The Avengers Roster: Wa to Wh
By Sean McQuaid

Complete descriptions of each individual's affiliation with the Avengers are detailed below.

War Machine (Jim Rhodes): See Rhodes, Jim
Second armored identity employed by Jim Rhodes during his former career as an adventurer. A longtime friend, confidant and employee of Tony Stark (secretly the original Iron Man), Rhodes was entrusted with the Iron Man armor and acted as Iron Man during a period when Stark was incapacitated by alcoholism. As the new Iron Man, Rhodes served with the Avengers until injuries and other concerns forced him to step down from the role, replaced as Iron Man by a recovered Stark. Rhodes continued to act as a substitute Iron Man on occasion thereafter, once as an Avengers reservist, and later did a second full-time stint as Iron Man during a period when Stark faked his death while trying to recover from a fatal illness. When Stark recovered and returned from his seeming death, Rhodes angrily cut ties with Stark and used a version of the Iron Man armor to establish his own identity as War Machine, rejoining the Avengers; however, an argument with Iron Man prompted him to quit the team. Rhodes later lost the War Machine armor in action, replacing it with an alien suit of battle armor that was subsequently destroyed. Rhodes has since decided to retire from adventuring, though his original War Machine armor was salvaged by his friend and former fellow mercenary Parnell Jacobs, who has used it as the new, criminal War Machine.

Warbird (Carol Susan Jane Danvers):
Active member of the Avengers (seventeenth recruit); former member of the Starjammers; former informal associate of the Defenders; former in-house associate of the X-Men. Carol Danvers was a veteran United States airforce officer and intelligence agent who became head of security at NASA, where she met and befriended the alien adventurer Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell of the Kree). During one of Mar-Vell's battles she was exposed to the radiation of the Kree psyche-magnetron device, which gave her superhuman powers that she used as the costumed crimefighter Ms. Marvel in emulation of Mar-Vell. After aiding the Avengers against Ultron, Tyrak, Korvac and Doctor Spectrum, Ms. Marvel formally joined the team to replace the absent Scarlet Witch; however, Danvers was estranged from the group after they allowed her otherdimensional admirer, Marcus of Limbo, to abduct her for the second time, mistakenly believing that she was going with him willingly (this despite the fact that he had admitted to abducting her once before and mind-controlling her into sexual relations with him).
     Carol escaped Marcus after he accidentally killed himself, but then she lost her memories and her super-powers in a battle with the power-siphoning mutant Rogue. Unable to bear contact with the Avengers after they had failed her so badly, Danvers avoided them and was taken in by the mutant super-team known as the X-Men, whose leader, Charles Xavier, gave her therapy to help her recover from the Rogue and Marcus encounters. In the process, Carol recovered her memories, but not her emotional attachments to them--she knew the story of her life, but no longer felt as if she had lived it.
     Carol often assisted the X-Men in their adventures, and was eventually captured by the alien Brood, whose experiments gave her new super-powers; specifically, she could harness and manipulate stellar energies (such as light, heat and gravity) and augment her own physical abilities, all by tapping the energy of a cosmic phenomenon known as a white hole. Adopting a new costumed alias as Binary, Danvers continued to associate with the X-Men at first but was estranged from them when they accepted Rogue's appliaction to join their ranks, hoping to reform her. Binary angrily departed, and since she no longer felt a strong emotional attachment to Earth, she used her powers to become a spacefaring adventurer, serving for some time as a member of the interstellar swashbucklers known as the Starjammers.
     Binary eventually returned to Earth to help save it from destruction during the Galactic Storm crisis, nearly dying in a successful attempt to save Earth's sun, but the Avengers rescued her and nursed her back to health, strengthening her attachment to them and to Earth in general. She left the Starjammers, opting to spend more time on Earth, though she declined to rejoin the active Avengers roster at first. Later, she participated in the post-Onslaught reorganization of the Avengers, aiding the group against Morgan Le Fay and Whirlwind, but was disturbed to notice that her Binary powers were waning to a fraction of her former strength. Her link to the white hole was gone, and while she could still power up from other energy sources in her environment to fuel abilities such as enhanced strength, flight and energy blasts, she was no longer the cosmic force she had been as Binary.
     Trying to put her Binary days behind her and make yet another fresh start, Carol rechristened herself Warbird and rejoined the active Avengers roster; however, her various misfortunes had led to her developing a serious drinking problem. When her alcoholism began to affect her performance, the Avengers subjected her to a formal disciplinary court martial, during which she resigned in anger. Though she later fought the Wrecking Crew and the Doomsday Man alongide the Avengers, Carol shunned the team for the most part and tried to deny her drinking problem; however, the friendship and support of Avengers founder Iron Man, himself a recovered alcoholic, eventually helped her admit her illness and seek help. She began participating in the Alcoholics Anonymous program, and turned herself in to the authorities for dangerous property damage she had committed during one of her drunken rampages as Warbird. Given her excellent record and her willingness to come forward, Carol was spared jail time and remanded into the custody of the Avengers, where she could "work off" her misconduct by rejoining the team's active roster. Carol readily agreed, and as Warbird she is once more a valued member of the Avengers, determined to stay sober and rebuild her life.

