Wasp Background

One of the founders of the Avengers, and its only female founding member, Wasp is finally getting the spotlight to herself. Wasp debuted in Tales to Astonish #44 in 1963. Though she had taken absences from the team she serves as one of the longest running Avengers and as its second longest leader. Now why exactly did it take so damn long for her to get her own solo series? She is in fact the last member of the founding Avengers to get their own solo series. She fell behind the men by DECADES. I don’t have to ask why because we all already know the answer, there is simply no other option, sexism. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the only founding member of the Avengers (that first appeared in the 60s) to not have her own series until 2023 is the only woman on the team. She is so unbelievably important and impactful in the comics, yet here we are literally 60 years later and Janet is just now getting the spotlight.

We are going to talk briefly about the problematic nature of her first solo series being a 4 issue limited series. This woman led the Avengers for literal decades and all she warrants is 4 issues to herself? It's a slap in the face to her character, all other woman characters and every single woman that reads comics. These writers have no respect for her or us. There is no reason they can’t come up with an ongoing storyline for her, not whenever every single founding Avenger with a penis has had 100 solo titles and 30 reboots. We are not moving forward with this series, it's actually a giant leap backwards. If writers can’t come up with AT LEAST a dozen storylines for her then they shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves writers. It's reason #4,568 why we need more women writing comics.

I pray to every god available that this ends up being an ongoing series but the likelihood of that is very very small. However from the synopsis Marvel has released it sounds like Janet and Nadia are joining forces and going back to Janet's 1960s roots with her new mini-series.

I’m sorry I can’t let this go, just real quick if we’re going back to the 1960s anyway lets do a rundown of all the possible storylines we could come up with for Jane and Jane alone…

Falling in love and out of love with Hank

Growing into a leader of the Avengers

Her recruiting members for the Avengers

Granting a motherly voice to characters like Wanda, Ms. Marvel, America, ect.

Using her perceptive abilities to do a run with her as a detective

She-Hulk team up

And those were simply off the top of my head with absolutely no context as to what her last appearance was. Coming up with story ideas for iconic characters is in fact not hard, and pretending it is is insulting. Janet deserves her own ongoing, long running title and some 4 issue placation series. The women of Marvel deserve better and I can’t believe that in 2023 we’re still having this conversation. Marvel needs to do better, DC needs to do better and audiences need to do better about letting these big two know what we want and what society needs. Writers need to do better and actually write characters they care about, if you don’t like the character then don’t write for them, it's really simple. I hope 2023 has more female lead series, but I need them to be real series and none of this limited engagement crap.