Let's not forget all the awful things he did in civil war/ 50 states era. Like making a negative zone prison, locking up heroes with bad guys than abandoned them all there without trying to save them!

 

Wasn't he also responsible for that Thor clone that killed Goliath? Or was that just Tony?

 

He was straight up a villain in the Civil War era. There’s a whole “take that” issue of Fantastic Four directed at taking Reed to task from Dwayne McDuffie IIRC. There’s also a very lively debate among comic book creators as to how out of character the Civil War versions of Steve, Reed and Tony are, to the point many don’t accept those issues as cannon.

Hickman’s run examines how close Reed often comes to crossing the line, and looks at what makes our Reed always stay on this side of the line. But even prior to Civil War Reed has done some truly bad things. I’m rereading the Stan and Jack stuff now and Reed can be a real ass to the rest of the team and sometimes comes very close to crossing that line into villain.

 

On Civil War, the best attempt at fixing up the continuity and explaining how Tony and Steve end up where they land is the Caualties of War one shot in Civil War, if I recall that title correctly. It has Steve and Tony sit down after Goliath’s death one last time to talk. And it lays out how each one ended up where they were with references back to the cannon for each character. It’s well done.

Hank turns out to have been a Skrull the whole time iirc.

But Reed doesn’t get much explanation on it.

If you asked me, I still think that Steve and Tony are on the wrong sides in Civil War, and the folks that green-lit that story really screwed that up. A lot of that story could have worked if they’d taken more time to work out who lands where. Hickman’s Time Runs Out arc in Avengers basically reruns Civil War but this time with the characters on arguably the right side of the dividing line.

 

Hank was two skrulls taking turns no less and one was a female skrull to boot!

 

I’d forgotten that. Secret Invasion is such a damn mess. I’m fine with Bendis in his monthly serialized work, but his event comics are so so bad. And Secret Invasion exemplifies that. It does shake things up as it leads to the Dark Reign and kicks off War of Kings. But during the event it’s such a mess

 

Female skrull was dating wasp who thought it was hank also at the time!

 

Well NOW I have all kinds of questions...

 

It gets worse when you see what they have done to Hank these days. They destroyed his redemption arc Busiek redeemed Hank explained why he went crazy and subsequent writers starting with Bendis through his arc in the trash. He basically became worse than he ever was when he accidentally hit Wasp. I think most writer have reconnected it so he did it on purpose now. Now he's a wife beater I think...or was that Ultimates...they started mixing the continuities....

 

Rick Reminder’s Rage of Ultron one shot is so bad. Then Nick Spencer built on that with the crazy Hank/Ultron dinner scene. Waid had tried to redeem Hank after Bendis’s Age of Ultron crossover made a case for how vital Hank is to the 616.

But ultimately writers don’t know what to do with a healthy and sane Hank. Mental instability has kinda been his thing for almost all of his history and making him mentally stable is like making the Thing human. It’s not meant to stick.

 

Kind of odd hank is always attacked for slapping jan but peter parker can punch mary jane across the room while Pregent throwing a hissy fit for something that turned out was a lie anyways and no one cared!

 

I just got to “the slap” in my Avengers reread and I get why Hank’s action has really stuck to him.. Hank goes full on cartoon villainy. He’s shown to be unstable and resentful of Janet leading up to that, and is still that way after. He’s not only unremorseful, but he builds a robot to attack the Avengers to preempt his trial in an attempt to appear heroic. It’s an awful horrible moment and Hank is under complete and total collapse. I’m honestly surprised he got used again as anything other than a villain.

Peter’s incident is a very different context, and he’s immediately sorry. It is absolutely true that it is not ok Peter hit MJ. But the context is very very different.

Hank’s collapse happens during the Shooter reign on the book. That era has a lot of cringe moments and really poor character decisions that have to be walked back later. Busiek revisits Hank in his run, but he also ends up having to address Carol Danvers who is done really dirty in Shooter’s run. It’s a really weird Avengers era where you have amazing things happening on the macro level while the micro level character threads are really regrettable.