Wasp (Janet Van Dyne):
Active founding member and co-chair of the Avengers; former founding member of the Lady Liberators; former informal associate of the Defenders. Janet Van Dyne was a flighty young socialite until her scientist father, Vernon, was murdered by an alien Kosmosian criminal he had accidentally brought to Earth during an experiment. In the aftermath of the murder, Jan sought the aid of her father's colleague Hank Pym, who was secretly the original Ant-Man. Impressed by Jan's courage and smitten by her resemblance to his late wife Maria, Pym revealed his dual identity to Jan and offered to take her on as his crimefighting partner. Jan eagerly accepted and Pym used his scientific discoveries to give her superhuman powers (notably the ability to shrink and to grow insect-like wings from her back) and a new costumed identity as The Wasp. After destroying The Creature From Kosmos, Ant-Man and Wasp went on to battle many other menaces, and soon joined forces with Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk to found a new super-team that the Wasp herself christened the Avengers.
     Wasp almost seemed to consider Avenging a hobby at first, and was often regarded as little more than Pym's sidekick, one of the least formidable members of the team. Pym himself, who had added growth powers to his repertoire and rechristened himself Giant-Man shortly after the team's founding, was a somewhat reluctant adventurer due to his various mental and physical health problems--and Wasp came to share that reluctance after nearly dying from injuries suffered during a battle with Count Nefaria's Maggia gang. At her urging, she and Pym retired from active Avengers membership, and even retired from adventuring altogether for a brief period. Jan soon grew bored and restless, though, and was happy when conflicts with Attuma and the Collector drew her and Pym back into the Avengers. Pym, trying to make a fresh start and make the best of his situation, adopted a new name and costume as Goliath, fighting his way though some serious physical health problems associated with his size-changing powers. Despite Pym's problems, he and the Wasp were mainstays of the team for some time after rejoining, including a period during which they and new recruit Hawkeye were the only consistently active members.
     Jan enjoyed the adventure of being an Avenger, and also enjoyed the lifestyle that came with the huge fortune she inherited from her family's estate, a fortune she used to dabble in fashion design and various other ventures. Pym, meanwhile, was reluctant to consider marriage because he saw himself as unworthy of Jan, especially since she was far more financially secure. Pym was also unhappy with Avenging, more inclined to lab work than superheroics and convinced that he was inferior to many of his teammates. Pym's various emotional problems only worsened after he created Ultron, a sentient robot that turned rogue and became one of the Avengers' most dangerous enemies. Though Pym seemed to cope with it well at first, his creation of Ultron filled him with guilt and shame that ate away at him for years to come.
     Anxious over his relations with the Wasp and the Avengers, Pym suffered an emotional breakdown (his second) and deluded himself into thinking he was a different, more daring person known as Yellowjacket--a role more compatible with the Wasp and a personality willing to take what he wanted, whether it was Jan or the role of a hero. In his new costumed identity as Yellowjacket, Pym claimed he had "killed" Goliath, and that he was taking Pym's place--both in the Avengers and in Jan's affections. Jan soon saw through Yellowjacket's disguise, but played along anyway--half-afraid that piercing Pym's delusion might further traumatize Hank, and half-thrilled that the mild-mannered Hank was finally being assertive and passionate. Jan even went so far as to marry Yellowjacket while Hank was still delusional regarding his true identity. Pym regained his memory shortly after the wedding when he saved Wasp from an assault by the Circus of Crime using his Goliath powers, and he was so happy to be married to Jan that he allowed the wedding to stand. He even decided to keep the Yellowjacket guise as his permanent costumed identity.
     It seemed like a happy ending, albeit a bizarre one, so Jan and the other Avengers were content to overlook Pym's mental problems as long as he was stable. Pym continued to feel inadequate by comparison to Wasp and many of the other Avengers, though, and felt like a personal and professional failure since his scientific career had sputtered and he was living off Jan's money. He began to scale back his involvement in the Avengers, opting for reserve status while Jan served with the active roster. By this time, Jan had begun consulting a psychiatrist in an effort to help Hank, but her efforts were soon undone. Attacked and brainwashed by Ultron, the mentally unstable Pym suffered a third mental breakdown, assaulting Wasp and the other Avengers. Pym quickly recovered his sanity after being freed from Ultron's control, but his mental problems were far from over. Tensions between Wasp and Pym escalated to the point where Pym was ill-tempered and often verbally abusive. When the insecure Pym rejoined the active Avengers roster, he was so eager to prove himself that he acted recklessly during a mission and was charged with misconduct.
     By now descending into his fourth and most extreme mental breakdown, Pym concocted a desperate plan to redeem himself by building a robot to attack the Avengers at his disciplinary hearing, a robot that Pym himself would be able to defeat using a secret cut-off switch. Pym dubbed the robot Salvation-1 or Sal, for short. When Wasp discovered Pym's plan, he angrily forbade her to interfere and even physically struck her. At Pym's misconduct court martial, most of the other Avengers were actually ready to acquit Pym of the charges and return him to active service, but Pym was now insecure to the point of paranoia and shocked the Avengers by ranting about his own heroism and how team leader Captain America was supposedly against him. The team's sense of shock only deepened when they discovered Pym had recently beaten Wasp. Seeing the group turn against him, Pym activated Sal; but the robot worked too well, and it seriously threatened most of the Avengers, including Pym, who was almost killed before Wasp deactivated the robot using Pym's secret cut-off switch.
