The Avengers Roster: Y
By Sean McQuaid

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

Yellowjacket (Doctor Henry J. "Hank" Pym):
Active founding member of the Avengers; former member of the Defenders. Hank Pym is a genius biochemist whose size-changing formulae gave him the ability to alter his own physical size, a power he has used in various super-heroic guises as Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket. As Ant-Man, he was a founding member of the Avengers, and he continues to work with the team today as Yellowjacket.
     When Pym's first wife, Maria Trovaya, was abducted and murdered by communist extremists in her native Hungary, Pym went mad with grief, suffering his first mental breakdown. On returning to America, Pym immersed himself obsessively in his biochemical research, hoping that one of his discoveries might one day give him the means to battle the evils of the world. His first and arguably most significant breakthrough was the discovery of the unique extradimensional subatomic particles that would later be dubbed the Pym particles, particles that could alter the size of other matter on contact. Pym managed to magnetically trap these subatomic particles in liquid formulae, and during one early test he accidentally shrank himself to the size of an insect, blundering into an anthill, where he was nearly killed before he managed to regain his proper stature with the aid of a friendly ant. After returning to normal size, Pym decided the serums were too dangerous to ever be used again--so he destroyed them.
     Later, Pym decided to re-create the serums for the sake of science, keeping their existence secret so they could not be abused. Greatly affected by his experiences in the anthill, Pym also began obsessively studying ants. He fashioned a special costume to protect himself from ant stings and outfitted it with various devices, notably a cybernetic helmet through which Pym could communicate with ants and control them. At the same time, Pym was enlisted to lead a government radiation research project. When foreign spies menaced Pym and his colleagues in search of radiation research secrets, Pym slipped into his special costume and defeated the spies as Ant-Man. Pym had finally found his way to battle evil, and a new life of adventure. He began fighting crime as Ant-Man on a regular basis, defeating foes such as the criminal scientist Egghead.
     Pym's crimefighting crusade was largely successful, but it was also lonely--until he met Janet Van Dyne, daughter of his scientific colleague Vernon Van Dyne. Jan was a flighty young socialite until 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 out Pym's aid. 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 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--including Loki, whose failed plan to use The Hulk as bait in a trap for Thor resulted in Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp and Hulk deciding to remain together as a heroic team, a group that Wasp christened The Avengers. It was Pym's idea for the quintet to remain together as a team; he felt unsure of his own abilities, and secretly feared he couldn't afford to lose such powerful allies.
     Shortly after the team's founding, Hank began to feel inadequate by comparison to the more powerful and more confident Avengers, especially after Wasp began flirting with Thor. Hoping to become more powerful and confident himself, Pym modified his size-changing formulae so that he could now attain gigantic size at will. To emphasize on this new ability, he changed his costume and began calling himself Giant-Man, even though he retained the abilities and equipment from his earlier Ant-Man guise (he could still shrink and command insects). The name change did little to help Pym, who was a somewhat reluctant adventurer due to his various emotional and physical health problems--the latter stemming largely from overuse of his size-changing particles. Pym also continued to feel small by comparison to the far more powerful Thor and Iron Man despite his own new abilities.
     When Wasp nearly died from injuries suffered during a battle with Count Nefaria's Maggia gang, 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. His health problems continued, though, and grew worse. He was trapped at a height of ten feet for a time, though he eventually regained normal stature with the aid of his new research partner, biochemist Bill Foster. Later, Pym lost his growth power altogether for a time, then regained it with the assistance of The Collector. 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 the lifestyle that came with her family fortune, but Pym was increasingly unhappy. He was reluctant to consider marriage since he saw himself as unworthy of Jan, partly because his professional scientific career had stalled and most of their money came from her assets and businesses. 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 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. Compounding this shame was the guilty secret Pym kept from everyone--even the Wasp--for years: the fact that Ultron's artificial intelligence was based on duplications of Pym's own brain patterns. Ultron's personality was a random accident--but to Pym, Ultron's homicidal insanity must have seemed like proof that dark madness lurked beneath the surface of Pym's own personality, and this knowledge ate away at him.
