I'm not sure what your point here is.
Batman being a harmful crazy person is starting to become how people normally write him now.
Even though just like with Hank it's BS that's limits the character.
I'm not sure what your point here is.
Batman being a harmful crazy person is starting to become how people normally write him now.
Even though just like with Hank it's BS that's limits the character.
The reason other characters get away with stuff is down to good writing and popularity.
If you have hundreds of comic books starring a character over decades with memorable storylines that make a character popular then people will overlook the one storyline in which a character does something messed up.
Batman has been written as a crazy jerk a lot of times and he has been called out on it.
Hank Pym has mostly had bad to good storylines most of his comic history. Not even the biggest Hank Pym fans would say he has had more than a few great stories. Like a lot of characters he has untapped potential. The Pseudo science behind his powers have only really tapped into it's potential in the last 10 to 15 years when some of the real world science behind particle physics started to be used by writers to do more interesting things with pym particle powers as our understanding and theories behind particle physics have become even more interesting.
Last edited by chamber-music; 12-30-2019 at 12:03 AM.
Ultron is certainly free of Pym now after the devondra incident but he seems as delusional as ever though it may of course be Slott simply ignoring the events of infinity wars to tell his story. Wonder when age of pymtron is going to be upon the MU.
they've had the opportunity to "explore mental illness." it isn't going to happen. Hank's just not that interesting outside of the wife beating. his best stories are actually Ultron's stories. they should just focus on making Ultron more interesting. he's been kind of dull as of late. might be because readers still see him as Hank Pym. Scott isn't a spin off. he's a correction and update to damaged brand. he was irrelevant because the writers were just as nostalgic about the lee/kirby era as the people on this board. they held Scott back. he debuted in the early 80s and wasn't offered an Avengers spot until Geoff Johns took over the title. this was after serving with the Fantastic Four and Heroes for Hire. after they turned their attention to Scott, Ant-man suddenly became marketable. they realized that a single dad (and he was one of the first) and reformed criminal (he was one of the first) had story potential. he kicked Doom's @$$ and hasn't beaten up a loved one. that has to count for something. good on Hank for passing the mantle to someone less problematic. it's too bad he didn't do the same with the Yellowjacket identity. i miss Rita.
David Michelinie created Scott Lang to be Ant-Man because at the time Hank Pym had undergone many identity changes -- Yellowjacket, Giant Man -- that the original Ant-Man identity had been left open. And Michelinie felt that the niche of the original stories which focused on a shrinking dude who could talk to ants had been abandoned by later writers.So Scott became a full-time Ant-Man.
This was before the slap.
So the preslapsarian (heh) Hank wasn't some great hero. He was a convoluted hot mess, and all Jim Shooter did was confirm Pym's hot mess status for all time. In the words of Shooter the Great:
Jim Shooter: "Before I embarked on the storyline that led to the end of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne's marriage, I reread every single appearance of both characters. His history was largely a litany of failure, always changing guises and switching back and forth from research to hero-ing because he wasn’t succeeding at either. He was never the Avenger who saved the day at the end and usually the first knocked out or captured. His most notable "achievement" in the lab was creating Ultron. Meanwhile, his rich, beautiful wife succeeded in everything she tried. She was also always flitting around his shoulders, flirting, saying things to prop up his ego."
I don't think writers hate Hank Pym. Current writers are either afraid to use him due to un-necessary drama that surrounds him now or they don't know how to use him.
Even after Hank slapped Janet, he was still being used because the readers of the time knew it was just comic book drama and reading how the character would recover from that event and getting arrested later due to Egghead would make an interesting read. Even his personas of Ant-Man, Giant Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket stuck around albeit on new characters.
Hank had presence on Avengers off-and-on more than other Avengers with no book until recently. It seems like the social media peasants and haters dug up the slap and that caused his presence to be diminshed resulting in Scott over-taking him cuz even when Hank was around with no codename he over-shadowed Scott.
"Cable was right!"
I don't think that comic-book writers hate Hank. I think most are just lazy. They don't bother taking characters in new directions for long, due to the almighty status quo.
So you get characters with certain "set points" that, no matter what happens, they always return to. Hulk always loses control of his transformations. Thing is never cured for long. Spidey's luck always runs out.
And Hank is always a screwup who can't move past his own mistakes.
The last time someone did something really unique with Hank Pym, IMO, was Avengers AI, but that story was lost in the muddle of the writer's pet characters. Even so, the "infinite game" scene was probably the best Hank writing in a while.