 

He still took a bad guys word, got super ticked acting like a crazy guy telling ben he can't steal his life than tried to choke ben to death. Mary tried to stop him from killing ben and was knocked across the room messing up her face for her trouble.

Many think it was done by marvel on purpose to make you not like peter as much as ben was replacing him in the book.

Peter looks like green goblin here!



Ben on the other hand eggs it on here more leading to the choking so he has some blame in this. Still way out of character for peter but don't forget peter was in an "angry gritty" phase at the time fans complained at marvel over.



And the scene.



Ben egged it on, but peter still tried to kill another person and used his Pregent wife as a dodgeball. That's all on him.

 

It is, but look at Peter hitting someone behind him and then realizing what he did versus Hank:

If you've never read it, or haven't read it recently, go back and read the issue just prior to Hank hitting Janet, and then that issue. It's incredibly incredibly bad.

Again, I'm not saying Peter shouldn't have that held against him. I wasn't crazy about OMD, but I was glad it broke up Mary Jane and Peter because once someone hits you, that should be the end of the relationship. That's just such a big line in the sand. But Peter and Hank aren't equivalent.

I'm alternating between a F4 reread and an Avengers reread. I just got to Avengers 217 and I'm about to read 221 and Hank is at rock bottom. Shooter drags him through the damn mud. He never seems to really acknowledge just how far off the straight and narrow he is. He's clearly on a villain arc and it's amazing he ever gets rehabilitated.

It won't be a popular take, but as much as I enjoy Busiek's run, I'm getting kinda annoyed by it the longer my reread goes. Busiek's run will end up trying to fix once and for all Kang, Carol Danvers, Hank Pym, and Wanda Maximoff. Kang is, was, and always will be a continuity mess and is probably the most successful fix Busiek undertakes. But for Carol, Hank, and Wanda you have three Avengers with some pretty deep personal trauma that's likely to haunt them for the rest of their lives. I find the idea they can ever be fully fixed ridiculous.

I'm finding I'm more and more happy with how the MCU handles Hank. He's a classic hero who's a jerk and who acknowledges he's screwed up royally in the past. And he's out of the game due to that.

 

By the way, Brian Cronin did a short article on Peter hitting Mary Jane. It's at:
Remember to Forget - That Time Spider-Man Accidentally Hit Mary Jane

He mentions in that one how that it was intended to be Peter shrugging off Mary Jane, but the art team didn't properly portray that. I think that part of why this isn't held against Peter is that:
1. It's the clone saga. Collectively we've all erased that storyline from our brains.
2. Peter's reaction.

If you toss in the information about writer's intent, it's not hard to see how we all just kinda moved past Peter hitting MJ.

 

True but it's still him smacking mj in anger and he still was chocking a guy to death in anger. It was a rough scene. Ironic not the first time spideys anger did this. Spider-man vs wolvirine he kills the girl he is trying to protect thinking she was wolverine and hitting her super hard. Ironic thing is she wanted to die and used peter to do it! Peter had nightmares of it and was so upset wolverine had to come back and help peter deal with it in web of spider-man. That was a better handling of peters anger hurting or in this case killing someone to me.

 

Why we discussion about abuse in Marvel Comics, you guys mention of how Hulk was abuse when he was a child or how Iron Man was abused himself with alcohol, instead talking of how Pym and Spidey commented spousal abuse.

 

Marvel has a lot of pretty adult stuff around. It was never just kids books.

 

I think historically, even those heavier subjects were done in a way that was easily understandable to the mostly teenage audience of those books. I think most of us knew what abuse was by the time we became teens. Besides, if Marvel Comics was all whimsical happiness, I'd find it pretty embarrassing.

 

It's obvious Peter's not assaulting MJ, but forgetting his strength in the heat of the moment while pushing her away.
Similar to the jazz club scene in Spider-Man 3.
Anyway Peter's always been a rough and tumble guy, manhandling Flash Thompson, and getting easily triggered, it's not a trait that started during the 80s/90s.