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Janet van Dyne is the daughter of
world-renowned scientist Vernon van Dyne. Accompanied by
Janet, Vernon van Dyne visited the celebrated biochemist Dr.
Henry Pym to ask if Pym would collaborate on van Dyne's pet
project, the use of a gamma radiation-based beam to detect
signals of intelligent life from other planets. Pym declined
since the nature of van Dyne's project lay too far outside his
won field of expertise. Janet van Dyne found herself attracted
to Pym, while Pym was deeply struck by Janet's remarkable
resemblance to his late wife Maria.
Van Dyne went ahead with his project, and several days later
succeeded in projected the beam through hyperspace to a
distant planet. (It has since been revealed that van Dyne
actually contacted a planet in another dimension.) This planet
was inhabited by the Kosmosians, a sentient non-humanoid race.
Piliai, a criminal from that world, utilized van Dyne's beam
to teleport himself through hyperspace to Earth to escape
prosecution on his home world.
Arriving on Earth in van Dyne's laboratory, the
extraterrestrial murdered van Dyne, not wanting a witness
alive who had the means to contact the authorities on his home
planet. After killing van dyne, Pilai escaped to menace the
rest of the city. Janet van Dyne heard the noise of the brief
scuffle from an adjoining room. She discovered her father's
body, and, uncertain of how to handle the situation, called
Pym. Although Pym at first dismissed Janet's call as a cruel
prank, he subsequently discovered that her story was true.
In his secret costumed identity as the original Ant-Man, Pym
went to investigate the scene of Vernon van dyne's death.
Janet van Dyne demonstrated moral strength during the crisis
that Pym had been unaware she possessed, and which reminded
him again of Maria, and Janet expressed her determination to
avenger her father's death. Pym, who had longed for a
crime-fighting partner and confidante, revealed his secret
identity to her and asked if shoe would undergo conversion
into a superhuman powerful being in order to become his
partner. Janet readily accepted, and Pym implanted cells
beneath Janet van Dyne's skin at her should blades and temples
corresponding to those cells found in wasp wings and antennae,
respectively. He instructed her on the use of the gasses
containing the sub-atomic "Pym particles" he had discovered,
which enabled him to reduce himself to insect size. Janet took
the name of the Wasp and quickly learned how to fly. She then
aided the Ant-Man in tracking down and vanquishing the
murderous Kosmosian. Just before this confrontation with the
alien, Janet told Pym that she was falling in love with him.
Van Dyne and Pym became crime-fighting partners, fighting a
wide variety of costumed villains and monsters. Although Pym
was far more emotionally inhibited and reserved than Janet, he
was failing in love with her as well. The pair joined the
original Iron Man and Thor in hunting down the Hulk, who had
been made an unwitting pawn in one of the schemes of Thor's
enemies, Loki. After Loki had been captures and his role in
the scheme exposed, Ant-Man proposed that the heroes remain as
a regular team of heroes.
The others agreed to this suggestion, and it was the Wasp who
suggested the new team's name, the Avengers. After a series of
adventures, however, Pym's size-changing imposed great strains
on his body that he believed could be fatal. He also decided
that his and van Dyne's careers were proving to be too great a
danger for her. Therefore, Pym decided to retire as a costumed
crime-fighter, and acceding to his wishes, van Dyne retired as
well.
Sometime later, Pym an van Dyne learned that the Sub-Mariner
was headed for New York City. Fearing trouble, they decided to
alert the Avenges. But soon van Dyne, as the Wasp, was
captured first by the undersea barbarian leader, Attuma, and
then by the alien Collector. Pym helped the Avengers rescued
van Dyne, and the couple rejoined the Avengers on a regular
basis. Van Dyne was instrumental in helping hold Avengers
together when she, Pym and Hawkeye were the only active
members.
