Simon Williams (Earth-616)
From Marvel Database
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History
Simon Williams was the younger of two sons of Sanford Williams, an industrialist who founded a highly successful munitions factory called Williams Innovations. When his older brother Eric declined his father's offer to join the family firm, Simon, the more studious, less athletic of the two, readily accepted. When Sanford Williams died, Simon inherited full control over the business, although he was only 22. Under Simon's inexperienced management, Williams Innovations began to lose its competitive edge in the marketplace to such rapidly growing firms as Stark Industries. Desperately, Simon sought his brother's aid, and the elder Williams agreed to offer his advice. Eric suggested to Simon that he embezzle some money from the company in order to invest in some business enterprises Eric had gotten wealthy from, namely the illicit racketeering run by the criminal Maggia families. Desperate to save his father's business, Simon did as his brother suggested. His embezzlement and Maggia connection was discovered by his company's board of directors, and Simon Williams was brought to trial. Found guilty and facing a prison sentence, Williams was released when Amora the Enchantress paid his bail and enchanted the authorities. Baron Zemo had read of Williams' case and, intrigued by the newspapers' assertion that he blamed Tony Stark for his downfall, dispatched the Enchantress to recruit Williams for the Masters of Evil. (Zemo believed Stark to be the employer of his enemy Iron Man; in fact, Stark was himself secretly Iron Man). Disoriented by the upheavals in his life, Simon Williams agreed to accompany the Enchantress to Zemo's South American base.
Williams agreed to become a test subject for Zemo's "ionic ray" treatment, a process that would endow him with superhuman strength and durability. After undergoing the arduous chemical and radiation treatments, Williams emerged with the attributes he was promised. Zemo then gave him a costume, dubbed him Wonder Man, and outlined his plan to use him to defeat his foes the Avengers.
To ensure Wonder Man's cooperation, Zemo told him that a side effect of the treatment that gave him his superhuman powers was that it altered his metabolism so that he would die within the week unless he was given regular treatments of an unspecified antidote. Not wishing to die, Wonder Man agreed to Zemo's plan and in a staged battle with the Masters of Evil, he won the confidence of the Avengers. When he explained to them that he was dying, the Avengers accepted Wonder Man into their ranks and unsuccessfully tried every means of science known to them to cure him. Soon Wonder Man led the Avengers into an ambush by the Masters of Evil. In the course of the battle, Wonder Man had an attack of conscience and decided that he could not betray the Avengers kindness to him even if it cost him his life. Deprived of Zemo's life-prolonging treatment, Wonder Man succumbed to the mysterious side effect of his power acquisition. Telling the Avengers that he was glad that his final act was a noble one, Wonder Man fell still, displaying no vital signs.
Although the Avengers assumed that he had died and brought his body back to the United States for identification and burial, Wonder Man had actually gone into a deathlike coma brought on by the still unstable mutagenic changes triggered in his body. Sometime later, Williams' brother Eric, now known as the criminal Grim Reaper, retrieved his younger brother's body. The Reaper wished to use his brother's cryogenically preserved body to bribe the Vision, the android whose artificial brain was cybernetically programmed with the memories and behavior patterns of Simon Williams, into betraying the Avengers. The Grim Reaper tried to convince the Vision that his consciousness could be transferred into Wonder Man's body, giving the Vision a more human form. Later, the Reaper claimed that Wonder Man could not be resurrected and offered to have the Vision's consciousness transferred into Captain America's body instead. The Vision pretended to go along with the Reaper's scheme in order to help the Avengers apprehend him.
The Grim Reaper managed to escape after the incident, however, and took with him his brother's seemingly lifeless body. Now obsessed with the idea of reviving his brother by any means whatsoever, the Reaper took Wonder Man's body to New Orleans hoping that the local Houngans (voodoo priests) could resuscitate it. Led by the Black Talon, the leader of their voodoo cult, the Houngans used their magic's to reanimate Wonder Man, but as a mindless zombie. Frustrated by the imperfect result, the Grim Reaper had the Houngans instruct the semi-living being to accuse the Vision of "stealing" his mind. He then pecked the body into a large crate and shipped it to Avengers Mansion. When the crate was opened, Wonder Man indeed did as bade but to no real effect.
The Avengers subdued Wonder Man and brought it with them to New Orleans to investigate what had happened. Curiously, as Wonder Man began moving about again, he began shaking off the effects of both the Houngans' magic and Baron Zemo's detrimental radiation treatment. Within a few days, Wonder Man was conscious and fully functional once again, much to his surprise. The Avengers later examined him and learned that he had simply been in a coma while his body was fully metamorphosed from one of flesh and blood to one of an unspecified superhuman flesh-like substance nourished by ionic energy instead of blood.
