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Ant-Man’s 6 Most Idiotic Moments

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The only worse sign than a movie poster saying “Ant-Man” is “even the movie’s own director can’t sit through what happened to it.” We don’t know what Marvel did to the movie, but when you can drive Edgar Wright away from a comic book you’ve screwed up in the nerdiest way possible. Which might just be Marvel meta-media marketing, because Ant-Man’s entire history is about screwing up as badly as possible. Behold the six worst ways a superhero can suck.

Wife-Beater

Ant-Man is getting a movie before Black Widow, because he was an original Avenger, but the Ant-Man who’s getting the movie isn’t the original Avenger. Come on, Marvel, you’re meant to use insane anti-logic to trap X-Men in Mastermind’s mental prison, not to sustain misogyny. And speaking of misogyny:

The whak heard around the nerd

The WHAK heard around the nerd (Source: Marvel)

Hank Pym whacked his wife, the Wasp, and it wasn’t the understandable reaction of anyone being told “there’s a wasp on you!” This was full-on “Shut your ovaries!” sexism, and now it’s the only thing he’s known for. Some fans complain it’s unfair how much people focus on this, they explain how he was under a lot of stress at the time, they tell you how he’s really a great guy, and no, they really don’t understand how awful it all sounds in context.

When “wife beater” becomes your defining trait that tells people everything they need to know in more ways than one. Because the only thing worse than being known as a wife-beater is having half a century of superhero stories without ever doing anything more memorable.

Inventing Ultron

Hank Pym was the mind behind the genocidal Ultron, in more ways than one. Parts of the internet went insane when the movie attributed this to Tony instead, but the Marvel movie universe doesn’t need more nerds only smart enough to use a computer to screw things up. If only because those parts of the internet are doing that already.

Ultron is an unkillable genocidal robot with more copies than a cat meme, and it was created when Hank tried to build a computer. That’s all! Iron Man gets grief for building weapons of mass destruction, but Hank can nearly wipe us out with a craft project. Ultron exterminating chunks of the human race is how most Marvel heroes know it’s time to buy a new calendars, and he comes from Hank trying to assemble a desktop. If he tried to build a baking soda volcano he’d sink the Eastern seaboard.

I cannot stress how much better off the Avengers would be if they’d accidentally stood on Hank instead of recruiting him.

"What? The robot I built by unethically experimenting on an evil robot is doing something unexpected?"

“What? The robot I built by unethically experimenting on an evil magical robot is doing something unexpected?” (Source: Marvel)

Later Ant-Man stories made things even worse, because that’s what Ant-Man stories do. Ultron decided to end the human race because the first one he met was Hank Pym. And this isn’t just Hank handling first contact so badly we get uninvited from existence. The reason Ultron so utterly despises Hank is because Ultron is based on Hank’s own brain patterns. This Ant-@$$#()!% downloaded his own self-loathing into an indestructible metal shell with could command all computers. He worked out a way to wipe us out with his whining.

Invented Something Even Worse Than Ultron

Most people would call it a day after unleashing invincibly self-replicating extermination droids. Because most people are better heroes than Hank Pym. What he did was notice that Ultron still had a physical shell which other heroes could defeat, so he designed Dimitrios, an entirely artificially intelligent virus which wasn’t just able to evolve faster than anything could counter, but was actively designed to do that. And he genuinely thought this was a good idea!

"Going to destroy humanity" is what Hank's products have instead of a trademark. (Source: Marvel)

“Going to exterminate humanity” is what Hank’s products have instead of a trademark. (Source: Marvel)

SHIELD’s AI division head Monica Chang arrests him, which makes sense, because he’s unleashed more world-threatening robotic threats than every evil mad scientist in the Marvel universe put together.

Unleashing global threats, and about to mansplain the head of SHIELD's AI division. Hank Pym, everybody. (Source: Marvel)

Unleashing global threats, and about to mansplain the head of SHIELD’s AI division. Hank Pym, everybody. (Source: Marvel)

But he gets out because he happens to know Captain America. In the meantime Dimitrios attacks a hospital, unleashes a Sentinel, plots to exterminate all of humankind, and commands an entire race of artificial intelligences while operating at computer speed.

Another fine product by Hank Pym™  <em>(Source: Marvel)</em>

Another fine product by Hank Pym™ (Source: Marvel)

The Marriage of Murderous Sexual Assault

Hank is already the comics poster boy for terrible marriages, but he made it even worse in ways you might not know about. Because–as is painfully clear–“making things even worse” and “not actually being that famous” are Ant-Man’s defining traits, and the top two entries on the unread Marvel internal checklist titled “why are we doing this again?”

