Ant-Man is a character with a pretty turbulent history. While the MCU’s Scott Lang definitely has a few metaphorical skeletons in his closet, he doesn’t compare to his predecessor’s track record in the comics –Hank Pym has done some Pretty messed up stuff. Domestic abuse, betrayal, and whole lot of questionable behavior stemming from years of poor mental health. I mean, you’ve gotta feel bad for the guy to an extent. So let's take a look at the top 10 Disturbing Facts About Ant-Man
Speaking of, let’s start our list off with O’Grady. Eric became the third Ant-Man after finding Pym’s latest version of the suit at Sheild, where he worked as a low-level operative. He steals the suit, which his Now dead best friend/roomate Chris was guarding –and wearing - when he was killed. Eric decides to become a superhero in order to stalk women, get laid and use it to up his thievery game. Eventually, he denounces his old ways and vows to change, but the laundry list of terrible things he’s done as Ant-Man is pretty damn long. For starters, early on in his ‘superhero’ career, he ran into Mitch Carson – the man Sheild had meant to give the Ant-Man suit to as the new man to take on the alias. Mitch tracked Eric down, and during Eric’s escape, he burned Carson’s face with his jetpack, leaving the agent blind and deaf on one side of his face.
As we mentioned, Hank Pym is a hero who has suffered from poor mental health for the majority of his life. His origin story is even steeped in it – his father is an asshole to him, his grandmother is the only person who ever believed in him, and when he falls in love for the first time and marries genius biochemist Marian Trovaya, she’s murdered during a trip to Hungary, causing him to have a mental breakdown which gives him the drive to create the Pym Particles. Yeah, pretty rough. So Pym being suicidal in the comics isn’t a long shot. After a stint as Yellowjacket had failed (more on that later), Pym heads over to the West Coast Avengers to be an advisor, where he gets taunted by old adversary Whirlwind about how much of a failure he is. This leads to Hank deciding to commit suicide in issue 17 volume 2 of the West Coast Avengers. He writes goodbye letters and is fully prepared to go through with it until Firebird sends him off on a mission.
While mutilating and permanently disabling a dude is up there in horrible things you could do to a person, turns out Eric O’Grady isn’t beyond emotional torment, either. Remember that dead best friend Chris who had died guarding the Ant-Man suit that Eric ripped away from his cold motionless body? Yeah, so Chris was dating another Sheild agent by the name of Veronica King. Eric had always lusted over Veronica, and now that Chris was dead, he took advantage of her grieving to make his move. The two almost have sex, on top of Chris' Grave, but Veronica stops, and the two eventually do sleep together. This leads to Veronica getting pregnant, and what does that cause Eric to do? Abandon her, refusing to help raise the child. After he ditches her, we never see Veronica again. Man, at least Hank Pym has a reason to justify his poor behavior – O’Grady is just a dick.
The Ultimate Marvel Universe introduced us to many varying alternates of Marvel characters. Unfortunately, Hank Pym is just as tragic – perhaps even more so – than his 616 counterparts. This Pym not only had his mental illness and marriage problems to grapple with, but was butting heads with his teammates, and the Ultimate universe turned up his cruelty several notches. Meaning he was unhinged enough to decapitate the Blob and spit out his head as Giant-Man. To be fair, in the storyline, he, along with the remaining superheroes are looking for survivors, including his wife. He discovers the Blob eating the Wasp’s corpse, and decides the character deserves some eye-for-an-eye retribution.
One of Pym’s many aliases was Yellowjacket – who, upon making his debut, was kind of a dick. First off, Hank emerged as Yellowjacket after having his second mental breakdown after Ultron. More on that later. During his first Yellowjacket appearance, he gets real cocky, makes sure everyone knows he’s the one who stopped a robbery, then goes to the Avengers and demands he be offered membership. He claims he killed Hank and has kidnapped Janet and everyone is like …sorry what? He then heads over to his secret lair, the Hornet’s Nest, and makes out with Janet, who realizes he’s Hank and sees him as a new and improved – and confident – version of the man she once loved. It’s then later explained that the character’s alias as Yellowjacket was due to a schizophrenic break that created that alias’ personality – which he blamed on working with dangerous untested chemicals.