Wonder Man suffered considerable psychological trauma adjusting to the change that had come over him as well as his memories of being "dead." During the initial months of adjustment, he resided at Avengers Mansion as a guest and frequently lent his aid to the team. Despite his vast strength and resistance to injury, Wonder Man dreaded the thought of dying and facing oblivion again, and was often overwhelmed by cowardice in life-threatening situations. Finally, while battling the near-omnipotent Korvac, Wonder Man was able to master his fears long enough to live up to his full potential. However, he still felt twinges of the same irrational fear from time to time, Unable to vanquish it completely. He was eventually re-elected to membership in the Avengers, and became close friends with his Avenger the Beast.
The Grim Reaper, learning that his brother was now conscious and no longer zombie like, stole into Avengers Mansion, subdued the Avengers, and held a mock trial to determine if this Wonder Man truly was his brother. Satisfied that Wonder Man was his brother brought back to full life, the Reaper planned to kill the Vision, whom he saw as an inhuman mockery of his brother. Wonder Man fought his brother to save the Vision and defeated him. The Avengers committed the Grim Reaper to a mental institution but he eventually got free. The Reaper was now convinced that despite the evidence of the trial Wonder Man could not be his brother for his brother would never lift a hand against him. Thus both the Vision and Wonder Man were mockeries of his brother who must die. The Reaper made another attempt on the two that ended in failure.
While living at Avengers Mansion, Simon Williams decided to seek employment in order to give himself something useful to do and so he was not financially dependent upon the Avengers. Having no inclination to go back into a business where he had faced his greatest humiliation, he determined to become an actor since he felt that during much of his time with the Avengers he was only acting at being a hero. His steadiest work was as a strongman on a children's television show. He eventually quit the job and also terminated his Avengers' membership during a major reshuffling of the roster. Unable to get decent acting work, he accepted a job at Cordco Incorporated as a troubleshooter and security consultant. He only lasted there a day before deciding to move on. Heading out to Los Angeles, he decided to exploit his nearly indestructible body by doing stunt work for the movies. He was highly successful at this and soon began getting acting work as well.
When Hawkeye went to Los Angeles to form the West Coast Avengers, Wonder Man was invited to join the team. Despite certain qualms about living up to the Avengers' standards, he accepted. While helping the team in its struggle to establish its own identity, Wonder Man began to come to terms with himself and his role as a hero. Impressive victories over such foes as Graviton, Ultron, and his brother the Grim Reaper served to bolster his self-esteem and his stunt work served to remind him just how impervious he was to mortal danger). His turning point came when he went on national television to announce that he was guilty of the embezzlement charge brought against him years ago and that he was sorry about it. Released from the grip of this personal devil of his past, Wonder Man was gratified when the public gave him a vote of confidence for his candid admission. He has also come to regard the Vision as a surrogate "twin brother" due to their psychological similarity.
Simon's confidence continued to increase with each victory. Suffused with ionic energy, he began to feel as if he were immortal until the explosion of a Kree ion-cannon dispersed his body's ionic energy. But Wonder Man's mind lingered. His love for Wanda Maximoff, the hex-casting heroine called the Scarlet Witch, tied him to the mortal plane. And her love for him enabled Wanda to channel the chaos-energies she wields to bring Wonder Man back to life. Feeling unworthy of a second chance due to the mistakes of his past, Simon sought to reclaim his dignity and sense of self-worth. To help those overwhelmed by forces beyond their control, he established Second Chances -- a non-profit foundation funded by the re-release of his movies and videos, plus countless new projects and endorsements. Finally free of his personal demons, Wonder Man became a confident, capable crime-fighter and staunch member of the Avengers.
After the Superhuman Registration Act was passed, Simon registered and so became an officially sanctioned S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, tasked with hunting down and capturing unregistered super-humans. He followed an Atlantean agent to a warehouse, finding it being a stockpile for Atlantean weaponry. Shortly after, he tried, unsuccessfully, to defend them from an attack by the Green Goblin. After embezzling money from his own charity he was coerced to do even more work for S.H.I.E.L.D., possibly as a way to seek pardon. He was one of the first established heroes assigned to lead the Fifty State Initiative training program for inexperienced hero recruits along with Ms. Marvel and various other former Avengers.
