The original Ant-Man (aka Hank Pym) has had several brushes with the dark side during his time with the Avengers. Although Hank took on several heroic identities, including Ant-Man and Giant-Man, he also became the violent Yellowjacket and infamously struck his wife Janet Van Dyne (aka the Wasp). Hank also created the android Ultron in the comics, who grew to hate his “father” and frequently threatened humanity, putting Hank’s parenting skills in question.
In one alternate future, Hank and Janet actually had two biological children of their own – twin siblings Hope and Henry. Unfortunately, the two chose not to follow their parents’ heroic example when they instead formed the supervillain group the Revengers to take down a new team of Avengers!
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This all took place in the MC2 Universe, an alternate future where the sons and daughters of classic Marvel heroes took over their parents’ old roles – for the most part. Although superheroes like Spider-Girl and American Dream were more than happy to follow in the footsteps of Spider-Man and Captain America, a few like Hope and Henry chose a darker path.
Just why these twins went bad is explained in A-Next #12 when Hope reveals that Hank died on a mission with the Avengers, leaving their mother Janet to die of a broken heart. Furious when they learned that a new team of Avengers had formed years later (which, in Hope’s eyes, denied them their birthright), the twins used Pym Particles to become the Red Queen and Big Man. They then recruited a team of supervillains, used their parents’ old security codes to sneak into the Avengers Mansion, and ambushed the new team.
However, while Big Man thought they were just there to show the new heroes they were too inferior to be Avengers, the Red Queen had more sinister ideas. After learning that Cassie Lang, the now-adult daughter of Scott Lang/Ant-Man, had become the Wasp-like superhero Stinger, Hope tortured the woman she felt replaced her and tried to murder her. Fortunately, Big Man stepped in and tried to reason with his twin sister, but she was too far gone.
The Avengers eventually escaped and a full-blown fight soon erupted between the Revengers and the Avengers. Just as it looked like the Avengers would win, the Red Queen revealed she had a contingency plan thanks to an auto-destruct sequence she’d rigged in the Avengers Mansion. Seeing just how insane his sister had become, Big Man knocked her out and allowed the authorities to take the Revengers in.
Big Man would return in the pages of Spider-Girl, this time as a member of a government-sponsored team of ex-super criminals who were allowed to take on sanctioned field assignments during their prison sentences. Hope herself would gain a form of redemption when she was re-imagined as the Hope Van Dyne of MCU’s Ant-Man movies. In this alternate continuity, Hope is an only child who becomes estranged from her father, but later reconciles with him and becomes the new Wasp.
Weirdly, MCU’s Hope becomes good friends with Scott Lang’s daughter Cassie, showing how Marvel’s multiverse can allow characters (or at least alternate versions of them) to choose different paths. While it’s disappointing to see that not all superhero descendants can continue the family tradition, there’s always hope that even the vilest of them, like Ant-Man’s daughter, will eventually come around.
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