Whether you’re a reader of Marvel Comics or just a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s something for everyone in The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope, a new young adult novel from Marvel Press, written by Sam Maggs. The book tells a funny and heartwarming new story inspired by The Unstoppable Wasp 2018 comic book series. Like everything Marvel does, this story is intricately woven within the massive Marvel Universe and the real world we all live in.
It would be an understatement to say that teenage Nadia van Dyne has it all figured out. Having grown up in the Red Room (the same training program that created Black Widow), Nadia missed out on pretty much everything teenagers take for granted. She’s not only trying to catch up on things like watching the Star Wars saga and listening to well-known music from groups like ABBA, but she’s also running her own female-driven science lab called G.I.R.L. (Genius In action Research Labs), learning the meaning of family, and trying to manage her bipolar disorder. Oh yeah, and she’s also a superhero called The Wasp on top of being a genius.
As someone who is more familiar with the big screen adaptations of Marvel superheroes than their comic origins, I will say that there were some things about The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope that confused me. For starters, I know the Wasp to be Hope van Dyne from the MCU film Ant-Man and the Wasp. In the comics and in this story, the Wasp is currently Nadia van Dyne, who’s actually the biological daughter of Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man) and whose mother was abducted when she was pregnant with her, which is how she ended up being raised in the Red Room assassin training program. By the time she got out, both of her biological parents were deceased and she was taken in by Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp, a founding member of the Avengers (in the comics), and the head of Pym Laboratories. If you’re not as steeped in the comics versions of these characters, I recommend pausing every so often to look up anything you don’t understand. For example, when Jarvis entered a chapter as a living breathing butler and not Tony Stark’s personal Alexa, I had to take a moment to learn more online.
The book’s subtitle, “Built on Hope,” comes from Nadia discovering her birth mother’s journal, which includes a list of things she wanted to do with her daughter. When Nadia is given an AI personal assistant named VERA that can help her stay on top of her busy schedule and start experiencing the things on her mother’s list, she becomes obsessed with learning more about the software. But when she befriends the brilliant young woman who invented the program and throws caution to the wind, Nadia learns the hard way that things aren’t always what they seem.
The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope is a fun read chock-full of girl power and pop culture references. Like the comic series, the novel also includes “Nadia’s Neat Science Facts!!!” which are fun to read and educational. This book is perfect for anyone who loves Marvel superheroes.