Everyone knows Hank Pym (AKA Ant-man, Giant-man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, etc...) has a bit of the ol' Schizophrenia and hit his wife once... and if you didn't, then you probably haven't read a story with Hank since it happened, cause lord knows it gets mentioned nearly every time he makes an appearance, but I digress...
What you might not know is, that in his earliest days as Avengers chairman, he and his team - the ever so winsome Wasp, happy-to-shot-anybody-with-an-arrow Hawkeye, the badass Black Panther, and the virile Vision - were recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. (Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division... I know it means something else now, but at the time, it stood for this) to stop A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanincs) from creating an army of Super-Adaptoid clones. But before they arive, the whole cloning process goes awry and A.I.M. ends up with an uncontrollable legion of Adaptoids, forcing the Avengers to take action.
During the skirmish, Hank makes a tough call, and sends the rest of the team away to retrieve the original Super-adaptoid from A.I.M.'s island HQ, leaving him all alone to take on an army of mindless drones, each with the powers of the Avengers... oh, shit.
BEHOLD: HANK GOES APESHIT!!!
That's right, folks... that last one is Hank Pym with a mouthful of Super-adaptoid clone.
All that to really just say that I'm enjoying Joe Casey's Earth's Mightiest Heroes II just as much as the first.
The first EMH was a nice look at the role of Captain America in the Avengers and how his joining the team kind of pulled everything together for them. This one jumps forward a few years and we see the Avengers made popular by the Roy Thomas and John Buscema era.
Having recently read the Thomas run, I think it's pretty cool how Casey's choosing to focus on the mental breakdown of Hank, something that Thomas introduced in the late-60s without a whole lot of build-up. Hank seems so out of his league as leader, and is desperatly trys to overcompensate by being all badass with Nick Fury and foolishly standing alone against the adaptoids.
I haven't really talked to a lot of people who're reading this, though... and that's a shame.
I know the first one did pretty well in hardcover once it was collected, but so far, month-to-month, this has been a great comic and it's a shame Casey's not writing an Avengers ongoing.
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