Open Mike Night: Unstoppable Wasp #1-5

Unstoppable Wasp #1-5

Written by: Jeremy Whitley
Art by: Elsa Charretier
Colored by: Megan Wilson
Lettered by: VC's Joe Caramagna

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price:  $3.99 each issue

Mike Maillaro: Over the last few years, Marvel seems to have perfected the “quirky book with a female lead” genre.  Everything from Ms Marvel to Spider-Woman to Hellcat to Squirrel Girl to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur to Gwenpool to Silk and now Unstoppable Wasp.  To be honest, Nadia Pym didn’t make a huge impression on me in her earlier appearances.  She didn’t seem to have much of a personality, and I thought it was just odd to add “mysterious child that Pym never knew about” to the Avengers.  I also cringed when I realized that Nadia is a Slavic name that means Hope (Pym and Janet’s daughter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is named Hope).

Nadia was raised in the Red Room after her mother’s death, and was put in their “Science Class.”  These days, she is looking to recruit other young female scientists to help them reach their full potential.  To be honest, the whole reason I picked up this book in the first place is I thought my daughter might be interested.  She doesn’t like to read all that much, but she’s very good at math and science.  I was very surprised to find that in her own book, Nadia is a very fun character.  Despite her upbringing, she is innocent and just wants to understand the world.  The early issues partner her up with Ms Marvel, Moon Girl, and Mockingbird, not to mention other young science-minded women that Nadia is recruiting.

Mike Weaver: I’ll be honest, through the first issue, I was not a fan of Nadia.  She is overly excitable and spitting catchphrases while simultaneously having the total fish out of water experience to ludicrous degrees (except in science, where she knows everything).  It almost felt like Perfect Strangers, and that’s not a good thing.

But a funny thing happened in the next few issues.  I began to understand her character more, and the amount of optimism and excitability she embodied despite her horrific upbringing made me appreciate her quite a bit.  By the end of the second issue, my opinion of her did a total 180.

Maillaro: I actually think that is a fair assessment.  When I read it the first time, I was happy to see her have an actual personality.  When I reread it to do this review, she was a bit annoying in the first issue. It probably didn’t help to feature her alongside Ms Marvel and Mockingbird in the first issue.  Though I did love her obsession with Mockingbird being a scientist, something that has really fallen away from her character over the years.  

But as the issues roll out, and we see her interacting with more original characters (and Jarvis and Matt Murdock), I thought she became more fleshed out and unique.  

Weaver: I’ll be honest, I forgot that Mockingbird was a scientist before she was a superhero.  It was neat to see that was the thing Nadia knew her for, since everyone else basically knows her just as a superhero.  I think she needed to have Mockingbird to set up the whole “we inspire each other” moment that becomes the main theme of the series, but the entire encounter was kind of...jarring, I guess is the best word.  I wasn’t ready for the manic pace yet.

Maillaro: I did laugh out loud at “I was married to Hawkeye.”  “Which one?”

Weaver: I was more amused by Mockingbird reciting exactly the facts about herself that Ms. Marvel provided as explanation a few panels before, but that line was good too.  

I like the idea that this book centers around a lot: that forever and ever, we’ve had this “smartest person” ranking system in the Marvel Universe that is 100% old boys’ club, with Reed and Tony and Banner and Pym and Parker and stuff.  Amadeus Cho sort of broke that up by busting onto the list, but we still had a giant sausage fest at the top. And why?  Because it was exactly the people on the list who created and curated the list, and they (probably mostly subconsciously) kept it up with more of the same.  Nadia is convinced that there’s plenty of women that could be on that list, so starts recruiting science adventuring girls to challenge that status quo.

Maillaro: They had sort of starting dealing with that in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, but it is much done better here.  Luna somehow solves a magic “test that proves you are smart” better than anyone else could.  Luna spends so much time stressing about being smart in her own book, that we rarely get to see her actually being smart. Nadia is a lot more chill about that.  Not knocking MG and DD, that is another really entertaining comic, it’s just different..  Hell, the whole list I started with are all books I genuinely enjoy (though Hellcat, Spider-Woman and Silk have all ended by now).

Weaver: I loved Nadia’s reaction to Luna’s stress about being smart.  Basically, okay, you’re smart, I was locked away and trained as an assassin.  Weird is relative.

