Hank's Getting Smarter With Age. Until His Next Foul-Up, Anyway

I've been meaning to do this post for a month, but kept getting sidetracked.

Avengers Academy #7 reminded me of West Coast Avengers #15. You have Hank Pym on the verge of a huge decision, the difficulties of his relationship with Tigra, and a super-villain that badmouths Hank about his superheroic career choices.

With WCA #15, Hank and Tigra are in San Francisco with Hellcat and Damion Hellstrom, celebrating Tigra managing to integrate her human and cat selves, so she's not at war with herself. This revelry is interrupted by Tiger Shark trying to elude Harbor Police, and the ladies make the capture. Turns out Tiger Shark was double-crossed by Whirlwind, who's still on the loose, and the heroes decide to bring him in as well.

At that time, Hank Pym's out of the crimefighting biz. He lives at the WCA's headquarters, but he's basically support staff. Not like Jarvis, or Oracle, more like that Harold fellow who lived in the Batcave in the '90s. Anyway, even though Whirlwind is one of his old foes, Hank is not going to suit up. He will, however, lend his experience by helping set a trap to put Whirlwind in a location where his powers are neutralized, and Tigra and Hellcat have a better shot at him. Things are going fairly well until Whirlwind tries to escape by slingshotting onto the roof Hank happens to be directing the fight from. At which point, Whirlwind giving Pym crap about being a loser who gave up his identity and let others take it, while Whirlwind, no heavyweight himself , has a unique shtick he won't let anyone steal from him. Hank flips out, tries to rush Whirlwind. . . and nearly falls to his death. The issue ends with Hank learning that while he and Greer Nelson (Tigra's human half) may have had a thing going, in her current form, she needs to figure out who she is, so Hank doesn't even have a girlfriend. Which helps drive him to the point of putting a gun to his temple in the last few pages of West Coast Avengers #16.

Avengers Academy is a little different. Hank's still taking a teaching role, but he's also still fighting crime himself. It had been as the Wasp, but he's opted to return to Giant Man. The Absorbing Man breaks confinement, there's no one else left to stop him, so Hank steps up. Crusher talks some trash himself, making fun of Hank for using his ex-wife's crimefighting name, shrugging off Hank's insults about his education, and electrocuting him in response. Crusher calls Pym a loser, and Hank flips out and rushes him, too. It works a little better this time, since he makes contact, but it allows Crusher to steal Pym's powers. This time around, Hank does take care of business, by enlarging the both of them to a realm where Abstract Beings reside, which is more than Crusher's mind can handle. The whole fight is set in between Tigra and Hank awkwardly discussing her son's parentage, and Hank's big plan to bring Jan back to them, over Jocasta's concerns.

It's interesting to contrast the two issues. In each case, Hank tries to attack a super-powered foe. In the first, he does so without any powers himself, because he's trying to give up superheroics, claiming he's not cut out for them. In the later case, he does have powers, because while he still may not be able to settle on an identity, he's at least accepted that he does, if not enjoy fighting crime, feel a responsibility to do so. Also, a charge is a somewhat better strategy against The Absorbing Man, who isn't particularly fast. He'll naturally steal Pym's powers when given the opportunity, and that ends up helping Hank defeat him, by making it easier to enlarge him to a size where the weakness Hank mentioned earlier (Crusher's mind) can come into play. Even if that wasn't Hank's intention at the time, if he simply tackled Crusher because the taunts got to him, he was able to think, and retake control of the situation. Trying to rush Whirlwind, whose entire deal is he's quite fast and hard to get ahold of, was ill-advised, especially considering they were standing on the edge of a rooftop.

In the more recent story, Hank actually listens (eventually) to everyone's concerns that he might be rushing his plan to bring Jan back. It also helps that he saw what brief exposure to that level of existence did to Crusher. In the WCA story, Hank can't really get past Tigra needing time to find herself. Even though she says they might wind up together again some day, he can't see it, he can't wait. He's frustrated that they were together, and then she changed, and now they aren't, and he seems to consider that emblematic of the superhero world he supposedly wants no part of. In reality, he did miss being a superhero, he just hadn't found a style that fit him.

And he wouldn't confide in anyone. When Hellcat asks him what Whirlwind was saying to him, Hank's response is he has no idea. He refuses to let on that anything is bothering him, and so nobody can help him through it. Granted he didn't tel everyone right at the start that his 'Infinite Mansion' was actually helping keep Jan's body together, but before he made his big attempt to save her, he let some other folks in on the plan. Ultimately, the decision was his, but hearing the doubts other people had, helped him realize he had the same doubts, that he was rushing into things again. This time he slowed down a little bit farther away from the edge.