One poster has deleted this detailed entry about Hank's actions slapping Janet:
Domestic Abuse: His relationship with Janet in their final days of the marriage:
In Avengers #211-212, Hank Pym and Janet are shown having a very strained marriage, with Janet being devoted to Hank, while he instead sulks and acts distant to her, backbites and insults her and acts in a way that is emotionally abusive certainly. During a mission, Yellowjacket goes Leeroy Jenkins and nearly causes a catastrophe killing everyone, leading him to be brought to court martial. In response, Pym goes and builds a robot to stage an engineered heroic and when Janet confronted him, he struck her. And while Yellowjacket was in a nervous breakdown, he didn't apologize or react in shock when he did this (unlike Peter Parker in a similar incident during The Clone Saga) and he forced Janet to go along with his scheme which she weakly says yes to. In the actual Court Martial, Janet shows up wearing glasses to cover her black-eye, which she takes off to Facepalm when Hank in response to Captain America's charges, instead accuses Cap of being a pervert which the other Avengers are all aghast by (Tony Stark who was sympathetic to Hank merely says, "Hank for the love of god, stop!"). The other Avengers on seeing Janet's face are aghast and later Hank's robot scheme backfires nearly killing him until Janet saves the day.
According to Jim Shooter, it wasn't intended to be a deliberate hit. Apparently the writer had directed in the script that Hank, accidentally backhand her but the artist Bob Hall disobeyed him and picked the most dramatic possible interpretation of the script, making it look like he struck her in a fit of rage. The actual comic does indeed treat this act as domestic abuse, and Hank shows no remorse or apology for doing this by accident, and the other Avengers react in shock on seeing Janet's black-eye which she sports for several pages in the following issues.
Bear in mind, that the relationship between Hank and Janet Pym was never very healthy. Janet was several years younger than Hank, and she was a Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest for his first wife. Janet was very much an extrovert, whereas Hank Pym was aloof and tended not to be a people person. Their marriage happened when Hank in a fit of schizophrenia created the Yellowjacket persona and kidnapped Janet and claimed to kill Hank Pym, only for Janet to catch on that he's Hank Pym and consent to marrying him, and then getting married while he's in that addled state. Since Hank created Yellowjacket because he believed Janet wouldn't like him or say yes, he and Janet remained married and he still sported the Yellowjacket identity after that, carrying across many of the same crippling issues of insecurity that he had before the relationship.
MY entry might be long but it cites actual pages, scenes and discusses context. Hank's actions do in fact amount to domestic abuse. And in no way does the dubious manner in which the marriage happened justify or excuse that. He forced Janet to go ahead with his insane scheme after beating her, did not apologize at once or Snap Back or have any My God What Ive Done moment until after he was exposed and humiliated.
One poster has deleted this detailed entry about Hank's actions slapping Janet:
MY entry might be long but it cites actual pages, scenes and discusses context. Hank's actions do in fact amount to domestic abuse. And in no way does the dubious manner in which the marriage happened justify or excuse that. He forced Janet to go ahead with his insane scheme after beating her, did not apologize at once or Snap Back or have any My God What Ive Done moment until after he was exposed and humiliated.