Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man took a deal with law-enforcement after the events of Captain America: Civil War. To be honest, I didn’t miss him all the much in the latest team flick, even if Scott Lang meeting Steve Rogers is all of us, but it’s because Paul Rudd shines much brighter in the MCU when he’s the only one doing the quipping and physical comedy to Evangeline Lilly’s sarcastic, butt-kicking Hope Van Dyne and Michael Douglas’s scenery-chewing Hank Pym.

Comics Like The Ant-Man and the Wasp | BookRiot.com

So, while it won’t have anything near the scope, scale, or world-changing dramatics of Infinity War, I’m actually very much looking forward to Ant-Man and the Wasp not only for the aforementioned but also because, at the moment, both in life and in films, we can all use a couple hours of laughs and pure enjoyment (which is why I’ve already seen DP2 twice).

Ant-Man hasn’t been a huge presence in comics for the last bit, and while the first movie does cover the Scott Lang origin story, there’s a lot more to the Ant-Man/Wasp/Yellowjacket mythos than a thief with a heart of gold. As always, we have some comics to bring you up to speed.

The Unstoppable Wasp by Jeremy Whitley and Elsa CharretierTHE UNSTOPPABLE WASP BY JEREMY WHITLEY AND ELSA CHARRETIER
Another fantastic, female-centered book cancelled too soon by Marvel due to “poor sales” (which, as usual, didn’t account for digital or trade paperback sales). The titular character, Nadia Pym, escapes the Red Room (yes, that Red Room) and makes her way to the United States, only to discover that her father, Hank Pym, is dead and that he never mentioned her to his second wife, Janet Van Dyne (the original Wasp). Pym did, however, leave Nadia a fair bit of money, which she uses to assemble an unstoppable STEAM team, made up of girls who wouldn’t otherwise have funding for their world-changing projects, dubbing them Agents of G.I.R.L. This book is uplifting and joyous, diverse and smart. It shows the importance of women in science to those coming after and the beauty of a found family of women. A lot of this Janet is present in the MCU’s Hope Van Dyne, and The Unstoppable Wasp gives us a glimpse of her potential as a character and, perhaps, eventually, mistress of her own franchise.

Avengers by RoY Thomas and John BuscemaAVENGERS #54, 55, 57-58 (1968) BY ROY THOMAS AND JOHN BUSCEMA
Now included in the Avengers Epic Collection: Masters of Evil and Avengers Epic Collection: Behold…The Vision collections, this arc contains Ultron’s first appearance. In the comics ‘verse, it was Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, who created the robotic monstrosity, not Tony Stark. Pym imprinted the automaton with his neurological patterns, while The Vision runs on Wonder Man’s (not Jarvis’s). Because 1968, Ultron developed on Oedipus complex which drove him to hate his “father,” who he brainwashed into forgetting he existed before going after his “mother,” Janet Van Dyne. I’m not going to lie to you, true believers, this story is very much a product of its time, so brace yourself for all that entails. Taking a look will, however, give you some excellent insight into the character of Hank Pym and some of his many, many foibles. Also see: narcissistic jerk who might allow himself to be so fully absorbed in his own grief he neglected his daughter.

Warning: Hank Pym is verbally and physically abusive to Janet in several of these issues, after which she left him and because of which he was kicked out of the Avengers. If these are trigger subjects for you, please proceed with caution.