Months later, van Dyne turned twenty three years old, and,
according to her father's will, came into possession of her
full inheritance, making her independently wealthy. For
several years, Pym had been in love with Janet van Dyne, but
because of his repressed personality, had resisted marrying
her. One day while working in his laboratory, Pym accidentally
dropped and smashed some vials containing various unknown
gasses, causing a radical personality change in Pym. He took
on a new identity of Yellowjacket, claming that he had
murdered Pym, and kidnapped van Dyne, proposing marriage to
her as Pym had long wanted to do. Realizing that Yellowjacket
was really Pym, van Dyne decided to play along, fearing that
she would worsen his psychological condition if she did
otherwise. Pym, as Yellowjacket, and van Dyne were married at
the Avengers Mansion, but immediately afterwards the Avengers
were attacked by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime. The
sight of van Dyne in danger of death shocked Pym back to his
normal personality. Despite the fact that Pym was married
under an assumed name, the marriage between Pym and van Dyne
was still legal, and Pym and van Dyne agreed to let it stand,
briefly embarking on a honeymoon.
Van Dyne left active Avengers roster to join Pym on an Alaskan
research expedition, although she continued to assist Avengers
on occasion, usually alongside Pym. However, after aiding the
Avengers against the alien Kree, she agreed to join a
discouraged Pym in retiring from crime-fighting and resigned
from the Avengers. Eventually, she convinced Pym to allow them
to rejoin. She was forced off duty after suffering near-fatal
injuries at the hands of the Toad, but after recovering, she
rejoined the active Avengers roster despite Pym's misgivings,
who reluctantly to committed to serve as an Avengers reserve
member. Later, Pym modified Janet's superhuman abilities so
that her strength would increase as she became smaller, and so
that she could use her heightened body energy to power her
"sting" weapons.
Janet van Dyne had since launched a successful career as a
fashion designer while continuing to act as a costumed
adventurer. (By this time it was public knowledge that Janet
van Dyne was the Wasp.) She had belatedly appreciated the
precarious state of Pym's mental health and began consulting a
psychiatrist regarding Pym's condition, since she could not
convince Pym himself to seek mental help. She was forced to
subdue Pym when he suffered a breakdown and attacked Avengers
on behalf of Ultron, and later, she was abducted by Ultron and
insane Pym, who together created Jocasta, a robot whose
artificial consciousness was based on the van Dyne's mind.
When Ultron was ultimately defeated by the Avengers, van Dyne
left active duty to help Pym recover from his breakdown,
although she soon rejoined the Avengers, once again without
Pym.
Pym had never remained completely healthy, mentally, and would
often lash out at Janet verbally and experience periods of
tension and depression. This sense of failure was exasperated
when he saw Janet's success as a designer and realized that
she was the principal source of money in their marriage. Pym
was charged by the Avengers' leader, Captain America, with
acting recklessly during the Avengers' encounter with the
Elfqueen. An Avengers court martial meeting was set to examine
the charges, but Pym, now undergoing a mental breakdown, built
a robot to attack the Avengers during the meeting. Pym design
the robot to have a secret weak point which he would use to
defeat it in hopes that this would allow him to be a hero in
the Avengers' eyes and lead to the dismissal of the charges.
Van Dyne discovered and protested the plan, and Pym brutally
struck her. Pym's plan went awry, and it was Janet who ended
up defeating the robot. Pym was expelled from the Avengers and
van Dyne brought divorce proceeding against him. When the
divorce became final, Janet dropped the last name of Pym.
Van Dyne remained with the Avengers, almost immediately
nominating herself for Avengers chairmanship and was elected
chair, quickly maturing into a surprisingly effective leader.
She served a lengthy term as the Avengers leader, displaying a
flair for media relations and successfully guiding the
Avengers through many of their most tumultuous moments such as
restructuring resources after losing their federal government
privileges. During this time, she also made peace with Pym,
accepting the fact that they were two good people who happened
to be bad for each other. The couple parted sadly but
amicably, and Pym temporarily retired from Avengers and
crime-fighting. Van Dyne only stepped down once as chairwoman,
taking a brief vacation after the trauma of the a battle
involving the alien Beyonder and an assortment of Earth's
heroes and villains. Here, she began dating the dashing
mercenary adventurer Paladin. She resumed the Avengers
chairmanship in time to lead them through one of their worst
crises, a takeover of their mansion headquarters by the
Masters of Evil. Van Dyne left the Avengers once more to
recover from the Masters attack, although she would
occasionally return to adventure alongside the Avengers as
needed.
