I See Posts Before My Eyes

brevoortformspring:

>I was excited to see Hank Pym, one of my favorite characters, will be getting used again, but was disappointed to see the story will again revolve around his mental problems. I know writers will pitch stories, but shouldn’t an editor say, “Hey, you know we’ve covered that in every single Hank Pym story since the Shooter Assassination of the character; maybe we could try some different take?” 

A word, if I may, about “the Shooter Assassination of the character”.

Jim Shooter has gone on record that he did not intend The Bitch-Slap Heard Round the World to be nearly as big a moment as it has become. He wrote about this in his blog, where he talked about the way he crafted Hank’s story, creating a pretty damned complex psychological profile.

As for The Slap:

In that story (issue 213, I think), there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of “get away from me” gesture while not looking at her.  Bob Hall, who had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross!  There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the “wife-beater” story.

Ever since, there have been endless attempts to make Hank Pym a major player in the Marvel Universe, and in almost all but the most recent use by Dan Slott, almost always ended poorly, spiraling back to “but he’s the guy who hit his wife”.

Jim created a very complex pool of potential storytelling here.  And it always gets reduced to “wife-beater” - both by the fans and by editorial - too often.  Dan Slott’s recent use of Hank may have been the most creative and rich storyline in decades.  Hank really is among the top three minds in the MU, but his issues render him alternately fiercely jealous or convinced he’s not good enough.  To this day I consider it very possible that the moment he was told he was the “Scientist Supreme” may have all been a hallucination, but one that inspired him to some of his greatest discoveries.

Here’s Jim’s complete blog post