New for Patrons: Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne

My newest guide for Patreon supporters of Crushing Krisis is for one of the longest-running women of Marvel. In fact, while researching this guide I realized she may be the first Silver Age female Marvel hero to merit her own series of solo anthology stories! She’s also the first woman with a lengthy stint as a team leader at Marvel. All of that makes it absolutely wild that she has never had her own solo series until this month!!! Find all of those Marvel milestone moments in my brand new Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne!

Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne
This guide is now available to the public thanks to the astonishing support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

I won’t lie – getting this Guide to Wasp done was a battle, even though I got a very early start on it!

That’s because Janet van Dyne has appeared in a staggering 1,296 Marvel comics as of this month, which includes 1,295 comics that were not her own comic.

Building a guide for a character who has mostly appeared in their own series is always more straight-forward than building one for a perennial team member and guest star – even if that character has many series like Wolverine. That’s because their series established their prevailing narrative. Even if Wolverine made three times as many guest appearances in a period compared to his number of solo issues, it will be the solo issues that establish his character arc at that time.

Janet van Dyne has never had that privilege. For a character who is about to celebrate her 60th anniversary, her major character moments are relatively few and far between.

At first, Janet was largely defined by her relationship with Hank Pym. She was certainly more adventurous and self-sufficient than other romantic leading ladies like Invisible Woman or Jane Foster, but she was still hopelessly devoted to Hank. Even when she stuck around in the Avengers without him on the team, it felt like she was mostly defined by his absence.

The first big change in that status quo came in the early 80s. Hank Pym had been an erratic character for years, and Jim Shooter wrote him on a sudden downward spiral of mania that ended with him committing an act of domestic violence against Janet. Too often, women characters are hurt, maimed, or killed to define the arcs of their leading men – that’s the origin of Gail Simone’s phrase “women in refrigerators”!

However, in this instance Shooter made a surprising pivot. Hank was quickly excised from the Avengers and divorced by Janet. Then, a few issues later, Janet told Captain America it was time to step down from chairing the Avengers … and then nominated herself to be their leader!

This kicked off five years of the best development Janet has ever experienced. She was headstrong but empathetic as she called the shots for a team of classic heroes, which also meant she was heavily-featured in each issue. Many of her modern character traits were established in this run by Roger Stern. It’s where she picked up many of her dedicated fans.

After 1987, things got slightly more uneven. Janet drafted herself onto the West Coast Avengers along with her ex-husband Hank. While several writers (including Roy & Dann Thomas) did a solid job of keeping their relationship platonic, again Jan was being defined by the presence and absence of Hank. She eventually left the team to work in Hollywood, a plot thread that lasted exactly three stories before fizzling out.

After that she was a reserve Avengers, briefly transformed into a human Wasp in the mid-90s (don’t ask), was criminally under-used as Hank’s love in the 1996 pocket universe reboot, and was back to being a steady Avengers member in the 1998 relaunch (again, often defined by a rekindled relationship with Hank).

Even when Brian Bendis got his hands on Janet, it wasn’t transformative – he used her as a background character in Mighty Avengers for a year and then simply had her sacrifice herself. While it was in-character for Janet, it was disappointing to see Bendis pass on re-developing Janet when he had done so much for other classic women like Carol Danvers and Jessica Drew.

Ultimately, it was the wake of Avengers vs. X-Men that brought Janet a new life (figuratively and literally). She was drafted onto the “Unity Squad” in Uncanny Avengers in Marvel Now, but it wasn’t until Gerry Duggan got a hold of her in the title’s iteration in All-New All-Different Marvel that a transformation began. Duggan put a firm end to her on-again / off-again connection to Hank Pym.

Then, in 2016, Mark Waid introduced an all-new Wasp – Nadia Pym. What could’ve easily aged Janet into “unrelatable old mom” territory and eased her out of the spotlight instead brought out some of her best traits in a pair of subsequent series by Jeremy Whitley. The empathy that Janet showed as a leader translated perfectly to her mentorship of her step-daughter. It also seemed to free Janet from only making Pym-focused appearances – she blossomed across multiple titles, including Tony Stark: Iron Man, Avengers (2018), and Black Panther & The Agents of Wakanda.

Now, finally, 60 years after her debut, this month Janet van Dyne starred in Wasp (2023) #1 – her own limited series!

While I didn’t read every one of Janet’s nearly-1300 appearances for this Guide to Wasp, I did review over half of them page by page to figure out where she had the most notable action and where she was just a glorified cameo. The guide includes every guest appearance she has ever made, right up until last month.

That made this guide one of my hugest guides to launch of all time. It took almost as much work as my Guide to DC Universe Events!

Patrons of CK pledging $1.99/month and up can enjoy the Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne, a part of Crushing Comics Guide to Reading & Collecting to Marvel Comic Books.

Patrons of Crushing Krisis currently have access to…

Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 30 Guides!

DC Guides (6): Batman – Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Omega Men