Hero Profile: Stature

I figure a few folks are a little disappointed that I’m not giving my Ant-Man movie review right away today. I apologize, my work schedule for Thursday and Friday made seeing a show on last night impossible. Well, not impossible, but I work in customer service, and sleep deprived Michael is grouchy, and grouchy Michael tends to get in trouble. So instead of the movie review for today, you’re going to get the Hero Profile for a character that you’ve probably never heard of, Stature, the teenage daughter of Scott Lang aka Ant-Man. Let’s get to it.

I'm suddenly remembering Agent J from Men in Black"I make this look good."

Cassandra “Cassie” Lang began humbly, as Scott Lang’s ill daughter. She suffered from a congenital heart defect, and needed a lot of money for an operation. Scott resorted to stealing Hank Pym’s Ant-Man costume and his Pym Particles to steal stuff. He found Dr. Sondheim, the only doctor capable of helping Cassie, being held hostage by Darren Cross at Cross Technological Enterprises. Scott freed Sondheim and she was able to save Cassie’s life.

After that, her parents got divorced and her Dad became the new Ant-Man. Cassie spent most of her childhood with her Dad, and as such got to meet quite a few of his new colleagues. Heck, growing up she called Tony Stark Uncle Tony. She basically go to live the dream of a good number of fanboys and fangirls. She and Scott are real close, which gets Cassie in a lot of trouble. Supervillains love targeting the hero’s kid. She helped her dad out on a number of occasions, like when Scott and the smaller hero group Heroes for Hire took on the evil Super-Adaptoid android and a supervillain calling himself Master of the World. Conceded, ain’t he? Unfortunately it was Cassie’s habit of getting roped into Scott’s Ant-Man shenanigans that led to her mother and her step-father getting custody of Cassie. Being forced to be away from her Dad caused Cassie to grow resentful of her mother, and even more resentful of her anti-superhero step-father, Blake Burdick. His heart was more or less in the right place, Blake was a cop that felt superheroes caused more problems than they solved. I disagree, but can see where he’s coming from. Cassie just disagreed. She regularly visited her father, until is unfortunate Death at the hands of the emotionally unbalanced Scarlet Witch. Cassie took his death hard, and only grew more resentful of her mother and step-father. Eventually, Cassie ran away from home to go to LA and join the Runaways. Superhero teen group comprised of various kids that ran away from supervillain parents, for those who don’t recognize the name. On her way there, she sees a new group of teen heroes called the “Young Avengers” on TV and decides to join that group.

Yep, that's the face of someone who's going to get
kidnapped, regularly.

So quick history of the Young Avengers. They were formed by Nathaniel Richards, a young man from the 41^st century. Nathaniel had learned that he was “destined” to become one of the Avenger’s worst foes, Kang the Conqueror. In order to try and circumvent this fate he traveled to the ancient past, relatively speaking, and created a new generation of Avengers to help battle his evil future self. Time travel is confusing, right? To do this, he took up the name Iron Lad and used a database pulled from the destroyed Vision android to track and recruit young people with superpowers that were connected to the Avenger’s history. For whatever reason, Cassie Lang was not part of the list. You’d think the daughter of Ant-Man would be higher up on the list than say, Eli Bradley, grandson of the lesser known Captain America. Whatever, so Cassie met a young woman named Kate Bishop who also wished to join the YA, but both are refused to join. Rather annoyed by this, Cassie starts angrily shouting at them and inadvertently starts growing. Like a lot. She then revealed that she’d periodically take her Dad’s equipment and expose herself to Pym Particles in the hopes of developing superpowers.  Until that moment she’d thought it hadn’t affected her. After seeing that display of power, Iron Lad and the YA accept her with open arms. Little jerks.Just saying.

She and the YA battled Iron Lad’s future self, Kang, and are actually able to defeat the time-traveling conqueror. This, unfortunately, destabilizes the timeline and most of the Young Avengers start disappearing. Kang reluctantly returns to the future, to accept his fate to become Kang, and restore the timeline. Cassie is most upset by this because she and Iron Lad had started having a thing. She and Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, convince the Young Avengers to not disband, despite Captain America and Iron Man ordering it. She takes up the codename Stature, and puts together a costume reminiscent of her father’s. Her new life as Stature causes some grief at home, as her parent’s suspect that she is Stature and this infuriates her superhero hating step-father. During the Superhero Civil War, she initially sides with Captain America, but then opts out and registers, stating that she wants to fight Supervillains, not cops and other heroes.

And this is the face of someone who
beats up kidnapper, regularly.

