More people are realizing the potency of shrinking and growing super powers. They used to make people think shrinking would only be good as an attack on someone else, make them weak. Now, folks realizing that good things come in small packages. You can break free, you can start over with such power. That’s what Nadia Van Dyne did, she’s left a life of destruction for a life of innovation. So who is Nadia Van Dyne? Let’s find out!
Nadia Van Dyne was born in captivity. Her mother, Maria Trovaya, the first wife of Doctor Hank Pym, had been kidnapped and never found, Maria died shortly after giving birth to a baby her husband didn’t even know existed. Nadia was raised in the Red Room, the same program that trained Black Widow. When it was discovered she had talent in the sciences, she was entered into the Science Class division of the Red Room. Told who her parents were and expected to be as much of a genius as her father, she was taught a variety of scientific and engineering fields. She was often secluded from others, so she wouldn’t gain any real attachments but she did manage to make one friend, Ying, who was also in the Science Class. When Pym Particles were procured for Nadia to reverse-engineer, she knew she had her chance, she would use these Pym Particles to allow herself to shrink and escape from the Red Room bunkers.
Now free, Nadia would travel all the way to America to Hank Pym’s door, ready to meet the father she never knew. Sadly, she would find out that he had been in a battle with Ultron and believed dead. She would break into his home, borrowing his gear to make her own Wasp uniform to seek out her stepmother and the other Avengers for aide. She would prove her skills when she would help an ailing Vision, technically her nephew, and alerted Edwin Jarvis of her ties to Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. Jarvis would contact Janet to get the two together, they were soon saving the life of the president of the United States as well as all of Washington D.C. Janet would become the mother that Nadia never had and Jarvis was the very terrified father figure.
Joining the Avengers for a time before teaming up with kids her own age in the Champions, which also allows her to work with her great niece, Viv Vision, super scientist families are different but still families. All the while, staying in her father’s house with Jarvis assisting her to life in America. She would decide that with the S.H.I.E.L.D listings of smartest people in the world being mostly a boy’s club until they discovered that Moon Girl, Lunella Lafayette, was the smartest person now, she figures that girls are missing from the roster due to biases and would set out to find the girl geniuses. She would found G.I.R.L. (Genius In action Research Labs) to help fund young girl geniuses and their projects.
Collecting several of the brightest minds who she could get, G.I.R.L. began in the Pym household. Things would go well until her old Red Room Science Class friend, Ying, arrived to take her back to the Red Room. Discovering that Ying had a bomb implanted in her head to insure that she got Nadia back, Nadia would have the G.I.R.L. team work on getting the bomb out while Nadia would confront Mother, the woman who trained her. When the bomb was removed, Mother was knocked out, but the Pym house was shot up by Red Room enforcers, leaving the parents of the G.I.R.L. team to take them away from such a dangerous endeavor. Nadia would go into panic mode until Janet arrive to assist her in starting a proper G.I.R.L. organization at Pym Technologies and able to bring the entire team back together.
It would be discovered that Nadia had inherited more than just her father’s brilliant intelligence and knack for the S.T.E.M. fields, she also inherited his bipolar disorder. This would hit her hard after an attack on the G.I.R.L. offices where she would refuse to sleep for days, began to over plan on how to fix everything and everyone. It would take Priya, one of the G.I.R.L. team members shrinking down into Nadia’s miniaturized lab necklace to help bring her back out to get the help she needed to deal with her bipolar disorder.
There you have it! Nadia Van Dyne joins the roster of Marvel size-changing hero set and is a welcomed one. She’s technically in the films by the name Nadia translates to in English, Hope Van Dyne. Nadia is quickly becoming a personal favorite and hopefully her series lasts a long time. See you next time!
Suggested Reading
Civil War II Free Comic Book Day 2016
All-New All-Different Avengers
Avengers
Champions
Unstoppable Wasp
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
