Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lottel]

How about the forgotten founding Avenger?
WE NEED MORE PYM.

[Bal]

Hank Pym for sure. Hank and Jan together would be ideal of course, but leave out the domestic violence please. It's not even interesting in the comics, and before her death more often than not made Jan seem petty. 616 Jan, obviously. Ultimate Jan was systematically abused by Hank for years, and then almost killed, not smacked once years ago while he was in the middle of a psychotic episode.

[Roger]

Clearly we need Janet to be based on the whimsical, more fun interpretations as seen in Marvel Adventures and EMH.

[Rico]

Changing the topic momentarily just to say that I would've watched [spoiler]Hulk Bam-Bam Loki for about 20 minutes longer than it actually went on for. The look on his face afterward is just too good, also.[/spoiler]

[Niku]

[spoiler]I wonder how many people even realized that Loki was whimpering pathetically after that, because even at a 10:15 AM showing the cheering was almost too loud to make it out.[/spoiler]

[Thad]

On a less good note, the Avengers cartoon they have made was hastily made and pretty much blows.

Well, I disagree with this entirely.  Animation's solid, writing's good, voice cast is quite good.  It's not Spectacular Spider-Man good, but it's still one of the best cartoons Marvel's ever made.

Moreover, I quite like the stories and characters they've chosen.  We've had characters like Kang, Zemo, Man-Ape, Klaw, Arnim Zola, the Leader, MODOC (yes with a "C" apparently you can't say "killing" in a children's cartoon), and Ultron, and Season 2 is building toward the Kree-Skrull War.  The most recent episode featured Michael Korvac and the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the one prior to that had Ant-Man hiring Luke Cage and Iron Fist (the latter voiced by Loren Lester, who played Robin on Batman: TAS) to help him find who'd stolen his tech.  (The only disappointment is that it turned out not to be Eric O'Grady.)  And early in the season there was an episode where Ben and Johnny came over for poker night and Hulk immediately tackled Thing and started punching him as soon as he walked in the door.  And then later swung him around by his feet as a weapon in a fight with Doombots.

If you don't think that's awesome then you're dead inside.

(Unless you were talking about the terrible 1990's Avengers cartoon.  In which case, yes, that was terrible.)

How about the forgotten founding Avenger?
WE NEED MORE PYM.

Edgar Wright is supposed to be doing the Ant-Man movie.  And apparently it's still going forward.

[Lottel]

I know and I'm super excited. From what rumors I've heard it may not be a Pym Ant-Man and if that's the case I say we riot.

[Thad]

The pitch a few years ago was that it was going to be split between a 1960's-era story with Hank Ant-Man and a modern one with Scott.  I don't know if that's still the case but I think that would be pretty great; the world needs more period superhero movies.  And the potential for a movie where we intersperse a young and old Hank would be cool too.  Old Hank as a Hollis Mason-style mentor to Scott.

BTW, interesting bit of trivia on the wife-smackin' bit that people just can't let go of: it wasn't written that way.

In that story (issue 213, I think), there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of “get away from me” gesture while not looking at her. Bob Hall, who had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross! There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the “wife-beater” story.

Now, that's Shooter, so in and of itself it'd be a grain-of-salt story, but artist Bob Hall has corroborated it:

I wasn’t really a pro at that point. I was a fan with some skill. I could not have drawn the panel the way JIm wanted it. In fact, I remember re-drawing that particular panel several times — not for JIm but because I didn’t like the results. The final panel was the point where I gave up and thought — I know how to do Marvel action — I’ll make it Marvel action cause nothing else I’ve done seems right either.

Anyway, it's like Tony's alcoholism -- I hate it and wish it would go away but unfortunately it's become the first thing people think of when they think of the character.

(Peter once hit MJ too, but everybody ignores that.  I think that's partly because we're all pretending the Clone Saga never happened -- indeed that whole issue makes no sense after the "Peter was the real Peter all along" retcon, as it revolved around him having been preprogrammed by the Jackal when he was cloned -- and partly because Peter's just flat-out a more popular character than Hank and fans are more ready to let one bad story slide in his case.)

Now, Ultimate Hank going after Jan was a legitimately creepy and affecting sequence, and probably the highlight of the entire Ultimates run.  I have no complaints about that, because you can do shit like that in the Ult U.  But I sure wish the writers and fans could put it behind them in the Regular U.

[Büge]

Anyway, it's like Tony's alcoholism -- I hate it and wish it would go away but unfortunately it's become the first thing people think of when they think of the character.

Even action figure designers. Note the hands:

Peter once hit MJ too, but everybody ignores that.

