Biography of the Wasp, 1963
This is a biography of the Wasp for the year of 1963, in which Janet van Dyne lost her father Vernon and subsequently allied with the heroic Ant-Man, with whom she helped form the Avengers.
Biography
Origin
Janet van Dyne was a young woman in 1963 when her father, scientist Vernon van Dyne, visited Dr. Henry Pym to propose a collaboration. Pym wasn't interested, but was secretly struck by Janet's resemblance to his late wife, Maria, while Janet herself was struck by love at first sight. Soon after, Vernon was killed by an alien creature who came to Earth through his gamma-ray beam. Janet found his dead body and was soon joined by Ant-Man—secretly Henry Pym. Janet vowed to avenge her father's death; witnessing her resolve, Ant-Man revealed his identity to her and asked her to join him in fighting crime. She accepted, taking on the appropriate moniker of Wasp along with Pym's size-changing technology and a winged suit. The two found the alien creature that killed Vernon—a large, sentient mass of green goo that had begun terrorizing Manhattan. Ant-Man synthesized a chemical that would counteract its formic-acid makeup, and the two destroyed it with help from his ants. Wasp confessed her attraction to Ant-Man, but he made it clear that their relationship was to be strictly professional.[1]
Egghead's revenge
Wasp and Ant-Man soon heard of a diamond heist nearby, but messages from the ants were garbled through apparent deliberate interference, leaving the heroes with no trail to follow. Soon after, Wasp alone attended an exhibit on wasps at a local zoo, where she observed the diamond in question inside a model hive. She returned that night in full Wasp attire, and was trapped in the hive by the villain Egghead, an old foe of Ant-Man. Wasp signaled for her partner with her antennae, and he soon arrived only to be trapped himself in a tank with an insectivorous iguana. Egghead gave him a pin to give him a sporting chance, and Ant-Man plunged the weapon into the lizard's scales, defeating it. Wasp was soon freed from her own trappings, only for the two to be confronted by Egghead's next minion, an anteater. Ant-Man used a powerful fiber lasso to snag and swing the animal, using his full-sized strength to easily subdue it. The heroes then took the fight to the criminals themselves, easily taking down Egghead's henchmen Ape and Twister, but allowing the man himself to escape.[2]
The robot cyclops
After weeks of relative inactivity in the city, Henry and Janet decided to take a vacation to Greece. Upon arrival, they looked to sail through the nearby islands, but a local captain refused to take them on account of a supposed giant living on one of those islands; further investigation suggested that it was a cyclops. The heroes were able to secure a ship to the island, donning their costumes and indeed coming face-to-face with a cyclops, over 50 feet tall. The boat grabbed the cyclops' attention, but the minuscule Ant-Man and Wasp were able to avoid his gaze. The two flew off (Ant-Man on a flying ant), quietly following the cyclops back onto the island. The cyclops led them to a series of strange lights in the hills, where they found a number of sailors held captive by aliens from the planet A-Chiltar III; the cyclops was in fact a giant robot constructed by the aliens. As Wasp and a group of friendly insects fought the aliens, Ant-Man entered the "brain" of the cyclops robot, controlling it and sending it after the aliens, forcing them to flee for good and freeing the captive sailors.[3]
The Avengers
One day, Ant-Man and the Wasp heard a radio signal from the Teen Brigade, a league of young do-gooders led by Rick Jones in the southwestern U.S., warning that the monstrous beast the Hulk had resurfaced and apparently tried to destroy a train along with its passengers. His intentions were unclear, and in any case he had to be found. The duo answered the call, taking a pair of flying ants for the long trip. When they arrived at Teen Brigade headquarters, they found that they weren’t the only ones: Thor and Iron Man had also come, though Thor strangely left only moments after. Ant-Man soon received an urgent message from his ant network, that Hulk had been spotted disguised in a nearby circus. Ant-Man and Wasp, followed closely by Iron Man, made their way to the circus and attempted to reason with the Hulk, but to no avail. The long-antagonized Hulk ran from them, and only Iron Man was fast enough to pursue. The insectoid heroes trailed behind, keeping a close eye on the action and devising a plan for the final outcome. As Hulk and Iron Man fought, Thor finally returned, his brother Loki in tow: he explained that Loki had framed Hulk for the train incident in a long-winded attempt to get at Thor. Desperate, Loki turned himself radioactive, threatening the rest of the heroes to leave him and Thor alone. But Ant-Man’s plan was soon realized, as a group of ants triggered a trapdoor underneath Loki that trapped him inside of a lead-lined container. Loki could not maintain his radioactivity indefinitely, and Thor would wait it out before returning him to Asgard. During the wait, Ant-Man and Wasp made a proposal: given the combined power that they all shared, the five of them would make an incredible team. Iron Man and Thor readily agreed in the interest of better serving the public, while Hulk figured that it was better than staying on the run. All that was left for the new team was a name, which the Wasp provided: the Avengers.[4]
The hypnotic music of Liso Trago
