Biography of the Wasp, 1964

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The following is a biography of the Wasp for the year of 1964, in which Wasp continued to fight alongside Giant-Man and with the other Avengers, including new member Captain America.

Biography

The Human Top

Through the ant network, Giant-Man and the Wasp soon learned of a planned department-store robbery by an infamous but largely small-time criminal known as the Human Top, renowned for his ability to spin at remarkable speeds. The duo were at the department store on time to witness the robbery, and gave chase through the streets. The Top easily outmaneuvered them however, running circles around the clumsy Giant-Man, who hadn't gotten used to moving around in his 12-foot form. Top escaped, and Giant-Man committed himself to training with a robotic replica in his lab for the next several weeks.[1] They soon learned of an explosion at the docks that hit only an old, useless boat—a seemingly pointless event that Giant-Man deduced was meant to draw police to the scene. Searching the city, Giant-Man and Wasp spotted the Top leaving the federal building, having stolen something unidentified. Despite his training, Giant-Man was still unable to catch the criminal, even with some diversionary assistance from Wasp. Meeting with government officials, the two learned that Top had stolen civil-defense plans and was planning on selling them to a communist agent. Unbeknownst to him, the plans were outdated, and the agent was under heavy surveillance. Giant-Man used this to his advantage, getting the jump on Top at the meeting and applying a powerful glue to his gloves to prevent him from escaping his grasp. With that, the Human Top was at last brought to justice.[2] Soon after, the Hulk joined forces with Namor the Sub-Mariner to fight the Avengers on a remote island, but the two were eventually fought off, and Hulk went into hiding.[3] The Avengers then found the legendary hero Captain America frozen in the sea on their way back to New York, and the five of them teamed up to fight Namor once more. Cap officially joined the Avengers afterward.[4]

The Black Knight and the Porcupine

Several weeks later, Wasp witnessed what appeared to be a Black Knight flying through the skies of New York aloft a winged horse and carrying a lance. He fired a laser beam from his lance to melt the side of an armored car, flying off with the bags of cash inside. Wasp reported this to Pym, who initially had his doubts, but the news and his ant network soon corroborated her story. Giant-Man confronted the Black Knight head-on with Wasp offering backup support, and the two soon overwhelmed him with their ability to quickly and repeatedly change their size. The Black Knight retreated, vowing to return and defeat Giant-Man one day.[5] Not long after, Giant-Man and the Wasp were giving a public performance of their powers, when they were suddenly attacked from afar by an onslaught of flying quills. The two were knocked from their position high off the ground; Wasp was able to shrink and fly away, but Giant-Man landed on his feet, fracturing an ankle. The culprit of the attack had left as soon as they had arrived. After the injury had been treated, Giant-Man was forced into inaction as it healed: he couldn’t even change his size for fear of injuring it further. He spent much of his rehabilitation in a loft that the two heroes had rented downtown, using it as a combination gymnasium and laboratory. One day they were visited by a local fan club, with each of the members dressed as one of their former foes. One fan was dressed as the Porcupine, and asked Wasp to go down to his car to get a gift for Giant-Man. She obliged, but upon arriving at the car found it to be booby trapped.[note 1] The fan in fact was the real Porcupine, who soon fled the scene with Wasp in tow. He brought her to his home and threw her into a barren room under solitary confinement, insisting that she would be left there until she gave up Giant-Man's true identity. In truth, he wanted her to escape, and deliberately left a small hole in the wall through which she soon flew. Wasp was unwittingly trailed back to her and Pym's home by a special radio quill. Pym, who had been tirelessly searching for a way to find Wasp, noticed the quill when she returned and braced himself for a battle. When Porcupine arrived at their home, Wasp was quickly incapacitated with a simple piece of flypaper. In the ensuing fight, Porcupine's own hubris did him in, as he inadvertently consumed several shrinking capsules from Giant-Man's belt, thinking them to be growth capsules. The Porcupine shrunk unceasingly, until he eventually blipped out of sight.[6]

