Do writers hate Hank Pym Ant-Man?

[Michael Watkins]

What I find amazing about this thread is the number of people treating the work of creators as if it were a person. Hank Pym isn't an abuser, or anything else. It's a character.

it's an abusive character with fans and people who become angry when it's pointed out that the abusive fictional character beat up his fictional ex wife.

[Ultimate Captain America]

The "it's just a fictional character" argument can go two ways. As a fictional character, the morally principled Henry Pym is not any more "correct" than the wifebeater Henry Pym or the modern Pymtron. The character is whatever the writers want him to be, and if they want him to be a wifebeater fused with a killer robot... a wifebeater fused to a killer robot he's gonna be.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

What I find amazing about this thread is the number of people treating the work of creators as if it were a person. Hank Pym isn't an abuser, or anything else. It's a character.

Abusers in real life also have characters or characteristic traits like any human being does.

I mean it baffles me that so many people are in denial of the truth of Hank Pym being abusers. In real life abusers aren't monsters like Orcs and so on. Women don't marry people purely because the men they fell in love with were always evil. The truth is people who are otherwise decent, capable, and even genuinely good in some respects are just as capable of becoming wife abusers as the other kind.

The fact is Hank Pym is both a superhero and an abuser.

The better question is why writers have so often focused on this change made to the character after nearly 30 years of publication, over 30 years ago.

Because it was part of the best story that Hank Pym was ever part of. It's his essential defining story as a character of superhero fiction. Whereas Peter slapping MJ is part of one of the worst stories of Spider-Man's history and as such is not a defining element of the character.

The quality of the story is what really counts.

Hank Pym is the superhero who is a total f--k up, a hot mess, a self-destructive a--hole. That's who he is. That gives him a unique niche in Marvel that nobody can really fill. Spider-Man can fail but never to the extent of being totally demoralizing, Daredevil too but never too far. But Pym...he can hit rockbottom and then keep digging.

Nobody has ever done a story with a redeemed Hank Pym that was of a qualtiy comparable to the original "Hank slaps Janet" Saga (Avengers #211-230).

My suspicion is that Pym didn't have as firmly grounded an origin as characters like Spider-Man or Captain America.

He was never a big enough hero to be in the same sentence as them.

Yes, we know the history, but what the character was about was retrofitted several times.

Yes definitely. Hank Pym had numerous personality shifts, and the way Roy Thomas wrote him in his run already established that Pym was the hero who "could f--k up a cup of coffee". He came up with Ultron essentially in his sleep, and then got mind-erased by his own creation. Then he was so insecure about Janet that he created a proto-90s edgelord personality like Yellowjacket to basically bridesteal her.

He hardly went on adventures near the end while Janet was pulling the weight of the partnership.

The fact that his relationship with Janet exists because Janet is a younger doppelganger of his first wife, who is Hank's true love, also means that their relationship never began in a healthy place.

[MichaelC]

Pym really shouldn't be blamed for Ultron, since he was just reverse-engineering Dragon-Man. Why does no one ever blame whoever invented Dragon-Man?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Pym really shouldn't be blamed for Ultron, since he was just reverse-engineering Dragon-Man. Why does no one ever blame whoever invented Dragon-Man?

Retcon. Introduced Later. Story not as memorable as the first one. Not referred to in general.

Obviously introduced to whitewash Hank and dial down culpability.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Pym really shouldn't be blamed for Ultron, since he was just reverse-engineering Dragon-Man. Why does no one ever blame whoever invented Dragon-Man?

You mean Diablo? He's acknowledged as a villain, yes.

[Triniking1234]

Making Pym or any other hero Ultron's creator was a weird decision.

Like it was probably cool in that time cuz comics are crazy but now we have to deal with omega levels of reaching just for character assassination .

[Frontier]

Nobody has ever done a story with a redeemed Hank Pym that was of a qualtiy comparable to the original "Hank slaps Janet" Saga (Avengers #211-230).

I vehemently disagree with that. Avengers AI, Hank's role in the West Coast Avengers, Busiek's Hank...I'd put those on par with that story.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Making Pym or any other hero Ultron's creator was a weird decision.

I heard that Roy Thomas did that because he needed a quick way to set up Ultron as an uber-villain, and the only scientist on the team he had was Pym.

I mean Pym's specialty is Particle Physics and to some extent, biology (the whole talking to ants thing), engineering, technology, and computer programming are out of his field, so him making an AI doesn't fit.

It does in fact fit Tony Stark better in the MCU because that's part of his own field and technology.

Like it was probably cool in that time cuz comics are crazy but now we have to deal with omega levels of reaching just for character assassination .

Pym isn't the first hero to accidentally create a villain. Batman threw Joker into a vat of acid, Spider-Man brought symbiotes to Earth from Battleworld leading to Venom and Carnage. But the thing is there are many stories of Batman and Spider-Man doing heroic stuff and great stuff to counter that one unintended and unforeseen consequence.

