Yellowjacket

Often perceived as nothing more than another costume Hank Pym uses, with the jerk factor turned up a considerable amount, Yellowjacket is actually much more than that. He begins as an alternate personality, a product of Pym's DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), but over time emerges as a person. Unfortunately, Yellowjacket is rarely recognized (in or out of canon) as a character in his own right.

Character Biography
Yellowjacket's first appearance is his "birth" from Pym's mind. Hank, using the name Goliath at the time, found himself unable to work up the courage to actually marry Janet van Dyne and hid himself in his lab. There an accident with Pym particles and chemicals resulted in the fracture of his mind and the beginning of his identity as Yellowjacket. From a psychological standpoint, this can best be described as a dissociative fugue and it would be a little while later before full DID developed.

From there, Yellowjacket goes on to beat up some robbers, then tell the Avengers that he killed Hank Pym and that they should let him join the team because he's clearly the better superhero. It is revealed in Avengers Forever that Yellowjacket, in fact, really believes his story about killing Hank and is completely unaware of his connection at this point in time. The Avengers, naturally, refuse to let Yellowjacket onto the team as they mildly object to anyone killing their members. This leads Yellowjacket to do the only logical thing to garner their favor and kidnaps Janet van Dyne.

He takes Jan to his hive--essentially a very, very small treehouse--and they argue for a little while. Jan, for some ridiculous reason, does not like it when people kill her boyfriend and then kidnap her. It turns out that Jan being angry is a turn-on for Yellowjacket and he kisses her, giving Jan a "the lips don't lie" moment long before Clint Barton ever did, and she realizes that Yellowjacket and Hank are the same person. She decides that this is a good time to marry him and the two return to the Avengers.

The Avengers are confused and angry, which is basically the same reaction they always have to Yellowjacket, but no one can convince Janet not to marry Yellowjacket and the wedding occurs the next day as planned. Everyone's grumpy except for Yellowjacket and Janet and the ceremony goes just fine. Before any marital bliss can occur, however, the Circus of Crime attacks their reception and Jan is in danger, so Hank gets off his mental butt and takes over from Yellowjacket. Hank and Jan decide that this wedding counts and declare themselves to be married. No one seems to think that this is a good time to get a mental health professional involved and everyone pretends that Yellowjacket is totally not a problem.

From there until the 2000s, it's debatable how many appearances of Yellowjacket are actually Yellowjacket or just Hank in the Yellowjacket costume and most of the events will be covered on other pages of this wiki.

The next confirmable appearance of Yellowjacket is in Avengers Forever, where a team of Avengers from throughout the timeline is assembled to fight Immortus. Yellowjacket is one of the Avengers chosen. Technically, these events take place right before Yellowjacket and Janet's wedding, but the time travel makes it so he was only gone for a few seconds and he forgets all of it by the end. Still, as far as insights into the character of Yellowjacket, this is one of the best. He starts off as incredibly hopeful for his future, upon meeting Jan from his future, he believes that they must have been happily married this whole time. Little does he know about, well, anything that happened over the course of roughly thirty years of comics that were anything but happy for him.

Yellowjacket's womanizer tendencies really get to shine as he hits on Songbird and Jan at every possible chance, leading both women to be pretty much done with him. Yellowjacket gets to cowboy it up with Clint and Songbird in the wild west, Clint insisting that Yellowjacket is Hank and wanting him to stop being a dick and just act like Pym already. Yellowjacket insists that, no, he's not Pym and Pym sucks.

This butting of heads continues until the Avengers break into Immortus' fortress and the team is separated. Yellowjacket ends up in a room with mirrors and screens, showing him the highlights (or lowlights, really) of the years between his origin and when he is now. Upon unmasking, he sees that he is Hank Pym (ish) and the life ahead of him is, quite frankly, a terrible one. He decides to confront Immortus on his own and agrees to help Immortus defeat the Avengers if he gets to stay himself and stay married to Jan.

This works for a while until it is revealed that billions of people would effectively be killed, their universes wiped from existence, in order for Immortus to give Yellowjacket what he wants and Yellowjacket can't stand for that. He turns on Immortus and saves the Avengers, fighting in the final battle alongside Kang, Rick Jones, and the Kree Supreme Intelligence to defeat the Time Keepers.

Yellowjacket is then made to forget the whole thing and dropped back in time for his wedding.

Later, during an encounter with the Kulan Gath, Pym's personality is temporarily reverted to the early Yellowjacket phase, which he had long repressed out of fear of that part of himself hurting Jan again, and while the effect is reversed another Henry Pym, representing the parts of himself that he had suppressed, is accidentally created from the extradimensional bio-mass Pym uses to grow. Each Pym reflects an aspect of his personality: Goliath is the thoughtful, scientific aspect while Yellowjacket is the impulsive component. During the events of the Kang Dynasty storyline the two Pyms begin to deteriorate from being apart, but are restored when the Wasp helps the two halves realize that they need each other.

This is more or less the last time Yellowjacket officially appears in comics as shortly after, Hank is abducted and replaced by the Skrull, Criti Noll. Criti Noll does use the Yellowjacke alias, but is not truly Hank or Yellowjacket.\

Powers
Yellowjacket's powers are almost identical to Janet's:
 * Size-changing
 * Bio-electric stings
 * Flight (with shoulder fins, not wings) when shrunken