The communist reign of El Toro

Giant-Man and Wasp were soon contacted by government officials for a private meeting in Washington. The heroes were told of El Toro, a communist who had recently won a presidential election in the usually democratic Santa Rico in a landslide. The U.S. suspected foul play, and asked the heroes to investigate for signs of a communist plot. Hank and Janet arrived in Santa Rico disguised as tourists, but this proved to be an utter failure. Hank handed Janet the size-changing capsules in case he was searched, but the suspicious Toro's men instead took Janet captive. She tossed Hank a capsule, which he used to become Giant-Man. Toro himself appeared and charged Giant-Man with his special horned headgear extended, knocking him silly as Janet was taken away. Janet was taken to a ship off the coast, where Giant-Man found and rescued her, attaining full control of his size once more. The two shrunk and hitched a ride to the capitol building, where they fought off Toro and found evidence that he had bought votes with outside communist money. The heroes revealed these papers to the public, who ousted Toro as leader and returned the country to democracy.[7]

The Human Top regroups

Giant-Man and Wasp soon learned of the Human Top's escape from prison and a subsequent bank robbery. When they arrived at the bank, the Top had escaped with a "small fortune" in cash. As the two returned home, they were quietly followed by the Top himself, who broke into their home and stole Giant-Man's capsule belt. Top made himself large, tossing Pym into a closet and locking it behind him. Wasp made herself small, but Top managed to capture her inside a jar and escape with her hostage. Giant-Man contacted some nearby ants who brought him a shrinking capsule, allowing him to escape under the closet door. Pym claimed a spare capsule belt and flew after the Top on a flying ant, becoming Giant-Man once more and confronting him on a rooftop. Wasp escaped from the jar, and following Giant-Man's instructions, employed a group of termites to weaken the ceiling underneath the Human Top. The fall knocked him unconscious, and Wasp slipped him a shrinking capsule to return him to normal size, allowing the two to easily bring him to custody. By the time of this mission, Hank and Janet's relationship had become playfully affectionate without being overtly romantic.[8]

The Magician

Hank's affection for Janet was stronger than he let on, however, as he soon decided to propose to her. When she returned home early that evening, he didn't get a chance to do so, as she was heading out to a party hosted by her lifelong friend, wealthy playboy Sterling Stuyvesant. Janet herself had become impatient over the fact that Hank hadn't proposed, and used the possibility that Sterling might do so himself as a way to make him jealous and get him to hurry up. Hank was frustrated and ashamed, but submitted to the idea that a full-time marriage was a fool's notion, given his responsibilities as Giant-Man and with the Avengers. Shortly after Janet had left, Hank got a message from his ant network notifying him of an entertainer called the Magician at Stuyvesant's building. Though nothing seemed amiss, Hank knew that the ants wouldn't notify him unless something was up. Indeed, the Magician turned out to be a criminal, as he added to the usual stage-magic tricks by attempting to rob all the attendees. Janet turned into the Wasp and confronted the Magician, but he trapped her in a trap compartment inside his cane. Hank arrived as Ant-Man shortly afterward and heard of what had happened before returning to his lab to search for the Magician. The ant network turned up nothing, so Pym instead decided to replicate the Magician's last target by throwing a phony high-society party. He rented a yacht and set it up so that it seemed a true party was happening, but he was the only one there. The Magician soon did take the bait, but upon being confronted by Giant-Man, escaped via his getaway blimp. Giant-Man received a message through his antennae that Wasp was safely aboard that blimp, and was able to transform into Ant-Man to climb a rope up to it. He freed Wasp and fought the Magician while Wasp let out the air from the blimp, causing it to crash into the river. Ant-Man was able to fly out on a paper airplane, while Magician was recovered from the water and taken into custody by the police.[9]

Adventures with the Avengers

The Avengers went on to search for Hulk through the southwest,[10] only to find that he had come to New York seeking revenge on them. The Avengers returned to New York and teamed with the Fantastic Four to bring Hulk under control. In the end, Rick Jones proved to be the deciding factor, feeding Hulk an anti-gamma pill that caused him to transform back into Bruce Banner as he fled.[11] A few days later, the Avengers stopped an attempted attack by the Lava Men in the southwest (fighting the Hulk once more along the way).[12] Returning to New York, they fought off a team of supervillains led by Baron Zemo called the Masters of Evil, including Wasp and Giant-Man's recent foe the Black Knight.[13]

