Cover art by Elsa Charretier and Nicolas Bannister
When it comes to the Marvel Universe, it’s not just superheroes that matter but their scientific alter-egos as well. There would be no Iron Man, after all, without the genius of Tony Stark, no Hulk without the Gamma Ray experiments of Bruce Banner, no Ant-Man without the Pym Particles of Hank Pym, and no Fantastic Four without the amplified brain power of Reed Richards. But what about the female scientists of the Marvel Universe?
“S.H.I.E.L.D. has this list of the smartest people in the world,” Bobbi Morse, aka Mockingbird, says in the 2017 comic book series The Unstoppable Wasp. “It’s been the same for years until just recently. It always really bothered me – the first woman on the list placed 27.”
Apparently the same discrepancy in the Marvel Universe holds true within the real world as well. The same year that Bobbi Morse expressed dismay over the S.H.I.E.L.D. list, Discover Magazine ranked “The Ten Greatest Scientists of All Time,” with just three of them being women. One year later, Biography Online did the same but this time listed only one woman in their top ten.
In terms of living scientists, both Big Think and The Best Schools offered rankings over the same time span, with three-out-of-ten for the former and five-out-of-fifty for the latter being women.
That is not to suggest that the results of such lists are the product of discrimination. In the case of “all time rankings,” men dominated the science field for centuries with little competition from the opposite gender – mainly due to a lack of opportunities for women scientists. Furthermore, it is hard to simply dismiss the legacies of such scientific giants as Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton. and Galileo Galilei.
In terms of the present, a gender gap unfortunately still exists not only in science but all STEM related fields as well. In 2003, the Society of Women Engineers reported that only 20 percent of new engineers were women, while a survey of worldwide research facilities found that a mere 24 percent of tenured STEM professors at those organizations were female – despite the fact that 57 percent of college undergraduates enrolled in STEM disciplines at the time were women.
Why do such discrepancies endure? Within the Marvel Universe, Bobbi Morse thinks the answer is obvious. “Who made these lists?” she asks in The Unstoppable Wasp. “Other guys. Other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Other super heroes. All these guys have known each other forever. They don’t seek out new people. We’ve got to start looking for our people. We’ve gotta start looking for girl geniuses.”
While survey results may not be intentionally biased, the fact remains that women face more obstacles within the fields of STEM than men. These obstacles not only relate to discrimination but the fact that the few – but growing – number of inspirational success stories are often overshadowed by the number of “horror” stories about women in both college classrooms and the workforce.
Although fictional, the narrative of the eight-issue Unstoppable Wasp comic book series contains an inspirational storyline. The main protagonist – Nadia – is the formerly unknown daughter of Hank Pym and his first wife Maria Trovaya. Maria was kidnapped on their honeymoon in Hungary and although never found, she gave birth to Nadia before dying.
Nadia was raised in a secret facility called the Red Room in Russia, which trained children – like Natasha Romanova, who would later become Black Widow – to be assassins. Because Nadia possessed a high intelligence, she was instead instructed in science. Given access to top secret research from around the world, Nadia was able to duplicate the shrinking effects of the Pym Particles invented by her father and escaped from the Red Room.
Once in the United States, however, she discovered that her father was deceased. Hank’s second wife – Janet van Dyne, the Astonishing Wasp – took Nadia under her wings (so to speak) and served as a mentor while Nadia became a superhero herself, likewise named the Wasp.
It was Nadia that Bobbi Morse was talking to about the “list” in the Marvel Universe, and Nadia immediately sets out to find as many teenage female scientists as she can to form her own lab, which she names G.I.R.L. – Genius In Action Research Labs.
“I was up all night researching,” she says the next morning. “Girls my age. Overlooked geniuses. Untapped potential. There are hundreds, maybe thousands. I’m going to start with New York. There are enough girl geniuses in that city alone to fill this lab five times over.”
While Nadia searched within the comic book world of The Unstoppable Wasp, writer Jeremy Whitley and artist Elsa Charretier did the same in the real world. “In every issue, instead of having a usual letters page, we decided to do interviews with actual women scientists out in the world, doing real science,” Whitley explained to Comicosity in August 2017. “I thought that it added a needed bridge between the characters in the book doing cool, fun, but ultimately impossible super-science and making it an actual real-world thing. Relating it for girls reading the book who want to do real science.”
Just as Nadia found an eclectic and diverse group of girl geniuses to team up with – including a Puerto Rican roboticist with a physical disability, an African American physicist working on a teleportation device, and the daughter of Indian immigrants who specializes in biology – Jeremy Whitley and Elsa Charretier accomplished a similar feat in the real world with an impressive collection of women engineers, biologists, mathematicians, and physicists.
In additional to creating a comic book world filled with girl scientists that likewise spotlights actual women scientists, Whitley also gave Bobbi Morse and Janet van Dyne the opportunity to address the stereotypical and chauvinistic attitudes that female superheroes have had to deal with from both writers and fans since the 1960s – many of which still rings true in the present day.
When Nadia realizes that “Mockingbird” Bobbi Morse is actually “Scientist” Barbara Morse, for instance, she excitedly proclaims, “Biologist Barbara Morse? Like, almost successfully reproduced the super-soldier serum Barbara Morse? Like, lady adventurer scientist in the Savage Land and hanging out with Man-Thing in the Everglades Barbara Morse? You are my hero!”
“That is weird that you know all that,” Bobbi replies. “People don’t remember that I’m a scientist. They just remember that I used to be married to Hawkeye and I hit things with sticks. So that means a lot.”
While Bobbi Morse’s comments are brief, Janet van Dyne – who was originally depicted during the 1960s as more interested in fashion and men than crimefighting – was given a longer monologue.
“Can we discuss misconceptions about me for a minute?” she begins. “The worst is that fake fanboys like to talk about how I’m only a super hero because I happened to be Hank’s wife. But actually I sought out Hank and insisted on going through the process that got me these powers. Maybe my favorite misconception is that I don’t have any useful powers. That I was somehow redundant on the Avengers. Tony could fly. Hank could shrink and grow. People who say those sorts of things don’t understand the difference between the Avengers and, say, the New Warriors. Why one team remains the symbol and the other one burns out. That difference, that’s my super-power. My secret power is that I get things done.”
Women have always had the ability to get things done, even if it has been regulated to a “secret power” too many times in the past. The same holds true within the field of STEM, where women continually excel no matter how many lists suggest otherwise. Comic books like The Unstoppable Wasp, meanwhile, have the ability to erase the misconceptions of old and help inspire a new generation.
All it takes is one lone girl, who after reading the adventures of Nadia and the real-world scientists spotlighted in the back of each issue, to say to themselves, “If they can do it, so can I!”
Anthony Letizia