The Avengers: Ant-Man

Henry "Hank" Pym was a brilliants scientist and also one of founding members of the Avengers along with Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor and his wife Janet Van Dyne. He was a great addition to the team for his power and his intelligence, although he at times would clash with Tony Stark, but really who didn't clash with him. Hank was the first to take the mantle of Ant-Man, and there were a few that followed him such as Scott Lang and Eric O'Grady. This article will focus more on Hank Pym as he was also one of the founders of the Avengers. Pym created the Pym particles that allowed the user to become the size of an ant or even a giant. Even more so, he created a helmet for his alter ego that allowed him to communicate with ants. Like his fellow founding members, he set an example for heroes who came to follow him.

Dr. Hank Pym was a brilliant scientist with a gifted mind in other scientific fields. Pym was brought into heroism by a tragedy that befell him and his first wife Maria Trovaya. He had met the beautiful woman who had fled from Hungary and got hitched in the States figuring living there would protect her from her people. That allusion had quickly been proven false and the two headed back to Hungary only to be confronted by agents of the secret police upon their arrival. Hank was knocked unconscious while Maria had been murdered. This put Hank in a deep state of depression as he was distraught over what had transpired. This awoken the hero within Hank as he decided to combat injustice in the world. He traveled back to the states where he discovered and began working with subatomic particles which would later be named, "Pym Particles." With these particles and the application of magnetic fields to entrap the particles into two separate serums, one would reduce the size of other people and objects while the other would bring them back to normal size. He decided he needed a test subject and used the serum on himself. The power of the serum surprised him as he was reduced to the size of an insect. Upon being reduced to the size of an ant, he found himself entrapped inside of an anthill and when he got out he found his other serum which returned him to his normal size. Realizing the power that the serums have, he destroyed them.

After some time had passed, he decided to reconsider his decision in destroying the serums and instead he revisited the serums. He began to study ants due to his time inside of an anthill and theorized that ants could communicate through psionic/electrical waves through their antennae. With this in mind, he took upon himself to create a helmet that would allow him to do just that. He even created a suit that would work seamlessly with the shrinking potion, if he ever decided to use it again. That same day Pym was contacted by the government and asked to create a gas that would provide people with temporary, yet limited, immunity to radioactivity under certain specific circumstances that were solely based off of Pym's previous work. The government also decided to send four other agents to help him in his work. The KGB, Soviet Intelligence Agency, learned of Pym's project and sent their own personal agents to hold Pym and his helpers in his laboratory. Pym was the only one that knew that the gas had been completed and refused to tell the Soviets the formula. This sent the Soviets in a panic as they began to frantically search the lab for the formula with every intention of killing Pym and his assistants afterward. Unbeknownst to the Soviets, Pym had the cybernetic helmet and his special suit on allowing him to shrink in size. He quickly escaped to the nearby anthill outside of his lab where he used the helmet to gain control of an army of ants to overpower the Soviets. After they were neutralized, he returned to his normal size and from then on he named his alter ego Ant-Man.

Pym would later meet his next love in Janet van Dyne after his colleague who happened to be her father, Vernon, was killed by an alien being from the planet Kosmos. Pym revealed his secret identity as the Ant-Man to Janet and she wished to avenge her father's death. To allow her to get revenge, he taught her how to use what he now called the "Pym Particles" allowing her to adjust her size. Through biochemistry, she was also able to grow insect like wings when she used the particles to shrink herself down in size. She created a alter ego for herself and named herself the Wasp. Janet gradually began to remind Hank of Maria and the two began to fall in love over time eventually leading to marriage. The two became permanent fixtures as costumed crime fighters and would go on to become two of the founding members of the Avengers. Hank even learned of a way to use the particles to increase himself in size where he would then be known as Giant-Man. The increased size had side effects on his body that could have been potentially fatal. Pym and Dyne decided that their career in general was becoming to dangerous for themselves, but believed that in doing so it brought them closer together. However, over time the both of them retired as costumed crime fighters and rode off into the sunset, but of course they would occasionally come back. If they didn't, then they wouldn't be comic book heroes, right?