Wonder Man in the 1990s
It’s kind of wild to me that there was once a Wonder Man on going series. Sure he was a mainstay on the Avengers, but up to this point in time, the only characters who could ever really sustain an ongoing series was the trinity of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. At this point, most solo characters could manage a limited series. The only characters who have managed to breach this (at last for a little while) were the Black Panther in the 70s, and you could argue that Hawkeye got an ongoing series since he was usually the feature character in Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight. Wonder Man did get his own one-shot in the 80s, but that was about it.
I’m really at a loss how this got greenlit. Mostly because information about the books publication is kind of lost to time. It’s another product of the memory hole that comic book history has on the internet. You can find endless pieces on the golden and silver age of comics and all sorts of information on new comics, but the 90s is like this vacuum where almost nothing was retained by anybody, especially on the internet. Which is unsurprising since, as I’ve pointed out in countless other primers, a lot of people paint this era of comic books with one brush. It’s dismissed as bad and not widely explored. Most of the information I can glean from the series was the outgoing statement from the series writer at the end of the last issue.
Which is a shame, because I’ve found some interesting hidden gems in this era. If you told me that Nomad was a good read a few years ago I would have laughed in your face. However, after finally reading the title (after a lot of admitted apprehension) I found it a wonderful, if flawed, series. Certainly a product of its time but very interesting to read.
That’s also where I sit with Wonder Man. I had a bit more exposure to this title since I was in my final years of elementary school at the time. Prior to that, my knowledge of comic books were as follows: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man. End of list. I’d buy a comic and flip through the pages but not necessarily read them. Around the 3rd grade, Marvel Super Hero trading cards became mega popular, next to sports cards. Since I wasn’t really into hockey, the exotic collection of superheroes I never even heard about was more enticing to me than Wayne Gretzky. This was also just before the X-Men animated series hit as well.
My first experience with Wonder Man was actually Halloween 1992. I was going out trick or treating and one guy was giving out comic books instead of candy. The comic book he gave me was Wonder Man (vol. 2) #15. This was a big deal to me as a kid because it was pumped full of superheroes. It was an Infinity War crossover after all. It also had a lot of X-Men in it, which I was just getting acquainted with on Saturday morning. Incidentally, this was apparently the most well received issue of the series.
I remember the day after Halloween I went knocking at that guy’s door again to see if he had any left over comics. He wasn’t impressed some kid was knocking at his door but he still had the long box at his entry way so he pulled a few random comics and handed them to me just to get rid of me. One was Sleepwalker #18 and the other Cable: Blood and Metal #1. Both comics I fondly remember thanks to some grumpy guy who was insanely giving away comics on Halloween. You could bet I was knocking on that dude’s door the following year. The following year he was giving away the first issue of Malibu Comics Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series and nothing else. He was dead to me after that (but seriously, I think he moved after that and it was back to fun-sized Snickers at that house). Knowing a little more about the comic book industry at the time, I wonder if that guy owned a failing comic book shop and was just off loading titles that weren’t selling so he could write them off on his taxes and stay afloat. It really explains the DS9 stunt to me anyway.
Anyway, enough nostalgia…..
Wonder Man is an enjoyable enough series, but whereas Nomad was filled with stories “ripped from the headlines”, this was some breezy stuff to read. Nothing too heavy to start. The series kind of dragged in the middle and played it fast and loose with continuity in a few ways. But overall it was enjoyable.
The entire series was written by Gerard Jones who got his start writing for National Lampoon magazine. Around the time he did Wonder Man he also did books for Malibu (Ultraforce and Prime) and DC (Green Lantern, Justice League, Martian Manhunter). In the early 2001s he went to work for Viz Media on Pokémon Adventures and Dragon Ball… So I’m assuming he wrote the localized scripts or something? I could probably look this up but I don’t feel like hunting through information about early 2000s manga translation credits. That just seems like a mire pit to me.
Doing research on Jones, I was hit by something I wasn’t expecting from a comic book writer: a child porn conviction. I expect there to be some cringe when it comes to reading comics from the 90s, but I wasn’t expecting something that extreme. Yeah, as it turned out, he got busted for uploading child pornography onto a private YouTube channel. Which look, I’m not advocating doing anything like this in the slightest, but uploading something that illegal to YouTube is monumentally stupid. You may as well have just showed up at the police station to share the illegal jpegs you have on your hard drive in person, but I digress. He now documents his experience in prison on a blog. On it he takes ownership for what happened, talked about his addiction issues, and how they may have tied into what happened. Some might see this as penance, others might find it ghoulish. Your milage may vary. If it puts your mind at ease, none of the other creators on this book have committed any heinous crimes in the past.
Anyway, Jones’ work on Wonder Man is fine. It’s mostly light hearted. The stories aren’t particularly heavy or deep. There is quite a bit of rehashing of old themes that were commonly explored with the character before and after this series: Coming to terms with his brush with death and his fucked up family dynamics.
However, this series also tried to focus on Wonder Man working on his acting career. This plot line never really went anywhere since the series was bogged down with major crossovers (Operation: Galactic Storm and the aforementioned Infinity War), it seemed like whatever Wonder Man tried to do he was always getting sidetracked by some supervillain plot or another.
I also commend the series for trying to introduce a supporting case of characters. Something that grounded Wonder Man in reality. These were his neighbors who lived in his apartment building, a love interest and her teenaged daughter, as well as two hangers on trying to boost their fame. It was a nice addition but the sudden introduction of 8 supporting case members out of nowhere often meant that these characters didn’t get the needed character development to have any staying power. Jones also tried making them superheroes in issue #19, but this idea soon fizzled out pretty quickly. As the series came to an end these characters have mostly fallen on the wayside.
