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Post by humanbelly on Mar 10, 2015 9:56:19 GMT -5
Heya Teammates--
Dare I say that it's worth starting a thread to cover the Assembled 3 material as Van avails us to it? Yeah? It was certainly heartwarming to see Doug's (dlw66's) Hank Pym essay finally get its time in the limelight. And I have to say that Hank is a character that I've come to care about more and more as the years have gone by. Like many others, he's been wildly and inconsistently mishandled in these last ugly 10 years or so, and was rather ungracefully handled by writers several times before that (In WCA it was often hard to recognize him as the same, familiar Henry Pym-- although his storyline was still one of the more interesting ones). What's kind of neat in Doug's article is that the coincidental way he was introduced to the character over different eras went hand-in-hand with Doug's personal light-bulb moment of realizing how truly cool and interconnected and far-reaching the Marvel continuity was. Thus, that association was gonna be strong for him forever, I just bet---!
Whatcha think?
Anyone out there w/ two cents? Or even four?
Anyone? Hmm?
HB
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Post by starfoxxx on Mar 10, 2015 15:31:11 GMT -5
Although I am very bummed about no Assembled 3 in print, I did enjoy Doug's article. I personally don't enjoy extended reading on a computer screen...whenever I see a young person reading a "REAL" book I say, YAY!!! BOOKS!!! We'll miss them when they're gone (at least I will).
I've never been a big Hank Pym fan, so it never phased me if he was treated (written) as a jerk, coward, hero, whatever....he was just part of the Marvel Universe for me. I DO like the fact that he was always re-inventing himself, not just with new costumes, but new powers, names, identities. Why not? Especially for a long-time super-hero. (DR PYM from WCA was pretty lame, though).
Personally, the WORST treatment/writing of Hank wasn't his abuse of Jan (that had already happened when I started reading comics)....
it was a few years back when he "honored" his "dead" ex-wife by taking up the mantle of...the WASP!!! BOOOOOOOO! STUPID IDEA! and I think it was Dan Abnett, one of my favorite "new" writers, who came up with that crappy idea.
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Post by humanbelly on Mar 12, 2015 7:55:42 GMT -5
Although I am very bummed about no Assembled 3 in print, I did enjoy Doug's article. I personally don't enjoy extended reading on a computer screen...whenever I see a young person reading a "REAL" book I say, YAY!!! BOOKS!!! We'll miss them when they're gone (at least I will). I've never been a big Hank Pym fan, so it never phased me if he was treated (written) as a jerk, coward, hero, whatever....he was just part of the Marvel Universe for me. I DO like the fact that he was always re-inventing himself, not just with new costumes, but new powers, names, identities. Why not? Especially for a long-time super-hero. (DR PYM from WCA was pretty lame, though). Personally, the WORST treatment/writing of Hank wasn't his abuse of Jan (that had already happened when I started reading comics).... it was a few years back when he "honored" his "dead" ex-wife by taking up the mantle of...the WASP!!! BOOOOOOOO! STUPID IDEA! and I think it was Dan Abnett, one of my favorite "new" writers, who came up with that crappy idea. I get the motivation behind having Hank go "Wasp", and it wasn't really out of character, I suppose-- but for me, too, it was just a little too far down Creepy Avenue to see Hank effectively dressing up in his dead wife's clothes. Abnett also didn't have a particularly deft handle on Hank's "voice" as we know it--- had him coming off much more as his original Yellowjacket persona. But what's kind of cool about the good Dr Pym is that all of the inconsistent writerly whims that have been foisted upon him over the years created a rather unconventional and truly rich consistent character continuity all their own. A lot has been made of how Ultron-guilt and that initial mind-wipe (detailed in Avengers #58) are a major cause of Hank's instability. . . but he was definitely a temperamental & emotional loose cannon loooooong before Ultron was even a gleam in a photo-electric eye. There's an instance late in his TtA run (after the Hulk feature began) where his story opens with him raging-- raging-- as Giant-Man on the side of his apartment building at some fans or teenagers or someone that had been pestering him just a bit. It's all that Jan can do to calm him down and get him inside. And Avengers #14? Jan gets critically wounded and Hank loses his mind, and pretty much has a sustained hysterical