INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE PT. 3

 As I reviewed the original INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE, I decided that I had been too vague in giving my reasons for stating that a particular pair of icons had transitioned from being defined by "individual stature" to "collective stature."

In that essay, I stated:

Slightly later, Giant-Man (renamed Goliath) and The Wasp rejoined the feature. However, they no longer had their own feature, as did Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, and so, even though they came to AVENGERS with separate stature, over time the stature they had as Avengers team-members excelled the stature they'd earned from their own (essentially failed) series. As with the team-debuts of Hawkeye et al, the first story in which Goliath and Wasp rejoined would count as a crossover, but not others, because from then on those two heroes would be on roughly the same level as the neophytes who never had their own features. 

I did not give any reasons for saying why I believed the Wasp and the former Ant-Man/Giant-Man had, by their appearances in the AVENGERS title,"excelled the stature they'd earned from their own (essentially failed) series." I didn't make it a matter of the sheer number of the two icons' appearances in AVENGERS as opposed to their own feature, though one might construe as much. If so, that would relate to my established principle of Quantitative Escalation.

However, my intent as I recall it was that the appearances of the two icons was of greater qualitative consequence than their appearances in their own feature. This distinction relates, rather, to the principle of Qualitative Escalation, first mentioned in ESCALATION PROCLAMATION PT. 2.

There, too, my earlier statements require expansion. A quantitative assessments requires little explanation; it only signifies, "how many times did a serial icon appear in distinct narratives?" But I possibly should have expanded on my definition of "qualitative," though I've made clear, throughout many other posts, that I believe that "literary quality" always inheres in an author's mastery of one or more of the four potentialities. 

If the corpus of stories that starred Giant-Man and the Wasp had shown mastery of one of the potentialities, then I might consider that that corpus was a qualitative success, even if the series failed to catch on with readers and become successful. But on the whole, the ANT-MAN/GIANT-MAN serial was marked by generally inferior art and writing in comparison with the other Marvel serials of the period. 

In contrast, though there were some subpar AVENGERS stories following the re-entry of Goliath and the Wasp, the overall level of quality was much higher in all four of the potentialities (even there wasn't much more *didactic* appeal in AVENGERS than there had been in ANT-MAN/GIANT-MAN). 

For instance, if I choose to focus upon "the creation of new villain-icons" as an indicator of a superhero serial's mythopoeic potentiality, then most of the ANT-MAN/GIANT-MAN villains barely stir one's memory, except for The Egghead and The Whirlwind.  (And they, like their enemies, generally got better stories when they made appearances in AVENGERS.) In contrast, the AVENGERS feature, even confined only to the first period in which Goliath and the Wasp were members, boasted characters like Ultron and the Grim Reaper, both of whom generated far more consequential narratives for the evolving Marvel mythology. And writer Roy Thomas was certainly at his most inventive in terms of extending parts of the mythology that he did not invent, as with the Kree-Skrull War.

Therefore, Henry Pym and Janet Van Dyne benefit from their association with the better stories of AVENGERS, as opposed to those of their own feature, and "qualitatively" their Collective Stature supervenes their Individual Stature. And of course, this is also true given that these two icons made many more appearances in AVENGERS in the ensuing decades, and remain best known to comics-fans as members of that team, not as solo acts. Even stories that may be dramatically bad, like "Henry Pym, Wife Beater," have become inextricable to the cosmos now designated as "Earth-616" in a limited mythopoeic sense.