Cassie later fights her father’s Ant-Man successor, Eric O’Grady, after the pompous jerk makes some less than flattering remarks about Scott Lang. She also begins seeing the New Vision, whom had been interested in her for some time. This Vision was designed by Iron Lad and he’d used his own brainwaves to give him a personality. So Iron Lad’s attraction to Cassie was passed onto the Vision. Weird, right? Anyway, she eventually helps her teammates Wiccan and Speed locate their sort-of mother, Scarlet Witch, alongside the other Young Avengers. There’s a little selfishness behind her actions, as she hoped helping the Scarlet Witch recover would lead to her father being resurrected. They find Scarlet Witch in Latveria, who is suffering from amnesia and is set to marry Doctor Doom. They help Scarlet Witch escape, and are saved from Doom’s forces by Iron Lad. He was doing to time hopping to test out his new time machine. The team goes back in time to help Scarlet Witch recover her memories. Cassie, despite assurances that they can’t affect the past, is able to save her father from the explosion that killed him before, and brings him to the present.

Doctor Doom steals Scarlet Witch’s powers and attacks the combined forces of the X-Men and the Avengers. Scott does his best to help, shrinking down astride a flying ant to fly into Doom’s ear and attack his inner ear, but is seemingly killed by an enraged Doom. Cassie grows and charges the colossal Doctor. Her efforts help Scarlet Witch and Wiccan take back Scarlet Witch’s powers, but Cassie is killed by an angry Doom. Imagine everyone’s despair when Scott returned, relatively unharmed. Iron Lad, who’s still in love with Cassie, insists that he take her into the future to save her, but the rest of the team disagrees. Something about how it’s what Kang would do, not what the Avengers would do. In a rage, Iron Lad rips the Vision apart (he was pissed that Cassie seemed to love his creation more than himself) and then retreats to the future. So we gained an Ant-Man but lost a Stature. Not a great day.

Every action has a consequence. Some are more severe than others
especially saving someone who is supposed to die.

She’s later resurrected during the Axis storyline, where a repented Doctor Doom uses his powers to bring her back. Cassie is reunited with her Dad, and seemingly retires from the costumed hero business. She’s later kidnapped by Crossfire, working for his second cousin Augustine Cross, in a bid to resurrect Darren Cross. Darren Cross was killed years ago during that first confrontation with Scott Lang’s Ant-Man. The thought was her Pym Particle irradiated heart could be used to sustain Darren Cross’s mutated form. While Cross does get the heart, Cross also used the nice doctor that saved Cassie’s life years ago, Dr. Sondheim. So, while an enraged Ant-Man and Cross fought, Sondheim was able to implant a new heart into Cassie, saving her life. After this, Cassie seems to be trying to live a normal life, well as normal as a child of a superhero and former superhero can live.

Cassie Lang has the same Pym Particle related powers as her father and the various Ant-Men. She can grow up to 40 feet tall and shrink to about an inch high. She doesn’t have the Ant-Man bug control helmet, so she rarely shrinks down to the super tiny size. Her powers are more tied to her emotions than the Ant-Men or Wasp, she grows when angry or shrinks when feeling guilty. A teenager whose powers are tied to her emotions, what could possibly go wrong?

Statues remind us of two things. Heroes get remembered
and we don't take down statues when they come back to life.

Cassie has appeared a few times in various Marvel series, though only as the young daughter of Scott Lang.

She had a minor role in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. She’s recovering from the illness that forced her dad to steal stuff to pay for her treatment, when she’d kidnapped by Scott Lang’s former partner, Crossfire. She’s saved by the team up of her Dad, Hank Pym, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

Cassie Lang will be portrayed by Abby Ryder Fortson in Ant-Man. Again, she’ll just be the young daughter of the new Ant-Man, but who knows, if the Movie Universe runs long enough we could see a Young Avengers and Stature somewhere down the line. Crazier things have happened.

Cassie as Stature is an interesting character. Her pre-superhero self is more akin to young Ankin Skywalker than anything else. She’s a legacy hero, a successor to a successor. She has a lot to live up to, and does so. I’ve seen her mostly in the “Child Crusade” story where she and the Young Avengers look for Scarlet Witch. While she seems a little mopey for most of the story, her desire to help her friend to also help herself, (while a little selfish) an understandable desire. Her relationship issues outside of her interactions with her dad are more on the generic and boring side, (choose the future evil despot or the robotic sort of clone of said despot, what’s a girl to do?) but I’d say her and Scott’s interactions make up for a lot. She’s the towering titian, the ferocious fighter, the stupendous Stature. Next time, Ant-Man, is it worth my hype? 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_Lang#/media/File:Youngavengerspresents5.PNG

 http://marvel.wikia.com/Cassandra_Lang_%28Earth-8096%29

 http://superheroines.wikia.com/wiki/Stature

 http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120312025027/marveldatabase/images/6/68/Death_of_Cassandra_Lang_%28Earth-616%29_002.jpg