When the Avengers' West Coast member Iron Man left the team,
van Dyne agreed to join their roster hoping to help lift the
team's spirits. There, she became reacquainted with Pym,
himself a western Avengers member, forming an affectionate
friendship with him. She and Pym briefly left the team to help
the woman they believed to be Pym's first wife, Maria, but
they returned when she was revealed to be an imposter. Soon,
she and Pym began to repair some semblance of a romantic
relationship, although Pym divided his time between the
Avengers' East and West Coast branches. Van Dyne even accepted
a temporary co-chairmanship with him. However, she eventually
stepped down to a reserve status in order to travel more
extensively.
Van Dyne returned to the Avengers after she and other
size-changing heroes and villains were caught up in an
invasion attempt from the natives of the dimension Kosmos, the
place where Pym particles stem from. She then discovered that
much of her personal fortune had been stolen by Iron Man's
secret identity, Tony Stark, who was secretly under the mental
influence of the villain Immortus at the time. In a
confrontation between Iron Man and the Avengers, van Dyne was
mortally wounded. Pym performed radical life-saving
experiments which saved her life but at the same time
transformed her into a bug/woman hybrid. Although van Dyne
remained oddly upbeat about her life despite her strange
condition, she later bitterly denounced Pym and estranged from
him after discovering he had planted a tracer on her that
allowed him to monitor her in secret.
Van Dyne was on hand with the other Avengers who seemingly
sacrificed their lives to absorb the energies of the being
known as Onslaught. In reality, she was shunted to another
dimension. When she and the other heroes were restored to
Earth, van Dyne found that she had returned to her normal
appearance and powers. She and Pym also returned to their
previous romantic relationship.
Van Dyne helped reorganize the Avengers with Pym and their
teammates, stopping the menace of the sorceress Morgan Le Fey.
She then agreed to stay on as a reserve member, although she
and Pym would join with the Avengers on an as-needed basis,
such as helping them thwart the villainous Grim Reaper.
The robot Ultron later kidnapped Pym, van Dyne, and others of
its so-called "family." Ultron revealed that Pym had used his
own brain patterns as a template for Ultron's intelligence,
and Ultron intended to do the same with all members of its
"family" when building a new robot army with Pym's latest
research. Van Dyne had also revealed that she now largely
blamed herself for Pym's past mental and emotional problems
because of the bizarre circumstances of their marriage and the
way she treated him early in their relationship, pushing him
to be what she wanted. Ultron was confronted by the Avengers,
who freed Pym and allowed him to deliver the blow that
defeated Ultron. Soon after, van Dyne and Pym rejoined the
Avengers full-time, and van Dyne soon accepted leadership once
more.
After a series of adventures, Van Dyne recruited Captain
America to serve as her co-chair, and together they
reorganized the Avengers into a more proactive,
forward-thinking, multi-pronged operation, establishing
detached service operations outside the active roster. About
the same time, the time-travelling Kang attempted to conquer
Earth, and van Dyne helped lead the Avengers in their global
conflict. She also helped Pym restore himself from a period of
debilitating physical and mental condition with the help of
the Triune Understanding. Even though van Dyne and the
Avengers helped rescue the president from the forces of Kang,
they failed to prevent the slaughter of the population of
Washington, DC by Kang. Van Dyne, as leader of the Avengers,
was forced to formally surrender to Kang on behalf of the
Avengers and Earth. Ultimately, however, van Dyne was rescued
by the Avengers who were not captured by Kang's forces, and
she helped lead the team in Kang's eventual defeat.
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