Who is Ant-Man?

by Chris Vegvary

I find that whenever I mention Ant-Man to someone, even some of my friends who know comic books, I get blank stares. No one seems to know who the guy is. Obviously, Hank Pym is not as popular as some of the more mainstream Marvel characters, such as Iron Man, but he still plays a large part in the world of the comics. He’s one of the top brains in the Marvel universe, and has been around since the 1960s, although there’s been some alteration to his background in order to keep him young enough to still be relevant in the comics, as there has been with all of our beloved characters.

Hank Pym started out as Ant-Man, and has since changed personas many times, having aliases such as Goliath, Giant Man, and Yellowjacket. Ant-Man has the ability to shrink down to the size of an ant, and also to communicate with them and have them do his bidding. That may not sound like such a great power, but that combined with his intelligence landed him a spot on the Avengers team, which was named by his girlfriend and eventual wife, Janet Van Dyne (the superhero known as the Wasp), of which they were both founding members. Unfortunately for the both of them, the 2012 Marvel film The Avengers decided to go with Hawkeye and Black Widow instead.

Why else would Ant-Man/Hank Pym be important? Well, besides the creation of Pym Particles, which is what allows him to grow or shrink in size, Hank Pym is also directly responsible for the creation of an artificially intelligent robot that becomes progressively smarter and decides it needs to wipe out mankind. No, I’m not talking about Skynet or Terminators here; I’m talking about Ultron. But again, unfortunately, Hank Pym is left out of this process in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because the film Ant-Man won’t be released until after The Avengers: Age of Ultron, where it is suspected (but not confirmed) that Ultron will evolve out of the JARVIS AI used in Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor.

The film Ant-Man, which just found it leading man to play the character finally, was originally slated to appear in what is referred to as “Phase 2” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which includes previous films Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, and upcoming films Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy) before the sequel to The Avengers, Ant-Man was pushed back to the beginning of “Phase 3”, which will see the release of movies like Doctor Strange and possibly Black Panther. I feel it would have been not only smart, but excellent to see Hank Pym be responsible for the creation of Ultron in an end-credits scene of the film Ant-Man, leading into The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.

So now Paul Rudd, comedic actor, will be playing Ant-Man in the film, but it is still unknown at this time whether the character he is playing will be Hank Pym or someone else who took up the mantle of Ant-Man at some point, like Scott Lang or Eric O’Grady. Regardless of whether he creates Ultron in the cinematic universe or not (it’s already been said that he won’t), I’m still curious to see how director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) can make turning into a tiny person and fighting crime into an interesting movie. I know I’ll be seeing it no matter what.