Speaking of trained as an assassin, Nadia has Black Widow level martial arts skills in addition to being smart, which was nice to see.  She was raised in the Red Room, after all.  But thinking of the martial arts skills brings me to another thing I really liked about the series: the use of text boxes.  Every so often, Nadia will annotate the book with a “fun science fact.”  These range from a very specific description of how Krav Maga and pressure points work to just adding in that Tesla is awesome as an aside.  Whenever one came up, I wasn’t sure if it would be silly or science, and either way, there wasn’t a single one I was disappointed by.  And I learned a few things along the way, too (notably about how much power Times Square uses).  They never felt disruptive, either, which is hard to manage with sporadic text boxes.

Maillaro: I actually got genuinely annoyed about that Times Square fact.  We really are one wasteful society…

Weaver: For a second, I was worried that you were annoyed because you found out it wasn’t true.  My world was about to end.

Maillaro: LOL!  No, I totally believe it.  My annoyance is at humanity, not the creators of this comic…

Weaver: They really underscore the wastefulness of that amount of power usage within the story, too, with Jarvis complaining about the glut of advertisements there.

Maillaro: I will say it’s nice that Marvel has such a diverse line of comics, and I don’t just mean woman, ethnic diversity, etc.  A comic line that can feature a strong helping of books like Wasp while still doing Captain America as a Hydra sleeper agent is alright in my book.

Weaver: It shows a lot of diversity in how it handles science as opposed to main books, which was a big selling point.  In Iron Man or what have you, Tony goes into his magic cave and comes out with armor and we don’t know why or how, he just did it.  In this, it felt very much like the science people were sciencing and not pulling a curtain over it to hide any goofiness from the reader.

Maillaro: We even get the limitations of said science.  Nadia;s idea to power cell phones with static was cool...but we see her fry the phone and even needing to add a taser to “get rid of the extra electricity.” I have no idea if that is true scientifically, but it was written convincingly and in fiction that is all that matters.

Weaver: So, I’ll go first with scores.  I want to give the writing a 5, but I can’t quite go that high on it due to a couple of issues with annoying tone in the early going.  I’ll give it a 4.5.  The art...I didn’t care for the art at all.  I will give it the benefit of saying that it was consistent, every time we see a character we know who they are and all the panels are in the same style, but this seventh grade sketchbook art really doesn’t feel professional to me.  It’s what I doodled in the margins of my notebooks.  I’m giving it a 2 for art.

Maillaro: I actually agree that I didn’t love the art, but I wouldn’t quite go that low.  I liked the way Elsa Charretier drew action scenes.  The fight in the first issue and against the Grapplers were both done real well.  The more static scenes were kind of dull, and I thought that the way she drew Time Square almost felt like it contradicted the point the writer and Nadia were making about it.  But action is always a draw for me as a comic reader.  So I would probably fall closer to the middle on the art, and go a 3.  

I think a 4.5 is solid on the writing though.

Maillaro: Finally through some crazy patches at work, so hopefully we will be able to do this a little more regularly.  We actually are writing this on a new comic day...but nothing really all that exciting new out this week.  How about we do a sampler of the X-Men relaunches?  X-Men Blue and Gold have both been real solid.

Weaver: I’m very happy to be back.  I’m up for whatever you suggest.  However, I will say solidly here and now that the last thing I want to discuss in any capacity is the controversy surrounding X-Men Gold and hidden messages.  That will not be part of the review.

Maillaro: Totally agree with that.  I was actually annoyed that took up so much of the discussion about the X-Men Relaunch...especially since THE X-BOOKS ARE ACTUALLY GOOD AGAIN!  Took some rough patches to get there though...  

Weaver: I think “some rough patches” is a really generous way to describe that.  Last night, I was busting out my 80’s and 90’s X-Men comics, and we discussed how sharply it went from thinly disguised social issue commentary to over the top angst mixed with glamorous loners.

Maillaro: Kind of funny to mention that since Cable got a new series this week.  But it’s written by James Robinson, so I am tentatively excited about that.  

See you all next week!

Summary: Marvel has quite a few quirky comics with female leads, and Unstoppable Wasp definitely stands out.  Fun cast of characters and we get to see her science the **** out of things.  The art could be a little better, but that is becoming a common complaint with Marvel comics these days...

Final Scores