WASP

In Secret Invasion (2008), Janet van Dyne became the invasion's most terrible weapon without ever choosing to be one. The new growth formula she had been given by a Skrull impostor wearing Hank Pym's face had secretly turned her body into a living biological bomb. As she swelled out of control in the final battle, the only way to save everyone around her was to disperse the blast — and Janet with it. The founding Wasp apparently died on the spot. Hank, restored and grieving, even took up her codename in her honor.

But shrinking was always Janet's native country. The desperate warp that dispersed her had not killed her; it had shunted her down past the subatomic threshold into the Microverse — alive, at wasp scale, in a universe ruled by a despot. She survived the way she had always survived: she organized. Janet joined the rebels fighting the tyrant and helped lead the resistance, all while hunting for any signal that could punch through the dimensions and tell the world she was still alive.

The signal she finally used was pure Janet: an old Avengers communication card, the team's emergency lifeline, pushed until it carried across the dimensional wall. In Avengers Vol. 4 #31–34 (2012–13) — the "End Times" storyline — her teammates followed it down and found the woman they had mourned for four years alive and mid-battle. The Wasp had not been dead. She had been doing what she did when she named the Avengers in 1963 and chaired them in the eighties: holding a fracturing world together, at whatever size the job required.