Ant-Man and the Wasp's crimefighting pursuits continued, stopping an attempted jewel heist. The owner of the jewel, a man from India, told the heroes a story as thanks. He spoke of a man in India known as Ghazandi who was capable of hypnotizing people with his music. He also noted that doing so incorrectly could result in hypnotizing oneself. One night soon after, Hank and Janet shared a night on the town, taking in a nightclub performance from jazz trumpeter Liso Trago at Janet's insistence. After the show, the two spotted Trago stealing the night's profits from the promoter, and the heroes sprung into action. They stopped Trago and brought him to the promoter, who decided to send him out of the country to India rather than call the police on account of their friendship. Two months later, the two heard over the radio a song from Trago, and were quickly overcome by a bizarre frequency and passed out. One of their ants carried them to a nearby anthill to recover, and sacrificed itself to protect them from a garden snake. Protected by their cybernetic helmets, the two traced Trago's signal to a radio station in town. Ant-Man deduced that Trago had returned from India having learned the techniques of hypnotic musicianship from Ghazandi. The two found Trago using hypnotized band members to rob nearby stores and banks. As Wasp herded them with her stinger, Ant-Man and the ants distracted Trago and forced him to botch his hypnotic melody, inadvertently wiping his memory all the way back to his first job as a musician and putting an end to his brief life of crime.[5]
The many quills of the Porcupine
Hank and Janet attended the grand opening of a bank in town that promoted itself as burglar-proof, implementing security technology developed by Dr. Pym. The opening was crashed however by a bizarre villain calling himself the Porcupine. The Porcupine was appropriately clad in a bulky, spined suit, each of his "quills" armed with a different substance, from sleeping gas to liquid cement. Taking the crowd by surprise and obfuscating his crime with various gases, Porcupine easily got inside the bank safe and stole a large amount of cash. By the time the heroes had gathered their senses, Porcupine had escaped. Janet in fact had inhaled too much of the gas, and Hank was forced to bring her home to recover. Soon after, he received word from the ants that they had followed Porcupine after another robbery, trailing him undisguised to an army laboratory. Ant-Man went off alone, as Wasp recovered to a degree some time later. She learned of Ant-Man's location from the ants, and flew there to find him trapped in a filled bathtub. Wasp and the ants freed him, and the group quickly built up a stockpile of Porcupine's own liquid cement, and as the villain returned in full costume, squirted it into his quills to block his offense. Porcupine was knocked from the window, but survived the fall several stories down with some unclogged jet tubes, and escaped.[6]
The birth of Giant-Man
Pym made several scientific advancements in this time. He stabilized a method of growing himself beyond his normal size, discovering that a height of 12 feet was as tall as he could reasonably make himself. Beyond that, his natural frame could not support the increased pressure. He also integrated the abilities of his signature cybernetic helmet into a suit that was also adjusted to allow for the aforementioned increase in size. Finally, he and Wasp each equipped belts filled with a series of capsules that would transform them to various sizes. One day, as he and Wasp tested these new capsules in their home, they were attacked by a humanoid alien creature while. With a few swipes of his hand, the alien "erased" the two as a tiny Wasp stood on Pym's finger: in fact, this teleported them both to another dimension, called Dimension Z. Pym and some other Earth scientists had been kidnapped by the aliens there, with the intention of forcing them to teach the aliens the secrets of atomic weaponry. Wasp had simply been taken along by luck, unnoticed by their alien captor. She used a shrinking capsule on Pym to free him of his binds, and the two went to work rescuing the other scientists. As Pym unleashed on the aliens his new 12-foot persona, which he dubbed "Giant-Man," Wasp tracked down a way to return to their own dimension. She tracked down the locals' lead scientist, who led them to the alien that possessed the dimensional device. Wasp and Giant-Man fought their way into claiming the device and returned themselves and the captive scientists back to Earth.[7] Soon after, the Avengers fought and defeated the Space Phantom, but Hulk left the team, upset with his treatment by the other members.[8]
See also
References
- ↑ Tales to Astonish #44a: "The Creature from Kosmos!" (June 1963) Lee, Stan and H.E. Huntley (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Heck, Don (i), Simek, Artie (let).
- ↑ Tales to Astonish #45a: "The Terrible Traps of Egghead!" (July 1963) Lee, Stan and H.E. Huntley (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Heck, Don (i), Simek, Artie (let).
- ↑ Tales to Astonish #46a: "..When Cyclops Walks the Earth." (August 1963) Lee, Stan and H.E. Huntley (w), Heck, Don (p), Rosen, Sam (let).
- ↑ The Avengers #1: "The Coming of the Avengers!" (September 1963) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
- ↑ Tales to Astonish #47a: "Music to Scream By." (September 1963) Lee, Stan and H.E. Huntley (w), Heck, Don (art).
- ↑ Tales to Astonish #48a: "Ant-Man and the Wasp Defy the Porcupine!" (October 1963) Lee, Stan and H.E. Huntley (w), Heck, Don (art), Rosen, Sam (let).
- ↑ Tales to Astonish #49a: "The Birth of Giant-Man!" (November 1963) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Heck, Don (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
- ↑ The Avengers #2: "The Space Phantom." (November 1963) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Simek, Artie (let).