Taking one last look at the sleaziest of Ant-Man characters, it shouldn’t be a surprise by now that Eric O’Grady has little consideration for the opposite sex. When your ability allows you to shrink down to a tiny size, that opens up a whole lot of windows of opportunity to do some pretty cool things. But what does Eric do with his powers, aside from fighting crime? Use them to be a perv, of course. Eric was quick to notice that being a superhero was helpful in the dating department, or rather, getting laid department, and would often go on dates with women he rescued. If he wasn’t able to get laid by them, he would follow them home, shrink down and spy on them. He even pulled this stunt with Carol Danvers, who at the time was Mr. Marvel, by hiding in her purse and them watched her get undressed and shower. Luckily, the character was eventually killed off and briefly replaced by a life-model decoy named Black Ant.
Back to Hank Pym! At times, it was apparent that Hank never felt super comfortable with the idea of being a hero, especially around other super-powered individuals on the Avengers team. This led to feels of inadequacy and pretty low self-esteem, which often resulted in the character lashing out. On one occasion, he went too far. For context, at the time, he was under extreme stress, which was causing his marriage to fall apart. He and Janet got into an argument, sort of broke up, and then later, on a mission with the Avengers, under his Yellowjacket alias, Hank lashed out at a foe who called herself Elfqueen. After the conflict had been resolved, Hank attacked Elfqueen, hitting her with his bio-stings. Captain America launched a court-martial against him, and Hank was suspended until the hearing. So what did he do in his spare time? He built a robot to attack the Avengers in a scheme to save them, being the only one who knew how to stop it. This wasn’t the only time the character crafted a dangerous threat for the Avengers though.
Creating one of the Avenger’s most fearsome foes definitely deserved one of the top spots on our list. In issue 54 of the Avengers in 1968, Hank created a robot intended to be a living robot of himself. But turns out Hank did too good of a job, and the robot exceeded his own intelligence and rebelled – that robot was Ultron, and wipes his memory. Ultron, operating under the name Crimson Cowl, recreates a new version of the Master of Evil team, and reveals himself to be Ultron. The robot then creates Vision, who attempts to kill Janet van Dyne, but is stopped by the Avengers, and eventually helps them defeat Ultron. Afterwards, Hank starts to get his memories back, and realizes he was the one responsible for creating Ultron, which drives him into having a nervous breakdown. If that wasn’t already bad, Hank was also brainwashed by the villain, and came into conflict with the Avengers under Ultron’s command.
Hank Pym doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to the Wasp, his sometimes wife/sometimes ex-wife. And while our number one spot is devoted to the most famous crappy Hank Pym moment concerning Janet, our number two is pretty darn awful, too. As we mentioned, the Ultimate version of Hank Pym is a piece of work. He’s pretty cruel at times, and his behavior towards Janet is not out of character in that respect. In Ultimates issue 6, the character tries to murder Janet after they get into an argument about her friendship with Captain America. Wasp shrinks down to avoid her violent husband, who then gets his hands on a can of bug spray and starts spraying her. He also sends an army of ants on her, causing her to be hospitalized.
So remember a few numbers back when we mentioned that Hank was suspended after striking Elfqueen? And he built a robot to attack the Avengers? Well his wife Janet van Dyne found out about that, and was not cool with it. So Hank decided to show her how it worked. Janet still protested, and this led to Hank slapping her across the face in what is now one of the most infamous panels in comic book history and also reportedly a mistake drawn into the comic, which was later confessed by writer James Shooter who said the slap was most intense than he wanted it to be depicted. I mean, a slap is a slap, dude. Janet filed for divorce, and had quite the black eye afterwards. Because of this, Hank is often referred to as a wife beater, despite the numerous times that Marvel has tried to write the character into better graces
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10. MUTILATION
9. SUICIDAL
8. BAD FRIEND,WORSE BOYFRIEND
7. THE BLOB
6. YELLOW JACKET
5. SEXUAL HARASSMENT
4. ELFQUEEN
3. CREATED ULTRON
2. ATTEMPTED MURDER
1. DOMESTIC ABUSE
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