Poor old Henry Pym

Poor old Henry Pym. One of Marvel’s first superheroes and founder member of the Avengers, the poor guy has never had the starring power of his team mates Captain America, Iron Man or Thor. His solo series was relatively soon replaced by Hulk and Submariner stories and unlike other failed superheroes he only got one more shot at success which failed quickly too. So he remained a dependable secondstringer in the Avengers, as Antman, Giantman, Goliath and finally Yellowjacket, just another costume in a line up. And then Jim Shooter made him into a wife beater, when he bitch slapped his wife and superhero partner Janet van Dyne/the Wasp, as shown above.

Which actually wasn’t a bad storyline, as Shooter heaped abuse upon abuse on poor old Pym: losing his place on the Avengers, then getting a separation from Janet, getting manipulated into stealing adamantium from the US government by his old arch enemy Egghead, getting caught and sent to prison, then seeing bloody Tony Stark seduce his ex-wife… All in service of a good old “break the hero down, then build him up again” story, with Pym eventually triumphing over Egghead and winning back the respect of his old teammates and Janet. And there he remained, to be used as a supporting character by other writers later on, most notably by Steve Englehart, John Byrne and Roy Thomas in West Coast Avengers.

But all of that changed a decade or so ago, as a new generation of Avengers writers decided that this moment, was what should define Pym as a hero. I blame Kurt Busiek the most for that, as he set that whole trend in motion in his Avengers and Avengers Forever series, but every writer since seems to want to characterise Pym as the wifebeater. You see that sometimes in superhero comics, when either a new generation of creators reach back into their own fan past to redefine their old favourites into what they should be (like Byrne did with almost every title he’s ever worked on), or through some external impulse like a big budget movie blowing new life into an old villain (as happened with the Green Goblin, redefined as Spider-Man’s greatest enemy when surely Doc Ock fits that bill as well), that one particular moment or story is set to be the real version of a particular character no matter how much said character has evolved away from it.

Pym got the short end of the stick and ended up redefined as a wifebeating douchebag endlessly trying to make up for his mistake. Which annoys the fuck out of me because I always liked him, as Antman/Giantman but especially as Yellowjacket. Worse, I feel this continued harping on this one incident, something that was clearly part of the ongoing soap opera of The Avengers at the time and which had long since been resolved, sort of trivialises real life domestic abuse. It had just become a character quirk, something to distinguish him from others, and it needs to stop.