mental breakdown even as he's in the midst of all of the issue's events. And. . . this is a pattern that we see repeated time & again over the intervening decades. A few months later, he gets "stuck" at a Goliath height of 10' (or 12'; or 15'-- depending on how Stan's memory was holding up on any given month), and becomes a predictably depressed, brooding, angry, ill-tempered figure on the team. And of course his whole story started with the awful death of his first wife, which is COMPOUNDED by the fact that this new girl in his life seems to be an almost-inappropriately too-young dead-ringer for her-- yeesh. I wonder if Stan & the other early writers really had in mind that they were going to perpetually yank out this character's mental rug, or if he was just an easy target, as he was always a fairly visible B-list character? Y'know, w/ the Dr Pym identity in WCA, even though I poke fun at it as well, I honestly did kind of like and admire the attempt, 'cause it was a COMPLETELY different approach to being a superhero in a team environment. It was quirky and brave and not at all cool, and I would have loved to see them stick with it, as it represented a truly remarkable change of of direction that (theoretically) should not have been able to be reversed. Ohhhh, that pocketed jumpsuit alone exhibited fashion courage that few could ever muster-! HB |
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Post by Marvel Boy on Mar 29, 2015 10:46:23 GMT -5
Well, I have a special appreciation for Hank, I started reading Avengers around the time of the Trial of Egghead so I was introduced to Hank's mental woes from the get-go.
His Ultron-guilt seems to be a long-standing element regardless of the character or costume changes, I think that guilt was handled best in Avengers Vol. 3 by Busiek, seeing Hank try and finally come to terms with that guilt amidst all that ruin and devastation caused by Ultron, Hank's final lashing out at Ultron with the Vibranium at the story's end felt very cathartic.
But one interpretation of Hank that I liked was in Slott's Mighty Avengers, when Hank earned the title of Scientist Supreme, whose technical achievements are so impressive and inspiring as to be almost akin to magic. It may sound a bit hokey, but I thought it was an original look at the extreme technical prowess of Hank, mental issues aside.
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Post by Doctor Bong Crosby on Mar 29, 2015 19:28:28 GMT -5
But if there was a Scientist Supreme in the MU, it should be Reed. To my mind, the smartest men in the MU are Reed and Doom (a tie) and then Hank.
I loved as well how Busiek gave Hank that cathartic moment at the conlusion of his Ultron story. Certainly one of Hank´s finest moments.
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Post by Marvel Boy on Mar 30, 2015 19:52:20 GMT -5
I can't recall the specifics on why Hank was picked for such a title, but that's an interesting view. Reed, Hank, Bruce, Tony, Victor, the most brilliant minds of the MU but how to rank them individually? Reed (and thus Victor) may rank atop but would that be because Hank's ongoing mental issues are holding/weighing him back to some degree? Reed may be adept at building technical marvels, but would Tony be considered a better engineer than Reed? Would Bruce be considered the premiere expert on radiation? (Then what of Doc Ock?)
And that's not even considering Peter, Franklin (both young and adult) and Valeria yet. Hm......
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Post by humanbelly on Mar 30, 2015 21:04:25 GMT -5
I vaguely recall there being some attempt in MIGHTY AVENGERS at the time to justify and explain why Hank Pym specifically was given the Scientist Supreme mantle, and not Reed (or Doom or Bruce or etc)-- but darned if I can remember the particulars. The one thing I might toss out-- and it certainly invites disagreement-- is that Hank's expertise may actually fan out across a wider range of disciplines and fields than Reed's actually does (although those limits may simply be a bi-product of what Reed does and doesn't have an interest in). Reed is first & foremost a time-space/quantum mechanics/theoretica&applied physics kinda guy. . . who does a lot of clever inventing as a sidebar. Hank has really branched across quite a range of fields and combined disciplines. The size-changing is. . . bio-physics, I guess? Huge amounts of work studying ants and other insects (entomology); artificial intelligence and robotics, of course; the usual bunch o' inventions; his own quantum/pocket-universe/time-space projects. I mean, do ya want yer Scientist Supreme to be a limited specialist, or a fully capable, dependable utility player, y'know?
