The Absolute Worst Thing Ant-Man Has Ever Done

It's easy to write off Ant-Man. On his good days, he gets very big. On his regular days, he gets very small while retaining the strength of a grown man. In his live action debut during a 1979 SNL sketch, he was aptly described by the Flash, who said he "must be able to clean house on those other ants." Within the MCU, he had the sort of clout that allows a guy to operate as a superhero for decades without anybody ever really noticing. He is, from an objective point of view, a non-starter.

But what you might have forgotten is that on top of having powers that everyone makes fun of as soon as he leaves the room, Ant-Man is also one of the most problematic Avengers. There have been multiple Ant-Mans — Ants-Men? — and they've all pulled some heinous stunts. Let's dive deep into the crème de la crème, proving once and for all that the old saying is true: Power corrupts, ant powers corrupt ant-solutely.

With the last twelve years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe still simmering in the collective cultural consciousness, it can be easy to lose track of the fact that Iron Man isn't responsible for every bad day in New York. True, in the movies he inspired the genesis of Iron Monger, Whiplash, and Aldrich Killian. And, sure, he also provided Loki with a launchpad for the Chitauri invasion, smuggled a teenager across international borders to help him fistfight his work buddies, and created Ultron. In the comics, however, he ... still did a lot of messed up stuff. But he didn't create Ultron. So there's that.

No, Hank Pym was the father of Ultron in the original stories. Creating a xenophobic killer android with an Oedipus complex is bad enough in its own right, and Pym is indirectly responsible for untold death because of it.

It gets worse. Ultron has been around since 1968, and he hasn't exactly kept a low profile. He created Vision, who went on to marry Scarlet Witch, who went on to go extra-strength bananas and create demon children for the two of them to raise. Vision would later make his own family of synthezoids — his wife Virginia would go on to murder a man and play a part in the death of a child. The family kills a neighborhood dog on accident — twice. Virginia commits suicide, their son Vin is killed in a robot fight, and Vision nearly slaughters the Avengers during his revenge ride.

All, tangentially at least, because Ant-Man wanted a robot buddy.

Scott Lang, portrayed in the MCU by Paul Rudd, gets a pass on most of his shenanigans since, you know, he's Paul Rudd. In the comics, however, he's less of a "puckish goofball" and more of a "severely and irreparably broken man who's willing to throw children into combat for a taste of revenge." You know, like villains.

It all happened in the pages of 2013's FF. Reed Richards and the rest of the Fantastic Four, off on a dimension-hopping adventure, left a quartet of surrogate superheroes to fill in for them at the Future Foundation, the group's sci-fi research lab and home for misfit super-kids. Scott, chosen to head up the organization during Reed's absence, took less than three issues to announce that his underage wards had a new homework assignment: killing Doctor Doom. In his defense, Doom had killed Scott's daughter, so he was feeling pretty sore.

In the opposite of his defense, Lang was trusted with the wellbeing of a group of children and took approximately no time to decide that they'd be best put to use as an extermination squad. Members of the Future Foundation at the time included the child clone of a supervillain struggling to overcome his love of destruction, as well as subterranean Molloids and aquatic Uhari, meaning that Scott essentially asked exchange students to go to war for him. The whole thing was very un-Rudd. Very un-Rudd, indeed.

Writer Mark Millar spent the better part of the last twenty years creating the basis for most of the comic book movies you're familiar with. Kick-Ass? That was one of his. Old Man Logan? Classic Millar. He wrote Marvel's Civil War, created Kingsman: The Secret Service, and, most presciently, reimagined the Avengers for the new millennium with 2002's The Ultimates.

A lot of the changes that Millar incorporated wound up transferring over to the MCU. The Chitauri are featured as the first series' primary antagonists, and Nick Fury is modeled after Samuel L. Jackson, and even drops his name when the team is discussing who should play them in a movie. Other aspects of the reboot failed to make it to the screen — Captain America's fascistic side, the Hulk's homophobia, and Hank Pym's deep, abiding love of domestic violence.

During an argument with the Wasp in Ultimates #6, Pym responds to allegations that Bruce Banner is a better scientist than him by palming his beloved wife across the face. The fight escalates, concluding when Hank sprays a shrunk-down Janet with bug spray and then swarms her with ants, muttering about how she shouldn't have made him "feel small." She winds up in the hospital; he winds up getting the snot kicked out of him by Cap two issues later. For what it's worth, Pym went on to bite off a guy's head in the Ultimatum storyline a few years later, but somehow, this one feels worse.