     Shortly thereafter, a lab accident exposed Pym to chemicals that triggered a mental breakdown (his second), and he 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, relying on his shrinking powers since they were less physically and mentally taxing than his growth powers. The Yellowjacket costume's artificial wings allowed Pym to fly at insect size like the Wasp, and its gloves were outfitted with electric stingers.
     The Pym-Wasp romance seemed to have come to a happy ending, albeit a bizarre one, so the Avengers assumed Pym was well; however, Pym's various anxieties continued to plague him, aggravated by his ongoing physical health problems (caused by years of size-changing) and his inability to equal the breakthroughs of his early scientific career, creating a sense of failure and inadequacy in Pym that was augmented by his envious resentment of Jan's professional and financial success as a wealthy businesswoman and fashion designer. Pym also began to feel out of place in the Avengers since he saw the team as too demanding a commitment, and secretly wondered if he was worthy of it. He considered transferring to the more informal Defenders super-team, or retiring from superheroics altogether, but Wasp convinced him to stay with the Avengers as a reservist despite his misgivings.
     Attacked and brainwashed by Ultron, the mentally unstable Pym suffered a third mental breakdown, assisting Ultron in the creation of his robot bride Jocasta and 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. Despite Wasp's efforts to consult psychiatric professionals regarding Hank, tensions between Wasp and Pym escalated to the point where Pym was ill-tempered and often verbally abusive. When he rejoined the active Avengers roster during a membership reshuffling, the insecure Pym was so eager to prove himself that he acted recklessly during a mission: a mysterious adversary known as The Elfqueen had ceased hostilities and was prepared to talk when Pym blasted her in the back, starting another fight that almost got him killed until he was rescued by the Wasp. Team leader Captain America formally charged Pym with misconduct and put him on probation pending a disciplinary hearing.
     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 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 trial, 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 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. Too ashamed to pursue any sort of divorce settlement from Jan's fortune, Pym was soon out on the street, virtually penniless (his scientific publications were out of print, and his exotic research had exhausted most of the income from his various patents). Before Jan or any of the other Avengers became fully aware of the desperation of his situation, Pym was contacted by his old foe Egghead, who claimed he wanted Pym's help in a non-criminal project and was willing to pay for it, but Egghead instead framed Pym for an attempted theft of the government-regulated super-metal adamantium. Pym was captured by the Avengers and jailed for treason, unable to prove the involvement of Egghead, who was then believed to be dead.
     While in prison, Pym slowly regained his mental stability, came to terms with his mistakes and resolved to claw his way back up from rock bottom. He also accepted the loss of his wife and decided to put her behind him. Declining an opportunity to escape, he intended to rebuild his life by proving his innocence in a court of law. Before he could do so, though, he was abducted from his trial by Egghead's new Masters of Evil, who framed Pym as their supposed leader. Since Pym now looked more guilty than ever, Egghead argued that Pym might as well actually work for the Masters. Seemingly broken, Pym agreed to pursue Egghead's research into extending the human lifespan; but when Pym actually claimed to have produced an "immortality machine", the suspicious criminals insisted it be tested on Pym himself first--just as Pym planned. The machine was actually an elaborate weapons system, which Pym used to defeat the Masters single-handedly in a matter of minutes. By that time, the Avengers had uncovered proof of Pym's innocence and had come to rescue him, and Pym's longtime teammate, Hawkeye, arrived just in time to save the victorious Pym from being shot in the back by Egghead, who was killed when one of Hawkeye's arrows caused Egghead's gun to backfire. The accidental death was poetic justice of a sort, since Egghead had murdered Hawkeye's brother Barney Barton years earlier.
     With Egghead dead and his name cleared, Pym was freed from prison but declined an invitation to return to the Avengers. Determined to make a new life for himself as Hank Pym, he left the Avengers on good terms and returned to his original career as a research scientist, resolving to abandon his super-heroic identities since he saw that as a failed pursuit and had become incapable of size-changing anyway thanks to the years of damage done to his cellular structure. Pym found contentment in his work for a time, assisted by researcher Alice Nugent. He kept in touch with the Avengers on occasion and made peace with his ex-wife, Jan, forming a platonic friendship with her.
