Why Essential Ant-Man is the Best Book Ever

I can't pick up my comics until Saturday due to scheduling issues, but I've passing the time with "Essential Ant-Man", which my roommate found and bought me.

It is, I firmly believe, the greatest Marvel Silver Age compilation ever.

Why?

1. Communists. Lots of communists. Often for no real reason.

2. Cross-dressing communists.

3. The fact that Hank's first semi-psychotic episode is mentioned way back in Jan's first appearance and 43 years later, he still hasn't gotten proper therapy.

4. How Hank and Jan's relationship is pretty much summarizable as:

Jan: Hank! Notice me! I love you! I'm hot, young, rich and throwing myself at you!
Hank: ...oh look, particles.

5. The fact that this exchange actually happens in the comic:

Jan: "MMM...It's WORTH being ill to have you hold me in your arms like this, Hank..."
Hank: "Poor kid...the fever's made you delirious!"

6. The fact that this exchange occurs while riding home on the back of an ant.

7. And that Hank's other forms of transports include a tiny catapult and rubber bands

8. And that the aforementioned exchange ends up followed by the best line ever: "You and your old ants! I'll bet if I had six legs you'd like me better!"

9. The fact that villains can pick up Ant Man when he's the size of a paperclip, reach down and take his helmet off. I find this the most amazing thing ever, as my hands shake, so if I tried it'd be *squish*.

10. For that matter, even when they pick him up, they always decide to kill him in silly ways like using mind control to make him walk into a river. They never just go squish.

11. Hank's former wife Maria and Janet Van Dyne only look alike if you're freaking delusional.

Oh wait. Right.

12. How in every issue after the first, they explain that Hank's clothes shrink with him because they're unstable molecules worn for precisely that reason.

But the very first issue? His first time shrinking? His clothes still shrunk. I think he's keeping those molecules for other reasons.

Kinky.

It's Craazy.

Okay as it turns out, I'm still on my faint Avengers kick. It shouldn't last too much longer, I'd reckon. I'm just a kid with a new toy right about now.

Anyway, I managed (thanks to Flidget) to get ahold of Avengers 59 and 60, because honestly the whole story of the wedding sounded so crack-worthy that I simply had to see for myself.

I was not disappointed.

I thought, deep down, that there had to be an exaggeration somewhere. Janet Van Dyne couldn't have actually married her boyfriend while he's quite clearly out of his head, could she?

Well, as many of you know, and I was to find out. Yes, yes she did.

Now according to some explanation site, it's explained that she went along with the whole Yellowjacket marriage thing out of concern for Hank. She was afraid that he'd backslide further into insanity.

Well I'm staring at the issues this moment, and that's utter hogwash! In fact, Janet has, in total, exactly one moment of concern about what she's doing:



Yes. It would be a shame to marry your batshit crazy boyfriend while he's clearly not in his right mind unless you're absolutely sure.

It's not like he had gone on with a five page monologue/flashback about how he, as Yellowjacket, killed Hank Pym, culminating in leaving him to be murdered ignobly by a house-spider:



Oh. Wait...

Anyway, that one moment of trepidation aside, Janet spent most of the issues looking like this:



See that triumphant look? She's not doing this to protect his mental state. She's doing this because it's a way to trap him into marriage!



Here she's explaining to her understandably bewildered colleague...notice how gleeful she is! And her utter dismissal of poor Hawkeye's concern. (I'm giving Hank's dismissal a pass here because three seconds ago he was still calling himself Yellowjacket.)

One thing that amazed me about the comic was that at no point does Jan actually attempt to fill any of the other Avengers in. She just maneuvers them into following, witnessing her marrying a guy who is claiming to have killed Hank Pym.

I don't know why she just doesn't pull them aside and go "Yeah, I know it's a bit crazy, but he's really Hank."

Wait, I know why. Because they're heroes and might thus express concern that a man who thinks he's his own murderer might currently not be quite capable of consent.

Still, if it were me, I'd have just told them it was a bizarre roleplaying scenario and to play along.



So Jan gets her wedding. Fortunately Hank seems okay with this. But then again, three seconds ago he thought he was his own murderer, so I'm not taking anything about his sanity for granted at the moment.

And I'm glad I don't live in the Marvel Universe. Where apparently, if you enter into a marriage while in the grip of a provable psychotic delusion, without even using your real name, on account of you can't remember it, it's legally binding.

Oh and Jan, not that I think what happens subsequently is your fault, but for future reference, if your next husband-to-be ends up delivering a five page long monologue/flashback detailing elaborately how he's brought himself to an ignoble Spider-induced end, that might be a sign that he's got a bit too much repressed self-hatred to be good marriage material.

I'm just saying, sometimes there ARE warning signs...

I've got to give Hank/Yellowjacket credit for one thing though. He's been in this identity for approximately five hours or so at the most, by the time he kidnaps Janet Van Dyne, but he already has a hideout:



Hey, the man might be batshit crazy but you can't fault his style. That's one swanky bachelor pad. :-)

(All scans taken from Avengers v1 #59 and #60).

Further Thoughts on the 90s Avenger Cartoon:

In No Particular Order

-Okay, that bit where Hank makes such a big show about trading the future in to save Janet and they freak out and it turns out Booby Trapped? HOT.

-Captain America's Voice Actor has very old style animation speech pattern, hee.

-I think I may be starting to appreciate Mallet's love for Namor.

-A twenty some odd foot tall man keeling over in front of the Avengers headquarters is worth the price of admission.

-Scarlet Witch/Vision is still creepy.

-Vision's cute though.

-I think these are all the same voice actors from X-Men, which is a little jarring. I admit, I mostly know him from She-Hulk comics, but I think that Hawkeye shouldn't sound like Wolverine.

-Tygra as Rogue seems to work for me.

-Hank's a little...off, isn't he? If he were my teammate, I think I'd be pushing therapy.

-Do Wonder Man's sunglasses actually serve a purpose in the comics?

-Okay, if what Flidget told me is right, and Ultron really is made from Hank's own brainwave patterns...doesn't ANYONE think that might be a sign he needs psychiatric evaluation?

-That's not even counting the Yellowjacket mess. I saw those issues. "Oh! Yes! I knew he was insane the whole time!" Jan's not the most stable individual either.

-Ultron's body image issues are kind of interesting though.

-Namor/Scarlet Witch flirting! Yay!

-Where's Thor? Cap and Iron Man show up. But there's no Thor. :-(

-The transformation scenes are still amusing as hell

Why Impressionable Kalinaras Shouldn't Be Allowed to Watch TV:

Well, my roommate managed to find a bunch of old episodes of the 90s Avengers cartoon show. And after a marathon session of episodes, I have to say...

I find Hank Pym inexplicably hot.

I can't explain it. He's a jackass with confidence issues and I know about the abuse stuff in the comics...

But that just makes him more interesting to me. I can't explain it!

No wait, I can. He's like a fucked-up crossbreed of Scott Summers and Reed Richards. Who happens to be slim and blond and kind of pretty... (I'm such a bad feminist!)

I don't want to *date* him. I just want to look appreciatively...and send him to get lots of therapy or something.

That 40 Years of the Avengers CD is about 50 bucks, right? Well, I *did* get paid on Friday...

(Oh, and by the way? At least going by the cartoon characterizations, Wanda/Vision really does seem kind of fucked up...)