This is probably going to be a long one folks so buckle in! I can't say that I've always loved Ant-Man and the Wasp. I don't think I had but one comic as a kid with them in it. I probably considered them lame for some reason. I was very harsh on a lot of comics as a kid for some reason. I was also harsh on a lot of stuff that didn't deserve it because of my OH HEY STEAL SEANBABY/MADDOX'S NEGATIVE EVERYTHING SUCKS COMEDY. That's what my old websites and blogs were like. Very negative and I don't like them. I like things. I like genuinely goofy things. I don't like anything ironically. I'm glad in the years after that I've read tons of stories with Ant-Man and the Wasp and I have to say they are a fun bunch of characters. The original Ant-Man, Hank Pym is one of the first Marvel Superheroes. I'm pretty sure he even predates Thor, Spider Man and The Hulk. I'm not really sure on the dates but I dig the character and am glad that he somehow got his own movie of all things.
The stuff I'm gonna end up talking about involves mental health, so if you do not want to discuss these things or see them discussed I'm going to give a warning here. I know this stuff is serious and not to be made into bad jokes by dickholes on the internet. I don't do this for a lot of things but I feel I must here. Anyway we start alllllllllllllll the way back in December of 1968. Yes, This series has that much history that I feel like discussing because I want too. In Avengers #59, Hank Pym has a mental breakdown and starts thinking he is another person by the name of Yellowjacket. It was also the two parter where he and the Wasp finally got married. Now during a storyline in the Avengers in 1981 Hank Pym goes under such stress and awful stuff that he hits Janet. This is the big thing that people know about the character. It gets brought up a lot (which I uh think it should but everyone forgets the time Spider-Man hit Mary Jane.) He ends up stopping the people causing the stress that caused all his troubles and then leaves for a while. I think most appearances of Ant Man were of Scott Lang at that point.
He shows up again in West Coast Avengers sometime in like 1987 I believe. He's just Hank Pym. Not Ant Man. Not Giant Man. Not Yellowjacket. Just Hank Pym. We go through an entire story where he contemplates suicide. I remember it being done very well and that another character helps him out of it. He becomes superhero Dr. Hank Pym! Using all kinds of powers. It's a weird but enjoyable era for the character. It's weird to use the term enjoyable and suicide in the same paragraph. Anyway, we jump far far forward to 2018. I don't know these issues all that well or what happened to the Ant-Man/Wasp/Big people/shrinky people in the Marvel universe because my collection peters out on most characters around 1991. I do have most Hulk comics from the 1990s but that's for an entirely different discussion.
You see Hank Pym with his first wife Maria had a child who was taken and made to live in the Red Room. You know the same place The Black Widow was raised in the movies. I don't know if they just retconned the Red Room into comics or what. I don't remember everything about these characters, I'm not Mark Gruenwald. He was the only person who could remember all of the continuity. Anyway Nadia (the daughter) escaped from The Red Room and got to the states. In the first series she tries to create a science lab called G.I.R.L. and tries to recruit all kinds of scientific women to help run it. There's also people from the Red Room who want her back and she has to get a bomb out of her friends head for the superhero action but this comic wants to be cute and fun too. I think it does both really well and that brings us to this series.
This is a pretty serious look at least I believe to bipolar disorder. I don't have bipolar disorder so I can't say for sure but people were congratulating Jeremey Whitley (the writer of the story) for doing a great story about mental health so I'm going to assume he did a good job. This story has her hurting her friends during a manic episode and wanting to go stay in her mini lab (remember she can shrink and all that). Her friend Priya comes in to talk to her and save her, talking her through it and how her brother ended his own life. It's all very serious well done stuff.
FINAL VERDICT: This is one of my favorite newer series and characters. I like Nadia and her friends in G.I.R.L. a lot. I liked the art from the first series, the issue sof the second series done by Girihuru and the ones not done by them. I like them being friends. I like when Superheroes are friends. Batman and Superman should be pals. I don't care if you all want to hump super loner Batman when Batman with pals and a family is way better. Anyway this is a really great fun little comic that I enjoyed immensely.
As long as the issue was entertaining.
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