Re: Reposted for wording fail.
Right, forgot about the WHAT IF part.
Ah, Jim Shooter. He had his own "take" on things, didn't he? And he wouldn't be the last EIC to have a good idea that wilted in the execution.
From John Byrne's message board:
My point exactly, Paulo. Shooter used similar scenes elsewhere, but the Hank/Jan incident became a defining moment for one of Marvel's original characters. Shooter's story, as I recall, wasn't a treatment on how spousal abuse was wrong, it was a tale of Pym's fall from grace (which aren't necessarily the same thing). Had he written the scene with Hank shooting Jan with his costume's weaponry to disable her or render her unconscious, only to have her appear at the court martial at the last minute to disable the robot he had created and reveal his duplicity, I wonder if his character could have survived better or recovered sooner, especially in light of the Egghead brain-control retcon/reveal.
Shooter made a storytelling choice, for which Hank Pym paid a price as a character. Shooter then made similar storytelling choices in other comics that left no lasting stains on the characters. Until I came across this Legion story I thought Hank's slap was a well-considered choice, albeit a regrettable one. Since then I've been wondering if Shooter was writing these scenes for reasons that had nothing to do with the stories being told.
This would be the same Jim Shooter who ordered me to redraw a panel of THE AVENGERS in which I had an out-of-costume Hawkeye punch the Absorbing Man in the back of the head after AM had shoved Clint off a bar stool. "My heroes don't do that!" said Shooter, despite the fact that practically the whole office agreed it was totally in character for Hawkeye to do so.