He was recruited by Iron Man and Ms. Marvel to the Mighty Avengers, a team of registered super-humans. He participated in all of the group's activities such as opposing the Mole Man's bio-creations, an Ultron-infected Iron Man, an alien symbiote mutated New York, arresting Doctor Doom, an attack orchestrated by the Hulk and his Warbound, and opposing a full scale invasion by the Skrulls.Powers and Abilities
Powers
Ionic Energy Form: The tissue and bones of his entire body have been augmented in strength and to a certain extent supplanted by an unknown substance during the "ionic ray" bombardment. Despite Wonder Man's statements that he is composed of "ionic energy," he is actually composed of organic matter that is permeated with this form of energy. Since his last revival, his physiology has changed a great deal and its not clear if his external form is ionic energy or flesh. He stated during an incident in which all the living things in New York had been morphed into symbiotes that he was an ion being and not flesh and blood. This was the prime reason he himself had not been infected. He does not house blood in his body and cannot impregnate women.
Superhuman Strength: Wonder Man possesses vast superhuman strength, the limits of which aren't known. However, the upper limit is somewhere well in excess of 100 tons. His strength extends into his leg as he is capable of superhuman leaps covering several hundred feet.
Superhuman Speed: In spite of his great size, Wonder Man can run and move at speeds that are beyond the physical limits of the finest human athlete.
Superhuman Stamina: Simon's ion body grants him unlimited stamina making it so that he never tires.
Superhuman Durability: Wonder Man's bodily tissues are much harder and far more resistant to physical injury than the bodily tissues of a normal human. Wonder Man is highly resistant to penetration wounds, even from high caliber machine gun shells. He can also withstand tremendous impact forces, such as falling from great heights or being repeatedly struck by superhumanly strong opponents, without being hurt. Wonder Man is also resistant to extremes in temperature, being able to withstand temperatures as low as -150 degrees to as high as 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit without sustaining injury.
Superhuman Agility: Wonder Man's agility, balance, and bodily coordination are all enhanced to levels that are beyond the natural physical limits of even the finest human athlete.
Superhuman Reflexes: Wonder Man's reflexes are similarly enhanced and are superior to those of the finest human athlete.
Superhuman Hearing: His hearing has been enhanced to a superhuman degree.
Energy Vision: Simon can see beyond the human visible spectrum.
Flight: Originally, Wonder Man required the use of a sophisticated and advanced rocket pack attached to his costume. However, following his resurrection and metamorphosis, Wonder Man is now able to fly through the air at great speeds, the exact limit of which isn't known. He could originally fly at subsonic speeds after his metamorphosis, according to his latest official entry in the handbooks of the marvel universe [1]. Simon can fly at speeds in excess of 700 mph .
Immortality: For all intents and purposes, Wonder Man is functionally immortal. Because of the ionic energy that empowers him, Wonder Man no longer ages and he is immune to disease and infection. This same energy sustains his physical vitality far more efficiently than the biochemical process that sustain ordinary human life. As a result, Wonder Man no longer requires food, water, or oxygen.Abilities
Gifted Intellect: Simon has a gifted intellect.
Actor: He is good actor whose talents earned him a spot on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. His acting gives him a strong edge in undercover work.
Stuntman: Before he was an actor, Simon was an expert stuntman who worked in many big action movies.
Expert Combatant: Recently becoming an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., he has been trained extensively in unarmed combat and possibly other espionage techniques.Strength level
Class 100+; Simon can lift well over 100 tons ,he was stated to have strength comparable to Thor through his career.Weaknesses
As an ionic energy being, Simon is susceptible to attacks that disrupt his unique energy pattern. Dispersion would be hazardous as he might not be able to reform without further assistance from the Scarlet Witch. During the Kang Dynasty however, he was dispersed by one of Kang's weapons and was plenty capable of reforming himself on his own after traveling a great distance to avoid being discovered alive and making a grand escape, so this is unlikely. Wonder Man can however, be rendered unconscious and it is possible for him to be injured.Paraphernalia
Equipment
Formerly Avengers Identicard. Also, Wonder Man once employed small jet-engines that he wore on a shoulder harness in order to fly. These engines, designed by Anthony Stark, enabled him to fly for up to 5 hours before refueling. He could attain a maximum altitude of 2 miles and a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour (provided he was not carrying any cargo). He could lift aloft up to 300 pounds before he exceeded the design limits of the jet engines. He could exceed the design limits by a maximum factor of 1000 before causing a total system seize-up.Notes
- Character created by: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
- In the Guardians of the Galaxy alternate future Simon had become a major film star and and continued to operate as a superhero under the name of Hollywood.
- Superhero Registration number is JQ-272712-K.
- In Other Media: Wonder Man appears as a supporting character in the SNES/arcade beat-'em-up game, Captain America and the Avengers.
Links
- Appearances of Simon Williams (Earth-616)
- Character Gallery: Simon Williams (Earth-616)
- Images that feature Simon Williams (Earth-616)
- Fan-Art Gallery: Simon Williams (Earth-616)
- Quotations by Simon Williams (Earth-616)
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