At the time the series was being published, Simon was also a recurring cast member in Avengers West Coast. Apparently, they were really confident that Wonder Man could stand on his own and, shortly after he got his own series, he was made to leave the team. I think this might have been the biggest problem with the book. Avengers West Coast wasn’t such a hot series either but pulling one of the more popular characters from the roster didn’t do it any favors. I would have kept Simon on the team and used each book to cross promote one another. But that’s heindsight for you.
Most of the artwork for the title — for most of the first 25 issues, minus a few fill ins — was Jeff Johnson. JJ only had a brief career in comics. For Marvel, other than Wonder Man, he did the odd issues here and there a few issues of Amazing Spider-Man here, a few issues of the 3rd volume of Fantastic Four there. He did a run of Detective Comics and Green Lantern over at DC with a smattering of fill-in issues on other books as well. He has since moved on to animation working on such shows as the Boondocks, Spectacular Spider-Man, Batman: Brave and the Bold, and Transformers: Prime.
I actually like Johnson’s pencils. They’re exceptionally detailed and fun. Some people aren’t a fan of the way Wonder Man himself is rendered in this series. I’m going to have to disagree. It might because this was the first iteration of Wonder Man I’ve ever experienced and so there’s that nostalgic hit for me. I guess what makes it work is that you look at Simon Williams in this series and you’re like “yeah, that’s what a Hollywood actor who is also a superhero would look like.” I’m not saying other artists drew him poorly, I’m just saying I wasn’t buying the fact that he was a serious working actor back in the days when he wore the safari jacket and wore sunglasses all the time. A porn star maybe, but not a serious actor.
Another thing I like about this series is that there are a handful of guest appearances from the Beast. While this was probably to capitalize on the popularity of the X-Men (of whom the Beast was a member at the time) but it also harkens back to the days when the pair were on the Avengers and became best buds. I like it when writers come back to that strong friendship. The two are usually separated by decades worth of comics but when they get back together its like no time has passed since. The two are playful and joke around and have crazy antics. The fun-loving Beast is also great to see during this period when most of his appearances of the time were grim since he was trying to find a cure for the Legacy Virus over in the X-Men books. There was like a whole decade where McCoy wasn’t allowed to have fun.
According to Jones’ statement in the final issue, the series was doing well enough but wasn’t reaching market expectations. Editorial felt that the series was too lighthearted. This led to the series taking a bit of a darker tone after both Galactic Storm and Infinity War where Simon began to question his humanity in the wake of his powers growing out of control. This led to an all to brief deconstruction of the hero where he breaks off from the Avengers West Coast and finds himself again after a battle with Mephisto. This would all culminate in a new look and a new outlook for the character starting with issue #25.
These stories are fine enough but they get redundant as each issue rehashes Wonder Man’s origins and that period where he was “dead” for a while. Like every issue. Jones said that he enjoyed working on Wonder Man because he was more or less a blank canvas and he could go in new directions with the character. I actually think that he didn’t properly research the character before coming to that conclusion. That’s becomes very apparent in issues #22-25, the Inner Depth story arc where Wonder Man fights Mephisto. The story is rife with continuity issues, including Wonder Man’s mother being dead and having died in a house fire when he was a kid (which was contrary to prior issues that showed that she was still alive in the present) as well as grossly misinterpreting Wonder Man’s true nature. While it was a kind of an interesting story it was a god damn mess when it came to continuity.
By this point, Jeff Johnson was leaving the book and the final issues featured nearly a different artist every stroy arc. These were Tim Hamilton and Ron Randall. These guys aren’t necessarily bad, but they came in when the book was on a decline. It seems like the cancellation was sudden because the last two issues were a team-up with Spider-Man fighting a one-off villain. What’s kind of galling is that even though the series was on its way out, it still tried to cram in additional plot lines, such as Spider Beach getting dumped into an abusive foster home and Wonder Man proposing to Alex Flores.
In the final issue there is what I can only call a hasty epilogue at the end where Wonder Man’s current acting gig is being cancelled and this gave Jones to do a kind of fourth-wall breaking monologue where he basically goes “aw shucks, that’s show business” but it’s really nudge-nudge-wink-wink comment about the nature of comic books at the time a cheeky way of saying that the book was cancelled because editorial thought it was underperforming. Which would have been clever had it not been for the statement made by Jones in section usually reserved for the letters page where he basically spells out what was subtly hinted at in the actual story.
After this series Wonder Man would go back to mostly appearing in team books. First Force Works (where he was unceremoniously killed off in the first issue) and then the 3rd Avengers volume (where the above mistake was rectified by resurrecting the character). Wonder Man wouldn’t get the same chance at an ongoing series again, but he would appear in a few limited series. The first being Avengers Two: Wonder Man and Beast, a 3 issue mini-series that reunited the two buddies for more hijinks. This three issue mini-series served to tie up all the loose ends and explain away the discrepancies the Wonder Man series. Spider Beach gets adopted by Gloria Angel, Simon’s landlady, Alex Flores marries someone else when Simon was dead, all the conflicting shit in the Inner Depth storyline were all lies created by Mephisto and so on. After that mini-series Wonder Man would go back to the status quo of appearing various Avengers books, although Simon was also given a 7 issue solo mini series in 2008.
Will Wonder Man ever get a shot at a solo series again? I think that’s a safe bet. As I write this it is October, 2022, and there have been announcements for a Wonder Man series that will be going to Disney+ in the near future. I think we can at least expect a 5 issues mini-series (as is the standard these days) once the show is about to be released. It’s not a lot, but it’s something at least.