Egghead's Spider-Man deception

Perhaps realizing that Wasp's effectiveness in battle could be improved, Hank developed a highly compressed air gun that would attach to her arm as a sort of "stinger." Soon after, the two received an alert from the ant network claiming that the hero Spider-Man was seeking out Giant-Man to destroy him. Hank asked Wasp to track down Spider-Man and report back. Eager to use her new weapon, Wasp tracked down Spider-Man and fired it at him, unintentionally knocking him from his web-slinging patrol of the city. Spider-Man righted himself and used his keen senses to capture his tiny foe in a web. Wasp radioed Hank for help, and he quickly arrived on the scene as Giant-Man, pitting his size against Spider-Man's supreme agility as more and more police came in a vain attempt to stop the fight. But soon, Giant-Man received a message from the ants informing him that Egghead was unloading stolen goods in a warehouse nearby. He and Wasp made haste with Spider-Man in tow, easily defeating Egghead and his cronies with their combined forces. It became clear that Egghead had used his own ant-communication technology to coerce their initial warning, causing a fight between Giant-Man and Spider-Man and distracting the police from his crime across town. After many months in hiding, Egghead was at last brought to justice.[14]

The threat of the Colossus

Continuing to develop useful scientific innovations, Dr. Pym discovered a way to trigger a change in size through thought impulses in one's cybernetic helmet rather than consuming a size-changing capsule. Soon after, Captain America arrived at Pym's lab to inform Giant-Man and Wasp of reports of a massive being in Africa called the Colossus, said to be thirty feet tall. He lived at the top of a tall peak and had begun to demand human sacrifices from the natives. Giant-Man and Wasp traveled to the area by jet, approaching the peak with Colossus atop it. The heroes tried several methods of throwing him off-balance, but nothing seemed to work. Giant-Man desperately decided to grow to Colossus' size, meeting him eye-to-eye at thirty feet. This proved entirely ineffectual, as Giant-Man became too weak and dizzy at such an enormous size to do anything. He went back down to typical Giant-Man size, but the Colossus grabbed him and carried him toward a large egg-like object in the distance. But a Wasp air blast and a sudden ant-size shrinkage from Giant-Man caused the creature to become baffled and terrified. He stepped into what turned out to be a spaceship and flew off in terror.[15] Shortly after, with Hank out of town, Wasp fought and defeated the escaped Magician, returning him to custody.[16] Soon after, Baron Zemo, who had escaped imprisonment during his first encounter with the Avengers, aligned with Asgardians known as the Enchantress and the Executioner to attempt to defeat the heroes once more. Thor sent them through a space warp, launching them to a random place in the multiverse.[17]

Persuading the Hulk

At a meeting of the Avengers, the team studied newsreel film of the Hulk's recent battle with Spider-Man.[18] Giant-Man was quietly frustrated that the Avengers had lost him from their team, and he and Wasp traveled to New Mexico to find him and ask him to reconsider. They arrived at the missile base where the Avengers had faced the threat of the Living Stone, and spoke to General Thunderbolt Ross and a conspicuously annoyed Bruce Banner, but they offered no useful information. But as the two explored the towns nearby, the Hulk did emerge, and Giant-Man was able to evacuate a small town in time for their inevitable fight to begin. Giant-Man did his best to speak with the Hulk peacefully, but the rampaging beast was entirely uninterested. The two fought until military forces led by General Ross fired a small atomic shell at the evacuated city. The airborne Wasp saw this occur, and warned Giant-Man in time for him to react. Hulk was confident he might survive the blast, but wanted to defeat Giant-Man himself, and so jumped high into the air and caught the shell, tossing it as far away as he could. It exploded in a large but harmless blast, though the powerful shockwave caught Hulk and knocked him to the ground, returning him to Bruce Banner in the distance. Giant-Man and Wasp returned home: Hank was disappointed that he couldn't recruit the Hulk, but Wasp took solace in the fact that Hulk's selfless act demonstrated that he had some good in him.[19]Back in New York, the two spotted the villainous Chameleon in an incomplete Captain America disguise, observing a fight between Iron Man and the real Cap. He had tricked Iron Man into thinking that his ally was an impostor, but Giant-Man put a stop to it by grabbing and presenting the Chameleon and bringing him to justice.[20] Hank later went off to East Germany to rescue his friend Lee Kearns from communist forces. He refused to let Janet accompany him, and told her of his wife Maria's death at the hands of communists years ago. Janet indeed stayed behind, now more understanding of Hank's often bristly, unromantic exterior.[21]

