1960s Biochemist Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym discovers an unusual set of
subatomic particles he labels "Pym particles". Entrapping them within two separate serums, he creates a size-altering formula and a reversal formula, testing them on himself. Reduced to the size of an insect, he becomes trapped in an anthill before he eventually escapes and uses the reversal formula to return to normal size. Deciding the serums are too dangerous, he destroys them. He later reconsiders his decision and recreates his serums. Pym's experience in the anthill inspires him to study ants, and he builds a cybernetic helmet that lets him communicate with and control them. He designs a costume made of
unstable molecules to prevent bites or scratches from the ants and reinvents himself as the superhero Ant-Man. After several adventures, Pym is contacted by Vernon van Dyne, who asks for his help contacting alien life. Pym refuses, but is attracted to Vernon's socialite daughter Janet van Dyne. When Vernon is killed by an alien criminal who teleports to Earth, Janet asks for Pym's help avenging his death. Pym reveals his secret identity to Janet and uses Pym particles to graft
wasp wings beneath her shoulders, which appear when Janet shrinks. She assumes the alias of the
Wasp, and together they find and defeat Vernon's killer. They become founding members of the superhero team the Avengers. Pym eventually adopts his first alternate identity as the 12-foot-tall
Giant-Man. (Three decades later, a
flashback shows him adopting the identity out of feelings of inadequacy when compared to powerful teammates
Iron Man and
Thor.) Pym and the Wasp begin a romantic relationship, and soon take a leave of absence from the Avengers. Returning to the Avengers, Pym adopts a new superhero identity,
Goliath. A mishap traps him in giant form for several issues and affects his self-esteem. After recovering his size-shifting powers, he creates the robot
Ultron that unexpectedly achieves sentience and becomes one of the Avengers's greatest foes. During a botched experiment, Pym inhales chemicals that affect his mind, and he reappears at Avengers Mansion in the cocky new persona of Yellowjacket, claiming to have disposed of Pym. The Wasp secretly realizes he is Pym, however, and accepts his offer of marriage. At their wedding, a battle with the
Circus of Crime erupts; in the ensuing conflict, the chemicals lose their effect on him and his identity is restored.
1970s After several adventures with the Avengers, including another encounter with Ultron, the pair take another leave of absence. The heroes re-encounter Hank Pym at the beginning of the
Kree-Skrull War, and once again as the Ant-Man persona and has a series of solo adventures. After aiding fellow superhero team known as the
Defenders as Yellowjacket, Pym returns to the Avengers. He is eventually captured by an upgraded Ultron that
brainwashes his creator, causing the character to regress to his original Ant-Man costume and personality — arriving at Avengers Mansion, thinking it to be the very first meeting of the team. Seeing several unfamiliar members, Pym attacks the team until stopped by the Wasp. After Ultron's brainwashing is reversed, Pym rejoins the Avengers as Yellowjacket. Pym is forced to briefly leave the team when the roster is restructured by government liaison
Henry Peter Gyrich. Also at this time, he noticed
Scott Lang's theft of the Ant-Man suit. After
Darren Cross's defeat and aware of Lang's use of the stolen goods, Pym let Lang keep the equipment, albeit only to uphold the law.
1980s Returning 14 issues later, Hank Pym participates in several missions until, after demonstrating hostile behavior toward Janet van Dyne, he attacks a foe from behind once the opponent had ceased fighting.
Captain America suspends Yellowjacket from Avengers duty pending the verdict of a
court-martial. Pym suffers a
mental breakdown and concocts a plan to salvage his credibility. He plans to build a robot and program it to launch an attack on the Avengers; Pym will then counter the
false flag attack at a critical moment using his knowledge of the robot's weaknesses, thereby presenting himself as the other Avengers' savior. The Wasp discovers the plan and begs Pym to stop, whereupon he strikes her. Pym is subsequently expelled from the Avengers, Left penniless, Pym is manipulated by an old foe, the presumed-dead
Egghead, who tricks Pym into stealing the national reserve of the metal
adamantium. Pym is confronted by the Avengers and blamed for the theft, as Egghead erases all evidence of his own involvement. Pym, in turn, blames Egghead, a criminal still believed dead by the other Avengers. This is taken by Pym's former teammates as further proof of his madness, and he is incarcerated. During Pym's imprisonment, Janet has a brief relationship with Tony Stark. Egghead later attempts to kill Pym but is himself accidentally killed by
Hawkeye. With the perpetrator of the original theft now exposed, Pym is cleared of all charges. After bidding farewell to Janet and his teammates, Pym leaves to devote himself full-time to research. Pym reappears as a member of the
West Coast Avengers, first in an advisory role, then as a full member. He answers to "Doctor Pym" in the field, using none of the names or costumes associated with his previous superhero identities. He begins a short relationship with teammate
Tigra. After being taunted by old foe
Whirlwind, Pym contemplates suicide, but is stopped by
Firebird. Pym and Janet eventually resume a romantic relationship.
1990s The character returns to the Avengers, joining the East Coast team as Giant-Man. The pair, together with many of the other Avengers, apparently sacrifice themselves to stop the villain
Onslaught, but actually exist in a pocket universe for a year before returning to the mainstream
Marvel Universe. Hank Pym returns and aids the team as Giant-Man, and makes a significant contribution by defeating criminal mastermind Imus Champion and his flawed creation Ultron, simultaneously overcoming his old issues of guilt over Ultron's crimes.