     After an encounter with Ultron brought Pym and the Avengers together again, Hank began working for the new western Avengers roster in a civilian capacity as their resident scientist and major domo. Happy to be back among his Avengers friends without having to play superhero, Pym became even happier when he began dating team member Tigra--but before long, tragedy struck Pym yet again. When a new incarnation of Ultron evolved into the loving son Pym never had (Ultron Mark Twelve or "Mark" for short), Pym was overjoyed--and then he was shattered when "Mark" sacrificed his robotic life to save Pym from one of the earlier, evil incarnations of Ultron. Pym recovered from this loss, but then Tigra broke up with him. He might have bounced back from that, too, were it not for a humiliating encounter with one his old enemies, the super-criminal Whirlwind, who mocked Pym as a failure and easily bested him in combat. Though Avengers Hellcat and Tigra subsequently apprehended Whirlwind with Pym's assistance, Hank was so demoralized by the Whirlwind incident that he decided to kill himself.
     Thankfully, Pym was interrupted in the midst of his suicide attempt by Avengers associate Bonita Juarez, the adventurer currently known as Firebird and then known as Espirita. A devoutly religious social worker in her civilian life, Bonita helped Hank realize he still had things to offer the world and could still forge a life for himself worth living. With her encouragement and advice, Pym discovered new ways to use his skills and rejoined the Avengers as Doctor Pym, without adopting any sort of costumed identity since he finally felt comfortable as himself. He was still unable to alter his own physical size, but learned that years of exposure to Pym particles had given him the ability to alter the size of other beings and objects at will. Among other things, this power enabled him to shrink a wide array of tools, vehicles and weapons that he could store in his pockets and enlarge for use at a moment's notice.
     Shortly thereafter, Wasp began working with the western Avengers, eventually becoming friendlier with Pym. He and Wasp even served as interim co-chairs of the western Avengers roster for a time. They flirted on and off with renewing their romance, but they eventually decided to remain platonic friends and soon left the active roster. going their separate ways. Pym returned to his research, dating UCLA professor Jenny Falk for a while.
     During this period of research, Pym began experimenting with his own powers, and managed to regain his ability to alter his own bodily size; in the process, however, he lost his ability to alter the size of other people and objects, though he can still shrink or enlarge objects if he has chemically treated them beforehand. Rejoining the eastern Avengers roster after he and Bill Foster helped them save the life of the second Swordsman, Pym decided to resume his old Giant-Man alias for reasons never fully explained, and served as an active Avenger for some time in that guise. During this period, he began socializing with Jan again and collaborated with Foster on the B.I.G. research project, an experiment which revealed that Pym's special particles came from a dimension used by the alien Kosmosians as a prison, where the inmates were using Pym's latest experiments as unwitting assistance in a mass escape attempt. Despite the fact that the Kosmosians manipulated Pym into suffering yet another emotional breakdown, Pym foiled the criminal Kosmosians' plans, though Jan, Bill and several other adventurers were stripped of their own size-changing abilities in the process.
     Brought closer together by their Kosmosian adventure, Pym and Jan began tentatively pursuing their romance again, though their relationship was thrown into turmoil when Hank mutated Jan into a bizarre bug-woman form to save her from fatal injuries inflicted by an Immortus-controlled Iron Man during the conflict known as The Crossing. Regardless, they both remained active with the Avengers until they and most of the other active members disappeared in battle with Onslaught and were presumed dead. In actuality, they survived and were trapped for months in an alternate reality where they lived alternate versions of their past lives, including another version of the Hank-Jan romance.
     After the missing Avengers returned from Onslaught, Giant-Man opted for reserve membership while he concentrated on renewing his romance with Jan (who had regained her ordinary human form and standard Wasp powers as a result of their otherdimensional odyssey) and reviving his scientific career, accpeting a research position at a company run by his former assistant, Alice Nugent. As Giant-Man and the Wasp, Hank and Jan continued to assist in various Avengers adventures, notably by playing a key role in the time-spanning conflict known as the Destiny War, which forced Pym to team up with his past self Yellowjacket and several other time-tossed Avengers to save humanity from the Time-Keepers. Shortly thereafter, Pym played a key role in the latest defeat of Ultron (who had conquered the country of Slorenia after slaughtering its human populace) and finally began to put his creation of the killer robot behind him, confessing how his own brain patterns had been the template for Ultron's mind and finally pummeling Ultron into nothingness, dismissing the robot as nothing more than a failed experiment that had to be destroyed.