     Pym left the Avengers in disgrace, and Jan swiftly divorced him--but to everyone's surprise, Wasp emerged from the crisis stronger than ever. She had regarded Pym as a sort of father figure as well as a lover, having met him so young and so soon after her father's death, and for years Pym had been the primary focus of her life. With Pym gone, Wasp was forced to redefine herself as an independent adult for the first time. She threw herself into her fashion designs and her business pursuits with renewed vigor, enjoying even greater success than before. She also strengthened her commitment to the Avengers, successfully running for team leader and proving to be one of the most effective and capable leadership figures in the team's history. She also made peace with ex-husband Pym and came to regard him as a friend after he regained his mental stability. Meanwhile, Wasp found a fun new love in her life when she began dating the dashing mercenary adventurer Paladin.
     After rebuilding his confidence and revamping his methods, Pym rejoined the Avengers through their new western roster as Doctor Pym, without using any costumed alias. Shortly afterward, Wasp decided to take life a bit easier by taking an indefinite leave of absence from the Avengers, stepping down from her leadership of the team's original eastern roster; however, when the team's western roster was left shorthanded by several resignations, Wasp began lending them a hand--and started becoming friendlier with Pym. Later, Wasp became a full active member of the team's western division, and for a time she and Pym even served as interim co-chairs of the western team.
     Jan and Hank flirted on and off with renewing their romance, but they eventually decided to remain platonic friends and soon left the western Avengers--Pym to return to his research, and Jan to travel. Neither lover had fully let go of the other, though; Jan lost herself in screenwriting, jetsetting travel and meaningless flings for a while, but was soon back in America consulting a therapist and throwing herself into her latest revival of her fashion design business. Pym returned to his research and dated UCLA professor Jenny Falk for a time, but before long he renewed his association with the Avengers and began keeping tabs on Jan again. When her fashion comeback was a big hit, Pym sought her out to congratulate her and the two started growing closer again--an intimacy that intensified after Pym's B.I.G. experimental size-changing project led them into a conflict with a gang of criminal Kosmosians. In the end, the Kosmosians were defeated, Pym and Jan were romantically reunited, and Wasp was one of several adventurers who lost their size-changing powers in the process (though Jan retained her ability to project powerful bioelectrical "stings", a power she had developed when Hank modified her powers years earlier). As a result, Jan began living a somewhat more quiet life again, though she continued to associate with both Pym (now acting as Giant-Man again) and the Avengers.
     This association would lead to a double tragedy for Janet Van Dyne. First the bulk of her fortune was stolen by old friend and teammate Tony Stark (secretly Iron Man), who was then Immortus's mind-controlled pawn in an elaborate plot against the Avengers. Later, during a battle between the Immortus-controlled Iron Man and the other Avengers, Jan was fatally wounded by Iron Man. Pym saved her life by subjecting her to a second application of the process that created her Wasp powers in the first place, but this rescue also mutated her into a bizarre bug-woman form that made her look rather like an oversized human butterfly. Wasp seemed to take this in stride and rejoined the Avengers, though her relationship with Pym ended yet again due to tensions stemming from her condition. Still, this didn't stop the couple from declaring their love for each other when they and most of the other Avengers leaped into what they thought was certain death during their battle with the psionic monster Onslaught.
     When Pym, Wasp and most of the other active Avengers seemingly died in the Onslaught disaster, the remaining Avengers disbanded the team. Meanwhile, Pym, Wasp and the other supposedly dead Avengers were living alternate versions of their lives in a strange alternate reality, including another incarnation of the Pym-Wasp romance. This alternate reality had been unwittingly created by the near-omnipotent mutant child Franklin Richards, and when the Avengers finally returned to their own Earth, Franklin's instinctively "fixed" any Avengers who needed it, such as returning Wasp to her human form and restoring her standard powers (shrinking, flying and stinging).
     Upon returning to their own Earth, Pym, Wasp and their teammates promptly reassembled the Avengers--but Wasp opted for reserve membership at first since she was dedicated to two new goals: rebuilding her depleted fortune, and rebuilding her romance with Pym. She soon succeeded on both fronts, though Pym's emotional problems have endured and made their relationship an uneasy one. Despite this, they continued to participate in Avengers adventures, notably the cosmic conflict known as The Destiny War, during which Wasp led a squad of Avengers from assorted timelines in a successful effort to save humanity from the Time Keepers.
     Shortly thereafter, when the Avengers were suffering from bad publicity and a string of resignations, Wasp accepted an invitation to rejoin and help the team get back on its feat by resuming her old post as team leader. She quickly repaired the group's image and assembled a new and effective team roster, though there were problems--notably Hank Pym, who had rejoined as Goliath. During the Avengers' battle with the sorcerer Kulan Gath, one of Gath's spells accidentally split Pym into two separate beings, Goliath and Yellowjacket, each one embodying different aspects of Hank Pym's personality (in Yellowjacket's case, representing all the wild and passionate emotions Pym had been repressing since his long-ago abuse of Wasp). After she discovered what was happening, Wasp helped Hank merge his two warring halves with the assistance of the Triune Understanding, and also helped Hank to accept himself as a whole person, a flawed but worthwhile individual. Determined to confront his emotional problems and make peace with them once and for all, Pym has reclaimed his former Yellowjacket identity and continues to serve with the Avengers under Wasp, who currently co-chairs the team with Captain America. Together, Wasp and Cap recently led a reorganization of the Avengers, rebuilding and refitting their headquarters and equipment, and launching an ongoing series of operations designed to better monitor and contain potential threats.