Egghead and the android

One day, Hank and Janet received a letter from a producer who was interested in doing a film series on the two, featuring the heroes as themselves. After much cajoling from Janet, Hank agreed to do it. They arrived at the "studio" specified in the letter to find a dark, abandoned warehouse. They were attacked by a twelve-foot android, which directly matched up to Giant-Man in size. An amplified voice from within the android announced itself as Egghead, recently escaped from prison. Egghead declared that the air in the locked building would run out within an hour. Giant-Man and Wasp battled the automaton, and eventually Giant-Man grabbed the android by the legs and spun it such that its controller Egghead became unbearably dizzy, desperately releasing the lock on the door and allowing their escape. With Egghead out of commission, the mindless android wandered out of the building and off of a pier to its demise.[22] Also around this time, the Avengers repeled an attempted invasion by the time-traveling Kang, and fought back the Masters of Evil once more with the help of the duplicitous Wonder Man, who died shortly thereafter.[23][24]

The impostor Giant-Man

Returning to her and Hank's apartment one day, Janet saw Hank in full costume run out of the building hastily, much to her confusion. Later, she received word of an attempted robbery of a jewelry store, and arrived on the scene as the Wasp. She detected signals from Giant-Man's helmet, and found him shrunk to ant size hiding among the jewels. Looking at him close up, she found that the man wasn't Pym at all, but an impostor in his suit. She tried to get him to explain why he had Pym's suit, but she was soon contacted through her helmet by Pym himself. With Wasp momentarily distracted, the impostor—a small-time criminal named Second-Story Sam—took the opportunity to trap her in a small glass case and escape. However, Pym sent a flying ant to bring Sam to the apartment, where he knocked Sam out and used memory-loss serum to make him forget Giant-Man's identity and his own life of crime. During this whole debacle, Pym had also let a plant-growth-acceleration experiment get out of hand, causing a rapidly growing plant to spread across the city. With help from the ants, Giant-Man clipped the tap root and stopped its spread. Escaping from the jewelry case, Wasp returned to the apartment and reunited with the real Giant-Man.[25] Also around this time, the Avengers fended off the Masters of Evil and the mysterious Immortus, though the Enchantress used a spell to reverse time such that these events essentially never happened.[26] The Avengers further followed what Thor called an evil presence in Europe, which turned out to be the alien Lucifer, though they eventually left his defeat in the hands of the X-Men.[27]

The racket of the Wrecker

One day, Wasp and Giant-Man were visited in their apartment by a police officer, who told them that the police chief requested their presence at the station. There, the chief told them of a gang leader known as the Wrecker who had extorted protection money out of a number of establishments in Brooklyn. The chief asked for the heroes' assistance in bringing the Wrecker down with their own unorthodox methods. Hank and Janet, out of their superhero garb, traveled to one of the few stores in the area who refused to pay the Wrecker, and offered to buy the hardware store from the owner. The man eagerly did so, terrified of the threat of the Wrecker. It took no time at all for the Wrecker's men to hear of this purchase and confront Hank and Janet at the store with a protection contract, but the unassuming-looking heroes used their superior ability to beat up the gangsters and send them packing. Soon after, the Wrecker himself, donning a hood, came with an entourage of criminals and attacked the store themselves, but Giant-Man and Wasp were there to meet them. They defeated Wrecker and his cronies, allowing the police to arrive and take them into custody, but Wasp was knocked unconscious in the brawl. Giant-Man resuscitated her, and when she came to, he kissed her out of passion and relief. The police unmasked the Wrecker, revealing him to be the same man who sold Hank and Janet the hardware store.[28]

Attuma and the Atlanteans

Pym began developing a giant robot ant with the goal of studying ant behavior without using live specimens. So focused was he on his task that he treated Janet with careless cruelty, not realizing how mean he was being until the job was done. Distraught and determined to get over her misguided love for him, Janet took her belongings—minus any Wasp paraphernalia—and took a plane trip to an unspecified location, leaving a note behind telling Hank that she was leaving the duo. As the commercial plane flew through the air, it was suddenly overcome by a swarm of bubbles, which forced the plane to land safely on a nearby island. As the passengers left the plane, they were approached by a colossal treaded vehicle, a voice from which declared its allegiance to the mighty Attuma. The machine took the emptied plane into its hull and demanded that Janet come on board as well. The pilots of the plane attempted to stand up to the machine, but its driver, a helmeted Atlantean, came out and stunned them with a paralyzing ray. Desperate for a solution, Janet scoured her belongings and found the remnants of one of Hank's capsules. She consumed the crumbs, and though she didn't change size, she was able to send a brief cybernetic message to a nearby winged ant to get help. With her plan enacted, Janet went with the Atlantean willingly. Attuma and his followers released the plane and its other passengers, and studied Janet as a preemptive measure to prepare for an attack on the unknown surface world. However, it didn't take long for Giant-Man to arrive and bring Janet her Wasp equipment. The two teamed up and took down Attuma and the Atlanteans. So shocked was Attuma by the humans' bizarre powers that he claimed to be scared off of ever attempting to attack the surface world again. Later, Hank humbly asked Janet to come back to him, and she accepted, realizing anew that she needed him also.[29] Also around this time, while Iron Man was away from the Avengers investigating the apparent death of Tony Stark, the team were approached by a fake, robotic Spider-Man sent back in time by Kang. It led them into a trap in Mexico, but the robot was trailed and defeated by the real Spider-Man, foiling Kang's plans.[30]