     Predictably, this was not the end of Pym's problems. When a roster reshuffling left the Avengers short-handed, Hank & Jan agreed to rejoin the active roster. Jan resumed her past role as team leader, and Hank resumed his old Goliath identity, wearing the Goliath costume Jan once made for him before he decided to become Yellowjacket (Pym had never worn the uniform before, though Clint Barton had worn it as an alternate Goliath for a time). It almost seemed as if Pym was trying, if only on a subconscious level, to revise history by wearing the uniform he would have worn as Goliath years earlier if he hadn't become Yellowjacket.
     When a mission brought the Avengers into conflict with the wizard Kulan Gath, one of Gath's spells accidentally released the long-suppressed aspects of his Pym's old "Yellowjacket" personality. Terrified, Pym resisted, and when the spell was broken, he somehow split into two separate beings: Goliath, embodying Hank's intellect and rationality, and Yellowjacket, emodying the wild, emotional aspects of Pym's personality. As a result of the split, both Pyms had more difficulty using their size-changing powers since each now has only half the bodily mass of the original Pym to work with. The Goliath half of Pym, not knowing what had happened, continued to work with the Avengers, though Jan and his teammates noticed him becoming strangely unemotional and indifferent, and the Goliath Pym secretly began suffering excruciating pain as a result of his separation from his counterpart. The Yellowjacket half of Pym, meanwhile, concealed his existence from the Avengers at first, embarking on a plainclothes spree of drunken brawling and partying.
     Deciding he wanted his life back and convinced that Goliath was some kind of fake, the Yellowjacket Pym ambushed and overpowered the Goliath Pym, imprisoning Goliath in a secret hideaway. Yellowjacket then took the other Pym's place in the Avengers, posing as Goliath. The Avengers noticed that Pym began acting more reckless and impulsive, though the Yellowjacket Pym secretly struggled with the same bouts of intense separation pain that Goliath had suffered, though neither understood what it meant. Tired of concealing his true nature, the Yellowjacket Pym began operating with the Avengers as Yellowjacket, confusing and unsettling Wasp and other veteran Avengers given the bad memories associated with Pym's Yellowjacket days. Before anyone could investigate any further, though, the Yellowjacket Pym collapsed in agony during a mission and began to fade away.
     Believing he might be dying, the Yellowjacket Pym asked Wasp and the others to attend to his captive Goliath counterpart, saying that the other Pym did not deserve to starve even if he was an imposter. Jan found and freed the Goliath version of Pym, only to discover that he, too, was in a state of agony and slowly fading into nothingness. At the suggestion of Triathlon, the Avengers reluctantly sought the aid of Triune Understanding leader Jonathon Tremont, a spiritualist who specializes in healing divisions of the self. With Tremont's help, Wasp learned that Hank had been repressing the emotional and passionate aspects of his personality, the "Yellowjacket" in him, since he abused her as Yellowjacket during his worst mental breakdown years earlier. Terrified of hurting Jan or anyone else, Hank had buried the "Yellowjacket" aspects of his personality for years until Gath's spell somehow released them and gave that personality a body of its own. Through Tremont's mental powers and Jan's advice, Hank realized that he must accept, integrate and come to terms with all aspects of himself, even his imperfections, if he is ever going to be physically and mentally whole and healthy. Once he decided to accept himself as a complete, imperfect person, his Goliath and Yellowjacket selves physically and mentally merged into a new, unified Hank Pym.
     The newly whole Hank Pym has returned to active Avengers duty, and has done so in his guise as Yellowjacket, reasoning that if he is ever going to fully conquer his emotional problems, he can best do so by facing his worst fears and redeeming the identity he had once disgraced. How Pym's personality will develop in the future remains to be seen, but for now he remains a capable and courageous contributor to the Avengers.

