The name Hank Pym should be familiar to die-hard fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the original bearer of the Ant-Man mantle has been portrayed by Michael Douglas across the Ant-Man films, including the newly released Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. By the time he’s introduced, Pym has already left the hero game behind, passing his former identity on to Scott Lang.
But unlike in the MCU, the Hank Pym of the comics didn’t give up costumed heroics after Scott Lang replaced him as Ant-Man. In fact, he’s had several different heroic identities over the years, with Ant-Man only being the first. Here’s a brief rundown of every persona Hank Pym has assumed over the years.
Dr. Hank Pym
Curiously, Hank Pym’s comic debut didn’t feature him as a costumed hero at all. Rather, he first appeared in an issue of Tales to Astonish, a sci-fi/horror anthology comic in the vein of The Twilight Zone. Written by Stan Lee and his brother Larry Lieber with art by Jack Kirby, “The Man in the Ant Hill” was published in Tales to Astonish #27 in January 1962, predating the debuts of Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Thor. The story introduces Dr. Henry Pym as an eccentric scientist who creates a chemical formula that can shrink anything. But when he tests it on himself, he nearly meets his end when he becomes trapped inside an anthill filled with massive, hostile ants.
The story concludes with Pym surviving the ordeal destroying his formula — however, that ending would be revised months later, when the character was retooled into the shrinking superhero Ant-Man. But on occasion, Pym has since engaged in heroics while in his civilian identity. He took on the moniker of “Dr. Pym, the Scientific Adventurer” during his time with the West Coast Avengers, and similarly used no costumed identity while leading his own high-tech hero team in Avengers A.I.
Ant-Man
Hank Pym’s first and most famous superhero identity first appeared in Tales to Astonish #35, less than a year after his first appearance. Inspired by his brush with death in the anthill, Pym invented a cybernetic helmet to allow him to communicate with ants. And when he combined his new invention with his size-changing Pym Particles, Ant-Man was born. Not long after, he gained a crime-fighting partner in the form of Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, and the duo soon became founding members of the Avengers. However, though Pym is best known as the original Ant-Man, he would only use the persona for a little over a year.
Giant-Man
November 1963 saw Pym become Giant-Man in Tales to Astonish #49. The issue sees Pym invent a new variation on his Pym Particle formula that allows him to grow instead of shrink — however, he can initially only grow to a maximum of 12 feet in height before damaging his body. As Giant-Man, Pym retained his original Ant-Man powers, but his new growth ability and the strength that came with it became his primary asset. Pym continued to use the Giant-Man identity until 1965, when he and Wasp left the Avengers in issue #15 of the title.
Goliath
However, Hank and Janet returned only a year later in issue #28, which also saw the debut of Taneleer Tivan, the Collector. The Collector abducts Wasp to make her part of his collection, and Pym enlists the Avengers’ aid in rescuing her. Donning a new costume created by the Scarlet Witch, Pym takes on the new alias of Goliath. Using a new and improved version of his growth formula, Pym can now grow to a maximum of 25 feet. After Wasp is rescued, both she and Pym rejoin the Avengers.
Yellowjacket
Immediately after the revelation that Pym created the Avengers’ robotic arch-nemesis Ultron, 1968’s Avengers #59 featured another momentous event in the life of Hank Pym. After Pym mysteriously disappears, the Avengers are confronted with the enigmatic Yellowjacket: a brash and aggressive vigilante who claims to have murdered Pym, and demands to take his place on the Avengers. Understandably, the Avengers are initially hostile to Yellowjacket. However, Wasp quickly deduces that Yellowjacket is none other than Pym himself, who underwent a dissociative episode following a lab accident. Pym soon returned to his old self and took up his Goliath persona once more.
However, a few issues later in #63, Pym decided to take on the Yellowjacket identity long-term, out of fear that his growth powers were damaging his mental health. He resumed regular use of his shrinking powers, while upgrading the Yellowjacket suit with the same flight tech and electric stingers used by the Wasp. Pym would temporarily return to the Ant-Man identity around the time of the iconic “Kree-Skrull War” storyline, but returned to the Yellowjacket guise not long after.
Wasp
After Scott Lang became the new Ant-Man in 1979, Pym left his original persona behind for good. In the following decades, Hank would vacillate between his Yellowjacket and Giant-Man identities, never permanently settling on one or the other. However, in the aftermath of the 2008 crossover storyline Secret Invasion, Pym unexpectedly took up the mantle of the Wasp. During the arc’s climax, Wasp was thought to be killed in action by the invading Skrull forces — though it was later revealed in 2012 that she never died at all, but was rather lost in the Microverse. But during her absence, Pym briefly served as the new Wasp in her honor before becoming Giant-Man yet again in 2010.
Ultron
Pym continued to act as Giant-Man until the 2015 graphic novel Avengers: Rage of Ultron by Rick Remender and Jerome Opeña. In the climax of that story, Pym is accosted by his “son” Ultron, who claims that his constantly-shifting hero persona is a result of his desperate need for validation. He has no concrete self-image of his own, and instead attempts to reshape himself around what he believes others wish him to be. However, Pym never gets the chance to change his ways following this confrontation — in the ensuing battle, he and Ultron are merged together into a single cyborg entity. Pym and his creation, the manifestation of all his repressed hatred, are fused into one.
Later appearances by this Pym-Ultron hybrid implied that Pym’s personality had become dominant. However, in the 2020 Iron Man storyline “The Ultron Agenda”, it was revealed that Pym was dead the moment Ultron took over his body, and that Ultron has merely deluded himself into believing he’s his own father. In last year’s Ant-Man miniseries by Al Ewing and Tom Reilly, Ultron was seemingly destroyed with the help of a time-displaced Pym, transported to the future from back in his Ant-Man days. It’s unknown what’s become of Ultron since, or whether he’s still controlling his father’s body. However, it’s only a matter of time until Hank Pym makes his triumphant return — the only question is which hero identity he’ll be using.