"Agent Carter" season one discussion and spoilers

[Guy Gardener]

The Strategic Scientific Reserve either has America's best top scientists with a massive paramilitary arm of spooks (That means spy. Shut up.) answering to their curiosity and findings... Or the SSR has basically farms with 10's of thousands of scientists in battery cages developing agendas and assigning missions for the elite operatives.

Quantity vs quality.

The ratio is probably 9:1, it's just a question of who the 9 is and who the one is.

What the #### is so scientific about the SSR currently anyways?

 

[Turtletrekker]

A couple of clips from the finale...

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dj_wOgUsOxs[/yt]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCPmwEvZ9as&feature=player_embedded[/yt]

 

[DWF]

I have to wonder though why a mechanical engineer like Stark would make a chemical based biological weapon?

 

[Nerys Myk]

I have to wonder though why a mechanical engineer like Stark would make a chemical based biological weapon?

Comic book scientists are polymaths.

 

[Guy Gardener]

He's probably like Edison, using a farm of specialists to turn his ideas into reality.

 

[Reverend]

^Plus he was probably only trying to invent hair spray.

The thing to remember about Stark is that like his son, he may primarily be a mechanical engineer, he's still a genius and can probably turn his hand to just about anything he sets his mind on, including reverse engineering the subatomic element of an infinity stone!

 

[Turtletrekker]

HILL : When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?

TONY : Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?

 

[DWF]

HILL : When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?

TONY : Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the
only one who did the reading?

Yeah that's Tony and really it's not much a stretch from his to understand thermonuclear astrophysics. Tony is also a computer expert, but his father doesn't appear to be as overall smart as Tony nor does many of his inventions seem to work. It's kind of like Hank Pym creating Ultron.

 

[Nerys Myk]

HILL : When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?

TONY : Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the
only one who did the reading?

Yeah that's Tony and really it's not much a stretch from his to understand thermonuclear astrophysics. Tony is also a computer expert, but his father doesn't appear to be as overall smart as Tony nor does many of his inventions seem to work. It's kind of like Hank Pym creating Ultron.

Hey Hank discovered the Pym Particles, the cybernetic helmet, bio electric stings, genetic grafting and a host of other inventions that worked. But all anyone remember is he created Ultron.

 

[Guy Gardener]

He also discovered how to give his wife a blackeye using only the back of his fist.

 

[Nerys Myk]

He also discovered how to give his wife a blackeye using only the back of his fist.

I still think that was Skrull.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well they underlined that that isn't so during the Secret Invasion.

Marvel likes the spousal abuse storyline.

But what about the other way around?

What if Janet had been the Skrull who was hit?

Intent versus action.

He intended on hitting Jan, but struck a dirty skrull instead who was probably a dude.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well they underlined that that isn't so during the Secret Invasion.

Marvel likes the spousal abuse storyline.

But what about the other way around?

What if Janet had been the Skrull who was hit?

Intent versus action.

He intended on hitting Jan, but struck a dirty skrull instead who was probably a dude.

Don't care what Marvel underlines or likes. Hank the hitter pisses me off.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Yellowjacket was in the middle of a mental breakdown.

Hank was building a giant robot to Almost destroy the Avengers so that he could step in on that fight at the last minute, route his creation and save the day, and therefore become invited back to lead the Avengers.

Y'know, practically the plot to the Incredibles.

He slapped Janet because she dared to say that this plan of his (above) was a very bad idea.

Pym was clearly bonkers and then, 10 months later Pym was brainscanned (by a device built by Egghead) that confirmed that Pym was only bonkers and not hypnotized or brainwashed.

I'm amazed that after being an Avenger for a decade, that that was Janet's first black eye.

Her job was to get hit in the face.

Daily.

But the betrayal had to hurt.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Syndrome was the bad guy in The Incredibles, though. I'm not sure how Hank Pym escapes that notoriety regardless of the domestic abuse.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Syndrome built a killer robot that only he could defeat and thus assure his celebrity after all other supers failed to stop it.

That doesn't sound familiar?

HA!

I just reread Avengers #213, and the most awful thing Hank does is after he fails to stop his killer robot, and it is his wife who does save the day, and in the aftermath he's all hunched and almost crying saying that it was more humiliating to be saved by a girl than it would have been to have be saved by a man.

(The writers were trying to make him sound like an asshole.)

 

[Marsden]

He also discovered how to give his wife a blackeye using only the back of his fist.

Ummm..... she hit the doorknob. yeah.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yellowjacket was in the middle of a mental breakdown.

Hank was building a giant robot to Almost destroy the Avengers so that he could step in on that fight at the last minute, route his creation and save the day, and therefore become invited back to lead the Avengers.

Y'know, practically the plot to the Incredibles.

He slapped Janet because she dared to say that this plan of his (above) was a very bad idea.

Pym was clearly bonkers and then, 10 months later Pym was brainscanned (by a device built by Egghead) that confirmed that Pym was only bonkers and not hypnotized or brainwashed.

I'm amazed that after being an Avenger for a decade, that that was Janet's first black eye.

Her job was to get hit in the face.

Daily.

But the betrayal had to hurt.

Yeah, I read the comics. Doesn't mean I have to like it or the way that one scene became Hank's identifying moment. Partially because the artist misinterpreted the scene.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Did not know that.

The author, Jim Shooter, as Editor in Chief of Marvel would have been a dangerous man to cross in 1981.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I read the comics. Doesn't mean I have to like it or the way that one scene became Hank's identifying moment. Partially because the artist misinterpreted the scene.

Exactly. As Jim Shooter explains it:

http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/03/hank-pym-was-not-wife-beater.html

In that story (issue 213, I think), there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of “get away from me” gesture while not looking at her. Bob Hall, who had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross! There was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story of Hank Pym to be known as the “wife-beater” story.

When that issue came out, Bill Sienkiewicz came to me upset that I hadn’t asked him to draw it! He saw the intent right through Hall’s mistake, and was moved enough by the story to wish he’d had the chance to do it properly.

The final page can be seen here: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/04/15/comic-book-legends-revealed-309/

Shooter's in error; it's not a right cross, but a backhand sweep of Hank's left hand (although his right is clenched into a fist). Still, Hall clearly drew it as intentional and extremely forceful.

So it was one isolated mistake (both by the character and the artist) that fandom latched onto and exaggerated into a defining trait of the character, even though it was never meant to be. It didn't help when The Ultimates took the meme and ran with it, making that version of Pym an actual abusive husband.