10 Huge Differences Between Marvel Movies And The Comics

5. Ant-Man And Wasp Were Founding Avengers

Zemo Civil War
Marvel Comics

While the movie version of the Avengers stayed fairly close to comic's original line-up, two noticeable exceptions were Ant-Man and Wasp.

In the comics, size-changing Hank Pym and his sidekick Janet Van Dyne were two of Marvel's earliest heroes and joined forces with other 60s characters Thor, Hulk and Iron Man to fight Loki. This event led to the formation of the Avengers. However, the MCU changed Ant-Man and Wasp to a pair of SHIELD super-spies who were active in the 1980s.

Hank had retired and Janet had been lost in the Quantum Realm long before Tony Stark had ever even thought about strapping a load of scrap metal to his chest and calling himself a hero. The Ant-Man who eventually joined the Avengers was instead Hank's successor Scott Lang.

The reason for this change could be that Hank Pym doesn't have the most stellar reputation in the comics. The character had never been too popular and things only got worse after a series of stories involving him building the murderous Ultron, going insane and even hitting Janet. Many subsequent writers chose to focus more on these mistakes than his heroic accomplishments, leading to Hank becoming thought of as something of a loser.

It's no surprise then that the movies decided to turn the more popular Scott Lang into the "main" Ant-Man.

Contributor

I was just a mild-mannered NCTJ accredited journalist until one day I found out the truth... that I could share my nerdy ramblings with people on the internet! It's just like mumbling to myself on the train, but without all the strange looks.