Yellowjacket [II] (Rita DeMara):
Honorary member of the Avengers, deceased; inactive member of the Guardians of the Galaxy; former member of the Masters of Evil. Technologically inclined petty criminal Rita DeMara became the new Yellowjacket by stealing and modifying the original Yellowjacket costuming and equipment, which had been invented and previously worn by Doctor Henry Pym, who was then retired from costumed superheroics. Unable at first to cope with the disorienting nature of Pym's size-changing costume, DeMara was easily captured by the Wasp during her first outing as Yellowjacket. DeMara was later freed from prison by Baron Helmut Zemo's Masters of Evil, somewhat reluctantly aiding them in their subsequent invasion and occupation of Avengers Mansion. When the Avengers retook the Mansion, DeMara surrendered peacefully without offering any resistance.
     Escaping prison with the aid of her smitten Masters of Evil teammate, the Fixer, DeMara rebuffed his romantic advances and set off on her own to attack the Wasp; however, while shadowing Wasp, DeMara spotted and became strongly attracted to Dane Whitman, the Avengers member better known as the Black Knight. Abandoning her plans for revenge, DeMara followed Whitman until she was confronted by an angry Fixer, who had been following her. The jealous Fixer attacked Whitman, but Yellowjacket managed to defeat the Fixer, who fled. Whitman expressed a definite interest in his rescuer, but since she was still a wanted criminal, DeMara flew off after giving a grateful Whitman a parting kiss.
     Later, a signalling device in the Yellowjacket costume attracted DeMara to a gathering of inactive and reserve members of the Avengers, whom she assisted in defeating the High Evolutionary. The Avengers were sufficiently impressed by her skill and bravery to award her honorary membership in their ranks, presumably unable to offer her full membership since she was still a wanted criminal.
     When Doctor Octopus organized a new Masters of Evil to loot the Avengers headquarters during the Infinity War, Yellowjacket joined them with the intention of subverting this new Masters group from within, helping the Avengers civilian staff and the visiting Guardians of the Galaxy drive off the Masters. When the Guardians returned to their 31st century era, DeMara tagged along with them, hoping to make a fresh start in the world of the future, and soon became a valued member of the Guardians.
     Eventually, though, DeMara grew homesick for her own time period and returned to the present day--but when she tried to make contact with the Avengers, she was promptly murdered by Iron Man, who was then acting under the mind control of Immortus as part of a larger plot against the Avengers. Her death was senseless, nothing more than one of the first steps in a campaign to disorient and demoralize the Avengers. Iron Man himself was eventually freed from the control of Immortus, though, and Immortus himself later died during a dispute with his masters, the Time-Keepers, although a new Immortus has since arisen in his place. Hank Pym has since reclaimed the Yellowjacket name and costume, and is currently active with the Avengers in that guise.

Yolanda (full name unrevealed):
Former groundskeeper, Avengers Compound. Yolanda served the western Avengers roster as part of their groundskeeping staff, but was presumably laid off along with the rest of the Compound staff when the Avengers shut down their west coast operations. She was once taken hostage by the Night Shift criminal gang, but escaped without injury thanks to the intervention of the Avengers.

Yondu (Yondu Udonta):
Honorary member of the Avengers; past informal associate of the Defenders; active founding member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. One of the few survivors of the Centaurian race on the planet Centauri IV in the 31st Century of an alternate future timeline, Yondu is a Centaurian warrior priest, weapons master and expert archer armed with arrows crafted from his homeworld's sound-sensitive yaka metal (he can control their flight by whistling). When most of his people were slaughtered by the invading Badoon (who also overran 31st Century Earth's solar system), Yondu became a founding member of the band of freedom fighters known as the Guardians of the Galaxy, who ultimately drove the Badoon out with the aid of the 20th Century adventurers known as the Defenders. The Guardians stayed together thereafter as a spacefaring band of adventurers, and later made a lengthy visit to the 20th century in pursuit of Korvac. During their stay, they were hosted and assisted by the Avengers, who extended honorary Avengers membership to the Guardians so as to facilitate their 20th century activities. The Guardians eventually returned to their own time period, but later made a brief excursion to the 20th century during which they repulsed an attack on Avengers Mansion by the Masters of Evil before returning to their own time. Yondu was absent from that mission, having left the Guardians, but he has since rejoined their ranks.

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.