Next summer, Ant-Man and the Wasp will co-headline their sequel film, but they aren’t the only Marvel heroes slated to appear. In fact, the latest addition to the MCU predates both characters as one of the first heroes in the Marvel Universe.
The Tracking Board was the first to report that Randall Park has been cast as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jimmy Woo in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Nerdist has reached out to Marvel Studios for confirmation of this news, but has not heard back as of press time. However, Variety has also run with the news and there’s a very good chance that it is accurate. Park is best known for his roles on Fresh Off the Boat and Veep, and he previously co-starred with Paul Rudd in They Came Together.
Even longtime comic book readers may not be familiar with Jimmy Woo, but his legacy actually goes back to the ’50s, before Marvel was even called Marvel. Woo was created by Al Feldstein and Joe Maneely as the hero of Yellow Claw, a series about the titular communist supervillain who was basically a thinly veiled take on Fu Manchu. Jimmy Woo was the heroic FBI agent assigned to take down Yellow Claw, and consequently, one of the first Asian heroes in comics.
The Yellow Claw comic ended after only four issues, and that could have easily been the end of Jimmy Woo and the title villain. However, both characters were incorporated into the Marvel Universe beginning in Strange Tales #160. Woo went on to become an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but his appearances became more sporadic once the Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic came to an end. Woo resurfaced in the ’70s as part of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s anti-Godzilla task force, back when Marvel had the rights to publish a Godzilla comic. Sounds hard to believe, doesn’t it? Well, feast your eyes on this panel as Jimmy comforts a captured Godzilla, who had been miniaturized by Pym particles to make him easier to handle.
In an alternate timeline, Jimmy Woo was a key figure in the foundation of the 1950s Avengers, which featured 3-D Man, Gorilla Man, Namora, Venus, Uranian, and the robot known as M-11. That team served as the inspiration for Woo’s most prominent role to date as one of the main characters in Agents of Atlas. Writer Jeff Parker and artist Leonard Kirk literally revitalized Jimmy Woo by de-aging him and reuniting him with the characters formerly known as the ’50s Avengers.
The intriguing thing about Agents of Atlas is that Jimmy and his team pretended to be supervillains while remaking Yellow Claw’s organization into a force for good from within. It was a really terrific series that never quite found the audience that it deserved. Jimmy Woo has since resurfaced as the head of the Pan-Asian School For the Unusually Gifted; which was essentially a take on the X-Men’s school for mutants.
How will Jimmy Woo fit into the MCU? Although S.H.I.E.L.D. has been re-legitimized during Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it would be shocking to see that acknowledged in the Marvel movies. There have been rumors of a weird tension between Marvel Studios and Marvel TV, which could explain why none of the TV characters have been acknowledged or referenced on the big screen. So, where does that leave Jimmy? The first Ant-Man movie offers the perfect solution. It’s already been established that Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym and his wife, Janet, were operatives of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past. Therefore, a flashback appearance by Jimmy Woo may be the most natural way to introduce his character.
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Images: Marvel Comics/ABC