Whizzer (Robert L. Frank):
Honorary member of the Avengers, deceased; former founding member of the Liberty Legion and the All-Winners Squad; former member of the Invaders. A 1940s costumed crimefighter who gained the power of superhuman speed from a life-saving transfusion of mongoose blood, the Whizzer disappeared for decades but returned to action to find his long-lost son, radioactive mutant Bob Frank Junior (nicknamed Nuklo), who had been placed in suspended animation for generations by the government. The Avengers aided Whizzer in locating and subduing the rampaging Nuklo on two occasions, and during these adventures Whizzer and the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) came to the erroneous conclusion that she and her twin brother Quicksilver (Pietro) were actually the Whizzer's long-lost children (Whizzer's wife Madeline Joyce, the 1940s crimefighter known as Miss America, had died in childbirth at Wundagore Mountain shortly after Pietro and Wanda were born there to different parents). As a result, Whizzer continued to associate with the Avengers, who came to regard Whizzer as an unofficial member of their team, though they discouraged his crimefighting activities due to his advanced age. Eventually, after a humbling defeat at the hands of Count Nefaria, the Whizzer finally retired. He continued to see the Avengers on a social basis, though, and the group recognized him as an honorary member of their ranks when he was one of the many Avengers called in during the Korvac crisis, though he declined to participate in that case.
     Later, the Whizzer went into action one last time to protect his son and the Scarlet Witch from the Whizzer's old enemy, Isbisa. Both the Whizzer and Isbisa died in the ensuing battle, but as a side-effect of the radiation absorbed during the fight, Bob Frank Junior gained the ability to control his powers and was at last able to lead a more or less normal life, including a brief stint as the Avengers' groundskeeper.

Last updated by Sean McQuaid on October 13, 2001.

Avengers and all related characters copyright 2001 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All text in this document copyright Sean McQuaid, 2001.