The Original Ant-Man!: Hank Pym Appreciation

[KurtW95]

Couldn't agree more. I wantd him to be the next one to join the Illuminati, but it's Banner that joined.

It would make more sense, considering they sent Banner into space and all. But before that, I want him back on a main Avengers team and back with Wasp.

[Nomads1]

I'd rather Hank remained the big brain that will oppose the Illuminati. Most of them have been shown not to be very respectful of him, anyway, so, it'd be kind of awsome to see him show who is the Scientist Supreme while he rubs their noses in the dirt.

Peace

[Mary Jay]

I'd rather Hank remained the big brain that will oppose the Illuminati. Most of them have been shown not to be very respectful of him, anyway, so, it'd be kind of awsome to see him show who is the Scientist Supreme while he rubs their noses in the dirt.

Peace

I would tend to agree, also considering that the mentality of the Illuminaty doesn't really seem to fit with Pym's principles.

[Ant-manic]

Yes, and there is a certain entusiastic Scott Lang fan that, if he re=registered, will surely come on knocking and raising hell for your using the Ant_man identity on the title of this thread.

Peace

I actually put that Ant Man name in the title specifically just in case old Monty Cristo came knocking.

i'll give you all a moment to digest the irony.

[victorxd1999]

I'd rather Hank remained the big brain that will oppose the Illuminati. Most of them have been shown not to be very respectful of him, anyway, so, it'd be kind of awsome to see him show who is the Scientist Supreme while he rubs their noses in the dirt.

Peace

It would be awesome if Pym would get into conflict with them and gather his own men. Would make for a great arc (as long as it won't be made into an event and it becomes Civil war/AvX II)

[Pharozonk]

i'll give you all a moment to digest the irony.

Hey Monty! Is that you?

I don't want to cause antagonism on this thread. We're all just Ant-Man fans here, whether it's Pym or Lang under the helmet so let's all try and get along.

[Mary Jay]

I don't want to cause antagonism on this thread. We're all just Ant-Man fans here, whether it's Pym or Lang under the helmet so let's all try and get along.

I don't want to cause antagonism either I would just like to point out that this thread is a Hank Pym appreciation thread

[Mary Jay]

Has anybody heard where he might end up next? I've come across a comment from Sam Humphries on Tumblr saying that Pym would be back soon, but I can't find it again, and I haven't heard or seen anything else...

[Pharozonk]

I haven't been following Pym's recent activities. What's he been up to lately?

[Cernunnos]

I'm a Hank Pym fan. My favorite Pym personas are Yellowjacket and Dr. Pym.

[Sutekh]

I like both Hank Pym *and* Scott Lang.

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't want to see Pym join the Illuminati. He's already acutely aware that sometimes what seems like a brilliant idea at the time ends up being a disaster. All of Marvel's geniuses have had that lesson planted in front of them at some point or another (Reed with the negative zone portal thing turning New York into Annhilus' all-you-can-invade buffet, for instance, or Stark and his 'Armor Wars'), but Pym seems to be the one who has been most affected by the destructive potential of his genius. I'd *like* to think he'd be smart enough to avoid the Illuminati like the terrible idea it is. But his history certainly suggests that he could fall into that trap again. (That first issue of Avengers AI where he was *giddy* that newborn AI's were killing hundreds of people in terrorist attacks, suggest that he's still seen by Marvel writers as damaged goods.)

Probably my favorite thing about Pym is the impact he has had on the Marvel Universe.

He's a founding Avenger, and empowered the Wasp, *another* founding Avengers (yeah, two out of five founding Avengers are his work!).

Clint Barton, Bill Foster, Scott Lang, Rita DeMara, Eric O'Grady, Cassie Lang and Erik Josten have all used Pym Particles (and / or other Pym-tech, such as his Ant-Man helmets or Yellowjacket disrupters and wings) in superheroic adventuring, and five of those people used his equipment *exclusively.* (Hawkeye was a hero before his brief stint as Goliath, and Josten also had ionic powers.)

He invented Ultron, which, okay, bad. But Ultron, using his memory engram transferring technology, went on to create both the Vision and Jocasta, one of which is pretty much a classic Avenger (and the other still has spent more time as a robot Avenger than Machine Man!). Later still, Ultron created Victor LaMancha, who *also* has turned to a life of heroic adventuring. (Ultron must be pretty pissy about this... His killer robot creations turn into heroes!)

Pym's responsible, directly or indirectly, for more heroic supers than any other Avenger, and, if the Order is counted, might be getting close to Batman, Incorporated numbers!

I also love that Pym's a mad scientist. Tony Stark has a specific technological niche, in which he's untouchable, creating suits of powered armor. Bruce Banner's the guy you talk to about gamma radiation. Hank McCoy's got a lock of genetic mutation. But Pym, like Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom, is just a mad, mad, MAD scientist, sort of a scientific polymath prodigy, breaking boundaries and upsetting applecarts in multiple disciplines. Doom, Richards and Pym are the guys you talk to if you want a dimensional portal or a time machine or something equally absurd and 'weird science-y,' that takes the laws of physics and chemistry and tells them to go sit down and take a break, because we're doing science! here.

A student of entomology and how insect 'hive-minds' used parallel processing / task distribution, leading to pioneering work on parallel processing *computer* task distribution and networking, leading to the first functional artificial intelligence, all great stuff. Actually pretty logical how an 'Ant-Man' could go on to create an artificial intelligence. (Where Pym Particles came into the equation, not as intuitive, granted!)

And for all he's done, he's still not even fully tapped the potential of Pym Particles. He can control insects in great numbers, he can use Pym particles to greatly increase their size, and he can therefore unleash swarms of bus-sized giant ants on Skrull invasion forces, or he can *shrink* a swarm of ants to micro-scopic size and send them into someone's body to perform life-saving surgery (or cause them a horrible, horrible death by nibbling away at their aorta...). It's entirely possible that he (or Jan, or Lang) could survive death by downloading their memories and personality in any insect life in a half-mile radius, so that the area around their death later seems to be 'haunted' by strange insect behavior, until they 'get it together' and form into a hive-mind swarm intelligence, establish communication with surviving allies (or sneak back into an old lab) to try and download back into a clone body, or a computer, or a *swarm of robotic insects.* Even better, that could happen as an emergency reflex, even when someone survives, and, a month after being revealed to have survived a near-death experience, Janet could find out that there's a swarm of insects roaming around that thinks it's her, and, like Jocasta, is a copy of her 'engrams' that have gotten encoded into another form (a swarm of bugs, instead of a 'bride of Ultron,' in this case, but still a fully sentient new being, as deserving of a chance at 'life' as Jocasta).

I also like saying Pym Particles out loud, because I will never stop being immature.

[Nomads1]

i'll give you all a moment to digest the irony.

What irony?

Nice to see you back, Monty. Very appropiate name change.

Peace

[Pharozonk]

Well spoken Sutekh! Welcome to the thread!

[Pharozonk]

This issue and the issue that followed it are probably my favorite Avengers stories.

[Overhazard]

I like the way Hank was protrayed in Earth's mightiest heroes, it's nice to see someone who gets powers and then doesn't rush headlong into being a crimefighter. He wanted to use them in other ways. I didn't like the way janet and tony nagged him about it though. "What's the matter with you Hank?, Don't you want to risk life and limb punching people in the face? Being a superhero is AWESOME, COME ON MAN!!!!"

I hope some of that comes off in the movie. With hank being a mentor to scott.