Avengers, but a new twist reveals that Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne embody cosmic ideas that are wholly at odds with one another. This revelation sheds new light on the history of the Avengers and the impact that Hank and Jan have had on the team. However, this key insight into Ant-Man and the Wasp does not come from an Avengers story, but rather Marvel's often over-looked super-team, the Defenders.
In last year's Defenders #4 from Al Ewing, Javier Rodriguez, VC's Joe Caramagna, and Wil Moss, the team finds themselves transported to the fourth iteration of reality. Before superheroes, before science, and even before magic, this earlier version of the multiverse was populated the fundamental aspects of narrative: metaphors. Mapping out Marvel space-time on a cosmological scale is a consistent theme in Ewing's stories, and it turns out that the fourth cosmos is full of the archetypal ideas that are embodied by the heroes and villains of the eighth cosmos. However, it was not until recently that Marvel fully detailed which of these archetypal life forms are represented by existing recognizable characters, and Ant-Man and the Wasp are among them.
The key listing the characters and their corresponding archetypes appears at the end of Defenders: Beyond #2 by Al Ewing, Javier Rodriguez, VC's Joe Caramagna, and Wil Moss. There it's revealed that Ant-Man embodies the concept "Big-Is-Small," while Wasp represents "Small-Is-Big." The meaning behind Jan's archetype is the most straightforward of the two, as Ultron's creation and Pym's eventual death.
This insight recontextualizes Ant-Man and Wasp as a duo within the original Avengers squad. Wasp retroactively is distinguished from being a female Ant-Man as some have underestimated her, but instead both of them are expressing opposite cosmic concepts: big is small, small is big. Jan and Hank are not the only paired concepts on that first roster either; Iron Man and Captain America form their own archetypal dyad. However, "Big-Is-Small" and "Small-Is-Big" are archetypes that speak to the heart of the Marvel Universe as a whole. They are a reminder that the Marvel characters are often small, normal people with grounded dramas in their lives that are magnified and refracted through the lens of the superheroic universe they dwell in.
Ultimately, a key part of the plot in Defenders #4 is that the archetypes can be something new, signifying that the characters that embody them can still grow out of or change course from their previously established archetype. "Big-Is-Small" and "Small-Is-Big" are not limits upon what Ant-Man and the Wasp can be, it's just what they have represented previously. For example, Janet Van Dyne may often be overlooked, but she's closer than ever to receiving the honor she's due, as Marvel gives Wasp her first solo title next year. Either way, classic Avengers Ant-Man and the Wasp will always have cosmic significance as long as "Big-Is-Small" and "Small-Is-Big."
