, returning to his laboratory work full-time. Pym and the Wasp would join
with the Avengers on an as-needed basis, such as helping them thwart the
villainous Grim Reaper. During this time, Pym switched to his Goliath identity
once again.
Pym's
research was monitored by Ultron, who later kidnapped Pym and other of its
so-called "family." Ultron revealed that Pym had used his own brain
patterns as a template for Ultron's intelligence, and Ultron intended to do the
same with all members of its "family" when building a new robot army
with Pym's latest research. Ultron was confronted by the Avengers, who freed
Pym and allowed him to deliver the blow that defeated Ultron. Soon after,
Goliath and the Wasp rejoined the Avengers full-time.
At
one point, when investigating the machinations of the barbarian sorcerer Kulan
Gath, who had transformed a South American village into a version resembling
his native time period, Pym was transformed into a giant version of his
Yellowjacket identity. Although he was quickly restored to normal, the
reversion had unconsciously allowed the Yellowjacket identity to form for
itself a body out of the extradimensional mass Pym used to grow. Pym had long
sought to suppress the impulsive, egotistical Yellowjacket and instead rely on
rationality and prudence, and now the two sides of his personality shared the
same mass in the form of two separate bodies. "Yellowjacket"
surreptitiously helped "Goliath" and the Avengers escape Kulan Gath,
and he secretly followed them back to their Mansion headquarters. Soon,
Yellowjacket kidnapped Goliath, imprisoning him and taking his place as Goliath
among the Avengers.
Although
many of his teammates recognized "Goliath's" strange behavior, no one
suspected the truth. Yellowjacket would occasionally succumb to debilitating
pain, a stress of drawing upon the same mass. The strain eventually became too
much, and Yellowjacket began to fade away. Unaware of what was happening, the
Avengers found only one source of help, their former enemy, Jonathan Tremont of
the Triune Understanding. Tremont helped Pym confront the two sides of
personality, and he merged together to restore himself to normal. Pym rejoined
the Avengers and assumed his Yellowjacket identity once more, claiming that it
would be as Yellowjacket, the identity that gave him the most problems, that he
would face his problems and find out if he was truly cured.
Pym
and the Wasp renewed their romantic relationship, often taking time off together
like a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas. Pym again proposed to Janet van Dyne, but
she declined, fearing that he might one day lose control under stress. The Wasp
then began to explore different avenues of her life. She started to use her
size-changing powers to grow in size similar to Giant-Man. She also had a
dallying affair with her teammate Hawkeye, which Pym walked in on. The Wasp,
Hawkeye, and Pym avoiding come to terms with this uncomfortable new love
triangle, as the Avengers were suffered a series of sudden and devastating
attacks from friends and enemies alike, part of which resulted in She-Hulk
starting a rampage. The Wasp was summarily swatted aside and remanded into a
coma. When she recovered, she and Pym renewed their relationship once more. The
couple chose not to resume membership when the Avengers disbanded, and Pym took
an offer as a research scientist at Oxford University.
After
the Skrull Invasion, Pym adopted the codename Wasp in tribute to his deceased
partner and rejoined the Avengers, leading a team of his own. During the time
when his teammates were fighting the Unspoken, the entity Eternity named Pym
Earth's Scientist Supreme (the scientific counterpart to the Sorcerer Supreme).
Soon after Pym and his team defeated the Unspoken, they fought and defeated
Absorbing Man with the help of Norman Osborn's Avengers. Pym's Avengers were
previously deputized by agents of G.R.A.M.P.A., ensuring Osborn couldn't arrest
them, but that was only temporary. Pym would be asked to give aid during Osborn's
siege of Asgard, but he could not due to the return of Ultron.
After
Osborn's defeat, Pym was asked to be part of the Avengers Academy.
Janet van Dyne/Wasp (?) – “Janet
van Dyne was a daughter of a wealthy scientist named Vernon van Dyne. During an
experiment, however, an alien monster was unleashed and Dr. van Dyne was
killed. Her father's associate, Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym, had created a
substance called "Pym particles", which allowed the user to grow or
shrink in size, and had become the superhero Ant-Man; when Janet's father died,
she convinced Pym to help her, and he gave her a supply of "Pym
particles" and subjected her to a procedure which granted her the ability
to, upon shrinking, grow wings and fire blasts of energy, which she called her
"wasp's stings". As Ant-Man and The Wasp, they defeated the monster
and sent it to its own dimension, and had several more adventures together. To
the Wasp's credit her first solo victory, despite the protests of her absent
partner, was against the maniacal Magician.
Soon
afterward, the superhero team, which Janet herself dubbed the Avengers, formed,
and the pair were among its founding members. Although they took occasional
leaves of absence, the two have almost always remained members; during the
course, Janet grew as a person and several years later would be elected leader
of the team.
The
relationship between Janet and Pym had always been one of loving squabbling,
but her wealth and his research had always stopped him from proposing. One day
a cocky new costumed crimefighter called Yellowjacket broke into Avengers HQ.
He claimed to have disposed of Pym and even kidnapped Janet. To the outrage of
her colleagues, Janet then married Yellowjacket. A tension-filled wedding was
made even more edgy by an attack by the Circus of Crime. During the fight it
was discovered that Yellowjacket was Pym. He had had an accident with some
chemicals causing him a severe case of schizophrenia. Janet had realized this
from very early on and had taken advantage to finally tie the knot.
However,
her relationship with Pym became rocky, as he suffered a further series of
mental problems. A few years later, Pym had a complete breakdown, and became
completely paranoid. During the course of this breakdown, he became overbearing
and verbally abusive. At the nadir of his degeneration, he struck Janet, and
then proceeded to concoct a plan to make himself look good in front of his teammates
by staging an attack upon them which only he could stop. This plan backfired
and Pym was exposed, disgraced, and expelled from the Avengers, and the couple
divorced. She remained with the team despite these hardships, and after Pym's
mental state returned to normal, the two became friends again and, some years
later, resumed a romantic relationship.
During
the mental breakdown of one of their long-time teammates, Scarlet Witch, Janet
was knocked into a coma by an attack on Avengers Mansion. Hank watched over her
as she lay in the hospital, and when she recovered, they reconciled. The two
have retired from the Avengers in order to pursue a new life together in
Oxford.
Life
wasn't meant to be peaceful for one of the premiere heroines of the world for
there were enemies lurking everywhere. The shape-shifting race known as the
Skrulls had infiltrated Earth and replaced much of the population, including
many heroes, with their own people. Even Hank Pym was switched out and remained
hidden for years among those who knew him best, especially Janet. At the cusp
of their invasion, it would seem the Earth would fall into enemy hands, but the
Wasp along with every hero and villain left standing would face off against the
alien invaders. Unfortunately for the Wasp, the Skrull Hank was experimenting
on her and changed her into a biological bomb meant to destroy the heroes of
Earth. When she used her size-changing abilities to grow to gigantic
proportions, the Skrulls detonated the bomb, apparently killing Janet in the
process.”
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