Who is Wonder Man? The Marvel character that has changed everything on Disney+ compared to the comics

If you’re not into Marvel and the MCU, I suppose “Wonder Man” sounds like a kind of parody of Wonder Woman. And in reality, his origin has a lot to do with the DC heroine, but over the years he has carved out his own niche in superhero comics. Now he debuts on Disney+ with an 8-episode series that will have a few people cheering with joy and the majority wondering, “Excuse me, what is this?”. More than 60 years illuminate a character you hadn’t heard of until now, but I assure you he has a more or less fascinating story. That said, it has little or nothing to do with the one Disney has invented.

Avengers, against the wonder!

In the early 1960s, Stan Lee and his loyal artists were trying to figure out what their new shared universe was all about, which began to differentiate itself from the competition with more adult plots (within reason) and characters that evolved over the issues instead of remaining fossilized in time, something that Superman and Batman had been experiencing for years. In just three years, since 1961, The House of Ideas created the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Wasp, Doctor Strange, and the X-Men. The creative torrent became so immense that in early 1964, they brought together five of these heroes to form a group, like a bargain version of the Justice League, which went down in history as the Avengers.

When Wonder Man faced the Avengers, they were barely a proper group: they had only had nine adventures, and Lee didn’t know what to do with them. In fact, in this first appearance as a villain, Simon Williams dies because no one believed he could have a future in the publisher. However, four years later we learned that the Avengers had stored his mind in a computer (it’s comics, just accept it) and another four years later he appeared in a coma.

The first pure and hard appearance of Wonder Man in the modern era of Marvel occurred in issue 131 of Avengers, when he was finally resurrected. A year later, he would regain all his powers and, in fact, he would become a member of the Avengers shortly after, in 1977. And do you know why it took 13 years for him to return? Well, of course, due to a complaint from DC, which accused Marvel of confusing people with Wonder Woman (whose first comic is from 1941) and threatened to sue them. Lee left him dead until DC did the same as they did a few years later, introducing Power Girl after Marvel did so with Power Man. Oops.

In any case, Simon Williams has been growing over the years. In fact, he has been part of three other teams of Avengers, he has become a Hollywood star (in that he is similar to the Wonder Man from Disney+), it was discovered that his brother was the supervillain known as Reaper, he fell in love with the Scarlet Witch, and even ended up fighting against the Avengers themselves, convinced that they do more harm than good in the world. Oh, yes! And he ended up fused with Rogue, allowing him to use her powers.

Come on, if you were looking for the mythical character from The Avengers in the new Marvel series, try again. However, you might find something unexpected: an alliance with the false Mandarin that is going to be quite the talk… before Avengers: Doomsday arrives and sends any other idea about the MCU to hell, of course.