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, explains 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 her above dismay, for instance, 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 within their top ten. In terms of living scientists, meanwhile, 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 females as opposed to males.
That is not to suggest that the results of such lists are the product of discrimination by those who compiled them. In the case of “all time rankings,” men dominated the field of science for centuries with little competition from the opposite gender – mainly due to a lack of opportunities for female scientists – and it would be difficult to dismiss the achievements and legacies of such scientific giants as Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei out-of-hand.
In terms of the present, there is still an unfortunate gender gap within not only science but all STEM related fields. 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 woman – despite the fact that 57 percent of college undergraduates enrolled in STEM disciplines at the time were women.
Why do such discrepancies exist? 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.”
Although such a solution may appear simplistic to some, The Unstoppable Wasp sets out to demonstrate that the proactive initiative within the comic book can indeed relate to the real world as well. While survey results may not be discriminatory in-and-of-themselves, for instance, the fact remains that women face more obstacles within the fields of STEM than men. These obstacles do 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 related to the treatment of women in both college classrooms and the workforce.
Although fictional, on the other hand, the narrative within the eight-issue Unstoppable Wasp comic book series is quite inspirational when it comes to women scientists. 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 did give 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 became Black Widow – to be assassins. Because Nadia possessed such a high intelligence, however, she was instead instructed as a scientist. Given access to top secret experiments and 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 America, however, she discovered that her father was no longer alive. 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” within the Marvel Universe, and Nadia immediately sets out to find as many teenage female scientists as she can in order to form her own lab, which she has decided to call 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 within 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 for the traditional letter section of The Unstoppable Wasp with chemical, environmental, mechanical and nuclear engineers as well as 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 attributes and connotations that female superheroes have had to deal with from both writers and fans since the 1960s – many of which still ring true in the real world of today.
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.”
Janet van Dyne – who was originally depicted during the 1960s as more interested in fashion and men than crimefighting – has an even more direct opportunity to address her past portrayals in a monologue a few issues later.
“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.”
The reality is that women excel at STEM within both the world of comic books and the real world of everyday life, no matter what lists and statistics may say. The fact that too few have found their way into the field is likewise changing, albeit at a slower pace than is hoped or needed. The Unstoppable Wasp addresses these discrepancies on multiple fronts, and in its own small way attempts to change the discriminations and misrepresentations of the past.
With its depictions of Nadia and her fellow G.I.R.L. scientists as well as the real-world scientists spotlighted within, The Unstoppable Wasp has the ability to truly inspire and make a difference – it only takes, after all, just one lone girl to read the adventures of Nadia and her companions and declare afterwards, “If they can do it, so can I!”
Anthony Letizia