HB
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Post by Marvel Boy on Apr 4, 2015 9:15:24 GMT -5
It may also be a matter of perception. Hank's inventions and discoveries may be more 'amazing' (for lack of a better term) than Reed's work. Size-changing, the creation of a true AI, work with pocket universes, thought-control to an extent, these are wide-ranging 'fantastic' creations. Whereas Reed, whose genius work is admirable, follows more or less a traditional scientific path. It's also interesting to note, that of all the 'big brains' of the MU, Reed has suffered the least amount of trauma of them all, certainly nowhere near the level that Bruce and Hank have endured. But we could sum this up thusly: Hank created Ultron. Reed created Herbie.  |
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Post by Doctor Bong Crosby on Apr 4, 2015 19:19:09 GMT -5
It may also be a matter of perception. Hank's inventions and discoveries may be more 'amazing' (for lack of a better term) than Reed's work. Size-changing, the creation of a true AI, work with pocket universes, thought-control to an extent, these are wide-ranging 'fantastic' creations. Whereas Reed, whose genius work is admirable, follows more or less a traditional scientific path. It's also interesting to note, that of all the 'big brains' of the MU, Reed has suffered the least amount of trauma of them all, certainly nowhere near the level that Bruce and Hank have endured. But we could sum this up thusly: Hank created Ultron. Reed created Herbie. Actually, if you think about it, this doesn´t do Hank´s reputation any favors... . |
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Post by humanbelly on Apr 5, 2015 6:15:01 GMT -5
It may also be a matter of perception. Hank's inventions and discoveries may be more 'amazing' (for lack of a better term) than Reed's work. Size-changing, the creation of a true AI, work with pocket universes, thought-control to an extent, these are wide-ranging 'fantastic' creations. Whereas Reed, whose genius work is admirable, follows more or less a traditional scientific path. It's also interesting to note, that of all the 'big brains' of the MU, Reed has suffered the least amount of trauma of them all, certainly nowhere near the level that Bruce and Hank have endured. But we could sum this up thusly: Hank created Ultron. Reed created Herbie. Actually, if you think about it, this doesn´t do Hank´s reputation any favors... . No, no-- actually, it does. It's just that you have to maintain an absolutely cold-blooded, objective point of view, and look at only the scientific achievement itself, and not pay any heed whatsoever to that achievement's consequences (even unintended ones). I guess it's sort of a Modern Prometheus situation. Reed's AI contributions, Herbie & Roberta the Receptionist, are solid, clever, products of problem-solving-- cut & dried science. Hank's Ultron would seem to be a product of that special "extra" leap of conceptual ingenuity that one associates with the achievements of. . . well. . . Mad Scientists. (In fact. . . aren't pretty much all of the most impressive sentient robot/android creatures in the MU the product of Mad Scientists of some sort? Didn't SHIELD's LMD technology have its origins somewhere other than SHIELD)? HB |
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Post by Doctor Bong Crosby on Apr 5, 2015 18:46:24 GMT -5
I might be wrong, Belly, but I think the LMD technology at SHIELD´s disposal was Stark´s. There´s an early IM story where an LMD in Stark´s image gains sentience and plans to replace the real Tony.
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Post by humanbelly on Apr 6, 2015 20:07:35 GMT -5
I might be wrong, Belly, but I think the LMD technology at SHIELD´s disposal was Stark´s. There´s an early IM story where an LMD in Stark´s image gains sentience and plans to replace the real Tony. I tell ya, there seems to be a bit of a dearth of readily-available info on the subject. The more I've mulled it over, the more I my recollection becomes that there was actually a suggestion that the basis of LMD tech was adapted from some some captured alien technology, like the Kree or Shi'ar or someone. That (heh) rings a familiar bell for me, Bong. LMD's (and androids like the SuperAdaptoid) have always presented a problem for me, ethics-wise, because they were so poorly thought-out as a concept at first. They were simply too alive and self-aware to make a credible case for their being mere expendable "robots". Also, they're hopelessly like the Holodeck in ST:TNG (and subsequent series) in that they ALWAYS seem to have a glitch that makes them become "atypically" sentient, or self-directed, or whatever. If there's a highly visible LMD in a story, you KNOW that it's going to start thinking it's human before too long. . . HB |
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