2000s During the
Destiny War between
Kang the Conqueror and
Immortus, two versions of Hank Pym are drawn in: Giant-Man of the present and Yellowjacket immediately prior to his marriage to Janet van Dyne. Yellowjacket briefly betrays the team to Immortus and the powerful Time-Keepers try to create a timeline where he will not turn back into Pym, but he rejects this decision in time to help his allies. Observing the final battle,
Libra—who brought the team together by using the Destiny Force to tap into his subconscious awareness of the cosmic balance—reflects that both Pyms were necessary so that Yellowjacket's betrayal could bring the team into the right position to attack the Time-Keepers, while Pym's presence as Giant-Man both provided a stable support and irritated Yellowjacket to provoke his own actions. Back in the present, an encounter with
Kulan Gath results in Pym being split into his two personas of Pym and Yellowjacket, after a spell cast by Gath temporarily transforms Pym into a swashbuckler-style Yellowjacket, followed by the Yellowjacket persona manifesting a physical presence from the extradimensional bio-mass Pym uses to grow. Yellowjacket's stability deteriorates in a confrontation with
Diablo. The two personalities are restored when the Wasp helps the two halves realize they need each other. Pym is eventually able to resolve his problems and adopts his Yellowjacket persona again. After the events of the "
Avengers Disassembled" storyline, Pym takes a leave of absence, and in the
one-shot Avengers: Finale, he and Janet leave for
England to rekindle their relationship. As Yellowjacket, Pym is a central character in the
Civil War storyline, joining those heroes that support the
Superhuman Registration Act. At the conclusion of the Civil War, Pym is named "Man of the Year" by
Time magazine for his role in freeing several captive anti-registration heroes. Pym becomes one of the administrators at
Camp Hammond, a U.S. military base in
Stamford, Connecticut, for the training of registered superheroes in the government program The Initiative. Pym and Janet's relationship fails, and Pym again begins a romantic relationship with teammate
Tigra. Following the publication of
Civil War, Marvel's
Secret Invasion storyline uses
flashbacks to present the then-current version of the character as an
impostor who replaced the real Pym at some point in the books' fictional history prior to the events of
Civil War. This impostor is an extraterrestrial of the shape-shifting
Skrull race participating in a covert invasion of Earth; Pym's experiences throughout the
Civil War series and related series are retold in brief from the perspective of the impostor and its allies. The impostor is exposed and defeated by the hero
Crusader. After the final battle between Earth's heroes and the Skrulls, Pym is found with other "replaced" heroes in a Skrull vessel. When Janet is seemingly killed in battle, Pym takes on a new superhero persona, the Wasp, in tribute to her. He rejoins the Avengers and eventually leads the team. The cosmic entity
Eternity reveals to Pym that he is Earth's "
Scientist Supreme", the scientific counterpart to Earth's
Sorcerer Supreme. The Norse trickster-god
Loki later claims to have been posing as Eternity to manipulate Pym.
2010s Hank Pym creates
Avengers Academy, a program to help train young people with newly acquired superpowers. He returns to his Giant-Man identity, and later joins the superhero team:
Secret Avengers. In the "
Age of Ultron" storyline, Pym travels through time to destroy his robot,
Ultron, who had managed to conquer the world. In another adventure, Pym and
Monica Chang, A.I. Division Chief of the espionage agency
S.H.I.E.L.D., assemble a new team called the
Avengers A.I. A few months later, Pym, using his Yellowjacket identity, is shown as a member of the
Illuminati. At one point, Pym is presumed dead and a funeral service is held in his honor. Scott Lang receives one of Pym's labs according to the will. Pym resurfaces in a space adventure before rejoining the Avengers on Earth, though it becomes clear that Ultron is actually controlling Hank's body. The Avengers defeat the hybrid robot, but both Hank and Ultron survive and continue to do battle with one another internally. Later in this period, Hank's daughter
Nadia is introduced. It is also revealed that Hank has bipolar disorder, which he has been monitoring on his own to predict when and how often his mood swings may occur. During the "
Secret Empire" storyline, Pym sets up a base in Alaska and is forced to work through some family issues and relationship strife within the Avengers team. Pym later goes on a journey to collect all the Infinity Stones. During this storyline, a piece of Hank's soul gets stuck in an alternate realm and eventually devoured. In another storyline, Hank is portrayed as a villain in a battle against the Silver Surfer. In "The Ultron Agenda" storyline, Hank attempts to merge all robots with humans. Iron Man and Machine Man interfere with his plans and Pym attempts to take revenge. At the end of this storyline, it is revealed that Hank's human side has been dead since he first merged with Ultron.
2020s The
Ant-Man miniseries released in 2022 depicts an early Hank Pym being pulled into the future, along with Eric O'Grady and Scott Lang, in an attempt to assist the Ant-Man of the 25th century,
Zayn Asghar. Ultron is ultimately defeated and the other Ant-Men are returned to the past. Some time later, an old man claiming to be Hank Pym places an artificial personality in Whirlwind's corpse called "Victor Shade". It was later revealed that a fragment of Pym's consciousness had separated from All-Father Ultron when he was defeated. The fragment recreated his body which appeared older and he was still paranoid from his time under Ultron's control. What Pym did to Whirlwind was part of an experiment involving killing and reviving villains into becoming members of his
Lethal Legion with help from
Black Ant. The "Victor Shade" persona is hijacked by Ultron-12, who takes over the Lethal Legion. After Ultron is defeated, Pym states that Ultron is not gone for good and leaves with the Lethal Legion to prepare for Ultron's return. ==Powers and abilities==