The Four Color Media Monitor

The Fort Smith Times-Record wrote a puff piece about the history of Ant-Man and the Wasp on the week the new movie's to debut. And some odd propaganda, not surprisingly, turned up:

In the movie “Ant-Man,” we learned that Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) was the original Wasp, wife and partner to Henry “Ant-Man” Pym (Michael Douglas). She was lost to the “Quantum Realm” in 1987 and presumed dead — until Scott Lang, the current Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), traveled to the Quantum Realm and returned.

“Your mother convinced me to let her join me on my missions,” Pym told his daughter, Hope Van Dyne, in “Ant-Man.” “They called her The Wasp. She was born to it. And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret having said ‘yes.’”

In the comics, it was the other way around. In 1963, Henry “Ant-Man” Pym had only 10 solo appearances under his tiny belt before he asked Janet Van Dyne to be his crimefighting partner, because her father had been killed and she had vowed vengeance. Impressed with her resolve, Pym implanted specialized cells in Van Dyne that would become wings and antennae when she shrank. (This was recently retconned to be Janet’s idea, which takes some of the sting out of Pym operating on his soon-to-be girlfriend without a license.)

Oh, so the phony who wrote this - columnist Andrew Smith, who previously wrote a transparent item about a terrible Superboy story from 1977 - is now insinuating that Hank "violated" Jan? Is that it? This was not a medical procedure in focus, but a scientific-chemical experiment involving radiation effects, and can every writer possibly be expected to go to the trouble to state clearly that a sci-fi scientist has a license, if they truly need one, or be blamed for the lack thereof? Of course not, so he should be ashamed of himself for implying Stan Lee committed a big wrong in developing Hank Pym back in the day. By the logic he's going by, even Mr. Fantastic operated without a license whenever he examined his Fantastic Four partners and other superheroes with his lab equipment. It's just so galling how these press phonies find ways to lecture the audience about "morality".

Anyway, there's more to examine here:

The two became partners in every sense, fighting the good fight in the pages of “Tales to Astonish” and “Avengers” amid romantic banter. They got married in 1969, but as you’d expect, the ceremony was far from normal. For one thing, the wedding was crashed by the Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime, because what reception is complete without someone punching a clown? For another, Hank had developed a second, more aggressive personality named “Yellowjacket,” who actually did the proposing. That’s certifiable by any definition — but Jan married him anyway.

Hank recovered, but remained Yellowjacket. That was Hank’s fourth superhero persona (after Ant-Man, Giant-Man and Goliath), which should have been a clue that he wasn’t exactly Mr. Stability. Pym eventually had another mental breakdown, defrauded the Avengers and punched Jan in the eye. One divorce and an Avengers expulsion later, and Hank’s career took quite a nosedive. He recovered somewhat — comic books love a redemption story — but currently he’s considered sort-of dead. (Long story, but it involves being absorbed by Ultron and thrown into space. Nobody seems to really understand it, even the writers.)

Nobody seems to care, least of all Mr. Smith. Concocting excuses to make Hank out to be a real life person, not a fictional character. The writers assigned conceived a 4th role, not Hank developed another personality. And if the recent story developments say something, it's that they sure know how to be super-cheap and unredeeming, that's for sure. Bygones can't be bygones to these jerks. Besides, Hank didn't punch Jan per se, but rather, smacked her with the back of his hand in 1981. But you can't possibly expect these hacks to be more specific, can you?

Now another thing of note in this article, regarding the recently conceived replacement for Janet, Nadia:

That daughter, Nadia, was raised in the Russian “Red Room” that trains Black Widows (See: Romanoff, Natasha). But having inherited her father’s smarts and her mother’s backbone, Nadia escaped to the USA, where she re-invented herself as the new Wasp. Now she is being mentored by the original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, and has become a scientist and superhero in her own right.

What’s that got to do with the movie’s Hope Van Dyne? Well, Nadia is short for Nadyezhda. That’s Russian for “hope.”

Ah, so in other words, the Nadia character was conceived simply to give filmmakers something to build off of, as though it were truly necessary. It reminds me what I've long assumed was the reason for Gambit's creation in 1990 - to give merchandise manufacturers something to build off of, not so he could serve as a story component. After all, within less than 2 years of his introduction in X-Men, he was suddenly popping up in the 90s cartoon series and video games, instead of taking the more challenging idea of introducing better scripted characters like Cannonball and Wolfsbane to the extended merchandise lines. (And why does Rogue have to be stuck solid with him as a partner, rather than take bold steps to have her involved with civilian partners, let's say? Cheap, cheap, cheap.)

And this article even reveals something more that's quite unpleasant:

In 1966, the same year Marvel Comics introduced Black Panther, they broke ground with another black character. At the time, Hank Pym was stuck at 10 feet. Tony Stark sent an expert biochemist from Stark’s Baltimore research lab to fix the problem, in the form of Bill Foster, DSc, PhD. Foster, we learned, was born in Watts, but lifted himself out of the ghetto by smarts and hard work. This was at a time when black characters usually wore butler uniforms, not lab coats.

And lo, Pym was cured, so Foster faded into supporting-character limbo. But he came roaring back in 1975, using Pym’s technology to become the 15-foot superhero “Black Goliath,” and helping Luke Cage battle the Circus of Crime. (At this point, clown-punching is something of a tradition among Marvel superheroes.)

It should be noted that Foster is currently dead in the comics, killed in the superhero “Civil War.” His nephew, MIT grad Tom Foster, is carrying on the tradition as the superhero Goliath.

Proof that not only are black protagonists considered expendable to the SJWs running Marvel, but that SJWs outside the company don't give a damn about those they knocked off either. The same happened with Jim Rhodes, Iron Man/Tony Stark's colleague, at least 2 years ago in Civil War 2, but did they care? Not by a longshot.

And while we're still on the subject, if we look at the clown matters from a political perspective, it's worth noting that Marvel's SJW staff have made a tradition more out of "punching nazis", meaning, American conservatives and Republicans they can't stand. Not very clever, I'm afraid, given how it's come to serve as an excuse to avoid more challenging topics like combating Islamic terrorism instead.

So anyway, there's another of these shoddy columns that turns everything into tabloid fodder, without offering any objectivity as to recent storylines in superhero comics.

Labels: Avengers, golden calf of death, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics, women of marvel