Notes

  1. ↑ The only depiction of this trap is what Giant-Man assumed it to be: a glass case that kept Wasp secure inside the car.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Tales to Astonish #50a: "The Human Top!" (December 1963) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Ditko, Steve (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  2. ↑ Tales to Astonish #51a: "Showdown with the Human Top!" (January 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  3. ↑ The Avengers #3: "The Avengers Meet Sub-Mariner!" (January 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  4. ↑ The Avengers #4: "Captain America Joins the Avengers!" (March 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (art), Simek, Artie (let).
  5. ↑ Tales to Astonish #52a: "The Black Knight Strikes!" (February 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (art), Simek, Artie (let).
  6. ↑ Tales to Astonish #53a: "Trapped by the Porcupine!" (March 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (art), Rosen, Sam (let).
  7. ↑ Tales to Astonish #54a: "No Place to Hide!" (April 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Heck, Don (art), Simek, Artie (let).
  8. ↑ Tales to Astonish #55a: "On the Trail of the Human Top!" (May 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (art), Simek, Artie (let).
  9. ↑ Tales to Astonish #56a: "The Coming of the Magician!" (June 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (art).
  10. ↑ Fantastic Four #25: "The Hulk vs. the Thing." (April 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Bell, George (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  11. ↑ Fantastic Four #26: "The Avengers Take Over!" (May 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Bell, George (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  12. ↑ The Avengers #5: "The Invasion of the Lava Men!" (May 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  13. ↑ The Avengers #6: "Masters of Evil!" (July 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Stone, Chic (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  14. ↑ Tales to Astonish #57a: "On the Trail of the Amazing Spider-Man!" (July 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  15. ↑ Tales to Astonish #58a: "The Coming of...Colossus." (August 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  16. ↑ Tales to Astonish #58b: "The Magician and the Maiden!" (August 1964) Lee, Stan and Larry Lieber (w), Lieber, Larry (art), Rosen, Sam (let).
  17. ↑ The Avengers #7: "Their Darkest Hour!" (August 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Stone, Chic (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  18. ↑ The Amazing Spider-Man #14: "The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin." (July 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ditko, Steve (art), Simek, Artie (let).
  19. ↑ Tales to Astonish #59a: "Enter: The Hulk." (September 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  20. ↑ Tales of Suspense #58a: "In Mortal Combat with Captain America!" (October 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Heck, Don (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  21. ↑ Tales to Astonish #60a: "The Beasts of Berlin!" (October 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ayers, Dick (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  22. ↑ Tales to Astonish #61a: "Now Walks the Android." (November 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Ditko, Steve (p), Bell, George (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  23. ↑ The Avengers #8: "Kang, the Conqueror!" (September 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  24. ↑ The Avengers #9: "The Coming of the...Wonder Man!" (October 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Heck, Don (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  25. ↑ Tales to Astonish #62a: "Giant-Man Versus the Wonderful Wasp!" (December 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Burgos, Carl (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Simek, Artie (let).
  26. ↑ The Avengers #10: "The Avengers Break Up!" (November 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Heck, Don (p), Ayers, Dick (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  27. ↑ The X-Men #9: "Enter, The Avengers!" (January 1965) Lee, Stan (w), Kirby, Jack (p), Stone, Chic (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  28. ↑ Tales to Astonish #63a: "The Gangsters and the Giant!" (January 1965) Lee, Stan (w), Burgos, Carl (p), Stone, Chic (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  29. ↑ Tales to Astonish #64a: "When Attuma Strikes!" (February 1965) Lazarus, Leon (w), Burgos, Carl (p), Reinman, Paul (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
  30. ↑ The Avengers #11: "The Mighty Avengers Meet Spider-Man!" (December 1964) Lee, Stan (w), Heck, Don (p), Chic, Stone (i), Rosen, Sam (let).
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