"I’m going to keep trying new names until I don't suck!" (Source: Marvel)

“I’m going to keep trying new names until I don’t suck!” (Source: Marvel)

Hank got so distracted by being depressed over not having the guts to talk to the Wasp that he dropped a load of chemicals in his lab. Not only is his love life still at the playground level, but he can’t even turn to chemical assistance without screwing it up. The resulting chemical cloud transformed him into Yellowjacket–whose first actions were to claim he’d killed Ant-Man, abduct the Wasp, sexually assault her, and then propose marriage. And she accepted because she recognized him during the sexual assault.

Bravely researching new ways to make that costume even less attractive. (Source: Marvel)

Bravely researching new ways to make that costume even less attractive. (Source: Marvel)

I repeat: sexual assault was how the Wasp recognized Ant-Man. That’s a love story for the statute books right there. And even after everything was worked out he decided to stay as Yellowjacket, because even Ant-Man thinks “being a violently criminal sex offender is better than being Ant-Man.”

Attacking The Avengers (On Purpose)

There was also that time Hank built a robot army to attack the Avengers himself, if only so that he could claim that just once he’d done it on purpose. But that would still be too proactive. No, he built the army in an attempt to cover up his previous screw-ups, in the same way he’d try to put out a small lab fire by drenching it in radioactive phlogiston. Said screw-up involved waiting until Captain America had talked a villain into a truce then shooting her in the back. He was court-martialed by the Avengers, and managed to make that even more embarrassing than being found in contempt of a man dressed like Thor. He opened his legal defense by insinuating that Captain America was trying to throw the fight to get lucky with a villainess.

When your bull$#!+ about beautiful women embarrasses even Tony Stark, you've found a new low below Absolute Zero (Source: Marvel)

When your bull$#!+ about beautiful women embarrasses even Tony Stark, you’ve found a new low below Absolute Zero (Source: Marvel)

That page is the Masterpiece Theater of Hank Pym’s Failures: humiliating himself in front of the Avengers, unveiling his wife-beating, and then—-then!—-deciding now was the time to take out a big control box just before his robots attacked. Not only did they work out it was him in the first five seconds—-and this was a superteam which would interrupt a hunt for the Evil Breadmaster to sample free croissants during a tour of the world’s first Atomic Bakery—-but he screwed his own robot design. Because Hank simply cannot build robots which don’t try to murder him and everyone he knows. If he’d just become a villain, he’d wipe out super-crime inside a week.

The Most Self-Loathing Loss

Ultron attacks the Earth again, or as the Marvel universe used to call it, “Tuesday” (actually, now they call it “Seriously, Screw Hank Pym-Day”). A failed plan to phase inside Ultron accidentally fuses Hank Pym into his most murderous creation. (Well, they say it was an accident. Maybe they just wanted to get two planet-ending birds with one stone). The fused Hanktron isn’t annihilated by energy blasts or softened by anti-adamantium vibriations, but blasted away by Starfox. For those who don’t know, Starfox is Marvel’s creepiest hero: he can force people to feel love and affection. Being beaten by Captain Consent-issues is the Marvel equivalent of being beaten by the opposing team’s mascot and then waking up smelling of their fake fur.

(Source: Marvel)

The hero whose costume has a popped collar (Source: Marvel)

The self-despising cyborg still refuses to like itself, because mere superpowers aren’t enough to get over being even partly made of Hank Pym. Instead it flies into space and shuts down. The ultimate murder-bot storms off to space in a sulk, and also to love himself. The final fate of Hank Pym is to be the solar system’s most obnoxious teenager.

A human heart in a cold metal shell in dark spa ERROR MAXIMUM EMO THRESHOLD EXCEEDED (Source: Marvel)

A human heart in a cold metal shell in dark spa–ERROR MAXIMUM EMO THRESHOLD EXCEEDED (Source: Marvel)


bonusround2 Ant Mans 6 Most Idiotic Moments

Luke McKinney writes about games, drink, science, and everything else that makes life amazing. He’s a columnist on Cracked and writes for several beer magazines. He’s also available for hire. Follow him on Tumblr and Twitter @lukemckinney.

How bad do things get when Ant-Man doesn’t even make Luke’s list of The Worst Avengers Ever?

Ironically, there will never be a 3-D version of 3-D Man.

Ironically, there will never be a 3-D version of 3-D Man.

 


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