Marvel Chronology Project

Last week, AVENGERS #32 saw Janet van Dyne return from her supposed death at the end of SECRET INVASION. Previously, the final storyline in MIGHTY AVENGERS had revealed that Hank Pym had built his Infinite Avengers Mansion upon the body of his seemingly-deceased ex-wife in Underspace, a dimensional plane that was below the Microverse. The true purpose of the Infinite Avengers Mansion and its billion copies of Jocasta's robotic form was to keep Janet's body and mind intact until such time as Hank could restore her to life. However, that idea was later retconned in AVENGERS ACADEMY when Veil attempted to restore her only for it to turn out that "Janet" was really Carina, the Collector's daughter who had married Michael Korvac and supposedly died with him years earlier.

My question is for any readers who might have some inside info about how things work at Marvel: Was Janet's resurrection something that was planned from the moment of her death? I thought that MA writer Dan Slott did a nice job with his revelation that Jan was not quite dead and that Hank had built the Infinite Avengers Mansion as a way to bring her back. I was thus rather disappointed when that AA storyline retconned her back to death, especially since the only apparent point was to bring back both Carina and Korvac. However, with this resurrection, I am left wonderiong what really happened.

As I see it, there are two possible sequences of events:
Theory #1: Bendis killed Janet off for real in SECRET INVASION, Dan Slott revealed that she could possibly return in MIGHTY AVENGERS, Christos Gage retconned her back to being dead again in AVENGERS ACADEMY, and then Bendis decided to end his AVENGERS run by resurrecting her "for real."

Theory #2: Bendis was always planning to eventually resurrect Janet when he killed her off in SI but he didn't inform anyone of his plans. As a result, Dan Slott felt free to use "Janet's" body in that MA story. Since this made problems for Bendis' plans for Janet, Christos Gage was given the task to retconning her back into death so that Bendis could later resurrect her as he had originally planned.

If anyone reading this has any insight as to which of these "chronologies" is more accurate, I would really like to know what went on behind the scenes.

Don Campbell

DISCLAIMER: I'm just thinking out loud here; I don't know anything about anything.

It's entirely possible that Bendis always planned to revive Wasp. He wrote Disassembled where Hawkeye was "killed" and later wrote House of M where Hawkeye was revealed to have never really been dead in the first place. It's also possible the writers at Marvel knew all about this.

Many online interviews with Marvel witers have talked about the Marvel Retreats, their annual (or semi-annual, I don't remember) get-together where they hammer out the framework for the next year's worth of stories and construct the overall arc for the universe. These same interviews talk about how some writers really wanted to do something with a certain character, but another writer has already called dibs for those characters, making them unavailable. So yes, the writers are aware of other writers' plans.

Also, Slott and Gage co-wrote several arcs of Avengers: The Initiative and at least one arc of Mighty Avengers together.

Having said all of that…

It's very possible that when Bendis wrote Secret Invasion he had a plan to later revive Wasp and "called dibs" on her. I remember from an interview that at least Slott has gone to these Marvel Retreats, so I'm sure he knew about whatever Bendis had planned for Wasp. It's also possible that Slott always planned that the Infinite-Mansion-housing-Wasp's-body plot would end in a reveal where it wasn't really Wasp and Gage followed up on that. Since Slott and Gage have collaborated so frequently, it wouldn't be a surprise to me that Gage would have known about this. All of which would have been a red herring for the real Wasp story, which Bendis had plans for.

So we have Theory #3: The Infinite Mansion was a red herring, just like communism!TM

Col_Fury wrote:It's entirely possible that Bendis always planned to revive Wasp. He wrote Disassembled where Hawkeye was "killed" and later wrote House of M where Hawkeye was revealed to have never really been dead in the first place. It's also possible the writers at Marvel knew all about this.

Hawkeye WAS dead. The Witch resurrected him.

Col_Fury wrote:So we have Theory #3: The Infinite Mansion was a red herring, just like communism!TM

That possibility hadn't occurred to me. I suppose it could be true but it does seem odd to think of Bendis cooperating with other writers. Then again, in your scenario, it was Slott and Gage who collaborated on the "Jan is still alive" revelation and the "Jan is really Carina" retcon, and Bendis had nothing to do with it (since it didn't affect his story plans in the least).

I guess the only way we would know for sure would be if somebody at Marvel was interviewed about Janet's return and s/he revealed when and how the resurection storyline was developed and by whom. However, so far I haven't seen any hint of such an interview.

Don Campbell