Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer while still acknowledging that the abandoned story DID still happen. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
This time around, we look at the death (and life) of Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man.
Despite working with the Avengers on a number of occasions over the years (including famously defeating the Absorbing Man and Titania alongside the Wasp during the Under Siege storyline), it wasn't until 2002 that Scott Lang actually joined the Avengers (it was especially weird during Under Siege. The Wasp is all, "Hey, let me form a new Avengers team! Oh, not you, Scott. Hahahahah, did you really think I meant you?"). It was during Geoff Johns' run. Johns did an interesting rivalry between Scott and fellow new Avenger, the Jack of Hearts. Jack ended up dying at the end of Johns' run.
After a stint by Chuck Austen, Brian Michael Bendis took over the writing reins on the Avengers and, along with artists David Finch and Danny Miki, Bendis launched Avengers Disassembled, with a crazed Scarlet Witch using her powers to tear the Avengers apart. She re-animated the dead Jack of Hearts and had him explode, killing Scott...
Scott's daughter, Cassie, took up superheroing in honor of her late father and became the size-changing hero known as Stature as a member of the Young Avengers.
In 2011, the Young Avengers starred in a mini-series called Avengers: The Children's Crusade (written by Allan Heinberg, drawn by Jim Cheung and Mark Morales), where Cassie's teammates, Wiccan and Speed, the sons of the Scarlet Witch, try to bring their mother back. One of their plans involved going back in time and preventing Wanda from causing the events of Avengers Disassembled. They fail to do so, but they DO manage to bring Scott Lang back from the past before he is killed...
In the following issue, the other Avengers see Scott's return...
Sadly, Scott's return caused a bit of a karmic imbalance, which led to tragedy later in the series. We'll cover that tomorrow in another edition of Abandoned Love - The Death and Life of Ant-Man's Daughter, Cassie Lang!
That's it for this edition of Abandoned Love! If YOU have an idea for an interesting abandoned storyline, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com