So that by itself isn't a problem. It's just that he doesn't have an act of heroism or a story of heroic feats considerable enough to counter that. The one example, him single-handedly beating the Masters of Evil comes at the end of, and in consequence of, him slapping Janet.

[Mary Jay]

Hank Pym is the superhero who is a total f--k up, a hot mess, a self-destructive a--hole. That's who he is. That gives him a unique niche in Marvel that nobody can really fill. Spider-Man can fail but never to the extent of being totally demoralizing, Daredevil too but never too far. But Pym...he can hit rockbottom and then keep digging.

Nobody has ever done a story with a redeemed Hank Pym that was of a qualtiy comparable to the original "Hank slaps Janet" Saga (Avengers #211-230).

Yes definitely. Hank Pym had numerous personality shifts, and the way Roy Thomas wrote him in his run already established that Pym was the hero who "could f--k up a cup of coffee". He came up with Ultron essentially in his sleep, and then got mind-erased by his own creation. Then he was so insecure about Janet that he created a proto-90s edgelord personality like Yellowjacket to basically bridesteal her.

He hardly went on adventures near the end while Janet was pulling the weight of the partnership.

The fact that his relationship with Janet exists because Janet is a younger doppelganger of his first wife, who is Hank's true love, also means that their relationship never began in a healthy place.

Again... I really wonder what stories you have read, because I didn't see that much of "total f--k up, hot mess, self-destructive" character you seem to have...

He felt insecure about Janet because he's always been insecure and self-conscious. And it's not like anybody reassured him about himself of made him feel adequate to begin with.

And, like Frontier said, there are several stories with a redeemed Hank Pym in them. People who discard them as not important or not popular tend to do so because they paint a good light on the good doctor, and God forbid it would.

"He hardly went on adventures near the end while Janet was pulling the weight of the partnership. "... near the end of what exactly? Their relationship? Again, WCA, Busiek...

I will concede the relationship maybe not have started from a healthy place... it was true that Hank saw a lot of Maria in Jan, that's why he kept her at bay at the begining of their partnership in TTA. As he got to know her better, that's when he fell in love with Jan herself, and not the memory of his dead wife. He never fell in love with her because she reminded him of his dead wife.

[Mary Jay]

I heard that Roy Thomas did that because he needed a quick way to set up Ultron as an uber-villain, and the only scientist on the team he had was Pym.

I mean Pym's specialty is Particle Physics and to some extent, biology (the whole talking to ants thing), engineering, technology, and computer programming are out of his field, so him making an AI doesn't fit.

It does in fact fit Tony Stark better in the MCU because that's part of his own field and technology.

Hank Pym is a biochemist first and foremost in the MU.

[Frontier]

I mean Pym's specialty is Particle Physics and to some extent, biology (the whole talking to ants thing), engineering, technology, and computer programming are out of his field, so him making an AI doesn't fit.

He built the Ant-Man tech on his own though, so it wasn't exactly out of his field.

[MichaelC]

Making Pym or any other hero Ultron's creator was a weird decision.

Like it was probably cool in that time cuz comics are crazy but now we have to deal with omega levels of reaching just for character assassination .

As others have said, it's been pretty standard for heroes to create their villains. Batman accidentally created Joker, Superman accidentally created Luthor, Spider-Man accidentally created Venom, and so on. The difference is people like those characters, so they forgive those moments as aberrations. Almost no one has ever liked Pym, so something that might give a more popular character a bit of color and angsty flavor, instead just finishes him.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

As others have said, it's been pretty standard for heroes to create their villains. Batman accidentally created Joker, Superman accidentally created Luthor, Spider-Man accidentally created Venom, and so on. The difference is people like those characters, so they forgive those moments as aberrations. Almost no one has ever liked Pym, so something that might give a more popular character a bit of color and angsty flavor, instead just finishes him.

Creating Ultron by itself didn't finish Pym. It's just that after that, he had a breakdown and became Yellowjacket. He kept changing his identities because he was insecure and reluctant about being an Avenger and being outshown by everyone. He was also in a serious mid-life crisis. And then he slapped Janet.


What that added up to was that Hank Pym was a character whose work/life balance was totally overturned, that he wasn't very functional, he was erratic and not the most competent individual in terms of being a superhero. It made him an interesting character for sure, but there's a case of being too interesting for one's own good. MacBeth for instance is a very interesting character but he's not really a very good king.

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.

[SuperiorIronman]

Why do we keep focusing on Ultron and the slap?

Both stories had the 15 minutes of fame and we keep retreading it despite every time it's brought back up it becomes more and more mediocre. Even now that we have Pymtron, writers have gone out of their way to avoid tackling the interesting elements of that and just made Hank into Ultron. I've said it before and I'll say it again for those in the back, we can always have another Ultron, Pym doesn't need to die to do that. So why keep bringing it up if everyone wants to move on? Pym went to prison and even died at this point what more do you do? Even if he hasn't had that many good stories to his name (which is a shitty reason to keep a character down if they're at least a good supporting character) you can always bring him back and do those interesting stories with him.