And Reed Richards slapped Susan. But I think that Ultimate Hank really cemented the idea in readers' and writers' minds, and so it became a defining moment for the character. Most people focus on that rather than the "mad scientist trying to be a good guy" aspect of the character because it's just easier.

[Thad]

No, Ultimate Hank was a wife-beater because readers and writers already thought of Hank as a wife-beater, not the other way 'round.

Even Busiek's run on Avengers dealt pretty heavily with the "Hank has a breakdown and becomes Yellowjacket" angle.  Both in the main book and in Avengers Forever (which, as a series specifically designed to clean up ugly continuity -- Teenage Tony, Mutant Wasp, Vision being the original Human Torch -- could have totally retconned it out).

[Brentai]

From a movie perspective, Pym has two problems:

- As a superhero-not-comic fan, I know Hank Pym from discussions about his supposed domestic abuse.  And I kind of know that he's a shrinking guy.  Besides that, I don't know jack about him, so I'm not exactly excited about the prospect of seeing him onscreen, fucking up perfectly fun movies with uncomfortable beltstrapping scenes.  Loki's kinda-sorta-maybe implied killrape threat was even a bit too much.
- Take a look at the plots of this movies and tell me what the hell a guy like Ant-Man is even going to do.  Go inside Hammer's suit and fuck with it?  Ride the Allspark like a mechanical bull?  It's not that shrinking is an overspecialized power so much as the scale of a Hollywood movie plot necessarily makes it inappropriate.

[Thad]

- As a superhero-not-comic fan, I know Hank Pym from discussions about his supposed domestic abuse.  And I kind of know that he's a shrinking guy.  Besides that, I don't know jack about him, so I'm not exactly excited about the prospect of seeing him onscreen, fucking up perfectly fun movies with uncomfortable beltstrapping scenes.  Loki's kinda-sorta-maybe implied killrape threat was even a bit too much.

Well, presumably they'd spend as much time on his spousal abuse as they have on Tony's alcoholism.  That is to say, maybe a very vague implication of it.

And the idea is that he gets his own movie to introduce him and then they don't need to bother explaining who he is when he shows up in an Avengers movie.  Same as everybody else.

- Take a look at the plots of this movies and tell me what the hell a guy like Ant-Man is even going to do.  Go inside Hammer's suit and fuck with it?  Ride the Allspark like a mechanical bull?  It's not that shrinking is an overspecialized power so much as the scale of a Hollywood movie plot necessarily makes it inappropriate.

Well, he grows, too.  But yeah, "Shrink down to microscopic size and fuck up some electronics" is a perfectly cromulent use for a shrinking power.  Spying, sabotage, that kinda thing.

The actual talking-to-ants thing is a little trickier; one of my favorite gags in Ultimates was where he tried to summon ants but they were in the city so he could only get like six of them.

That said, stick him in the right setting and control over bugs is a perfectly decent power to have.

[Bal]

Hank's spousal abuse amounts to him slapping her once, almost ten years ago in universe time, while is was in the middle of a legit psychotic episode, and he was totally freaked out by it even then. Writers just latched on to it to make some kind of point, or make the characters edgy or some shit, and never, ever let it go. It tends to make Jan seem either petty, when she starts waxing about it as an almost total non-sequitur, or freaking bi-polar where she'll reject him or the idea of getting back together with him due to the incident, and then become jealous whenever Hank seems to be moving on. At which point she would often mindfuck him out of whatever relationship he was trying to have.

It got old pretty quick.

[Lottel]

How much more did the average person know about Thor before his movie? Or even Iron Man?

[Bal]

Hank Pym is best when he isn't growing or shrinking, but is just Science Man, doing whatever science can.

[Thad]

True, and I thought of mentioning that, but the team's already got two Science Geniuses.

Related: Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE is kinda the DC equivalent.  It's got Ray Palmer, but he doesn't wear a costume or shrink or grow; he is in fact just Science Man.

[Lottel]

I heard that and wanted to check it out, but I'm kind of in the mindset to not reward DC for dumbass moves. And I prefer Ryan Choi as an Atom anyway.

[Bal]

They need to establish him as Science Man in Avengers 2, so they can show him building Ultron after the credits, and then Avengers 3 writes itself.

[Brentai]

Stark and Banner giving each other handjobs in the lab was embarrassing enough.  I think I might spit if I have to listen to three nerds in a room congratulating each other in between outbursts of Cap interjecting with DURR I'M A BIG STUPID SOLDIER AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND SHIT.

[Lottel]

To be fair, Tony would say "I saw your stuff Pym. I improved it." Pym would get all flustered and angry and Banner would stare at the numbers or something boring. That's basically what happens anytime they get together in the comics.