Who is Wonder Man? If you’re not a fan of Marvel Comics, you may have been asking that question ever since you heard about the upcoming MCU miniseries. Well, now that Marvel’s released the first teaser for the show, that question has several new layers of meaning.
The teaser sets up the world of Wonder Man, in which the titular hero is the star of a cult sci-fi series from the ’60s or ’70s, something in the vein of Star Trek: The Original Series. When a reclusive European filmmaker called Von Kovacs (Zlatko Burić, recently seen playing a political allegory in Superman) decides to revive the character for a new movie, out-of-work actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) sees a chance at stardom.
Just based on this teaser, Wonder Man is swerving pretty hard from the character’s comic book origins. Created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby, Wonder Man first appeared as a musclebound member of Masters of Evil in 1964’s Avengers #9. Wonder Man dies in the battle, but not before he realizes that he’s been duped by Baron Zemo to fight against the Avengers and helps Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. He stays dead for a long time, even if Ultron later uses his brain patterns to help create Vision.
Eventually, Wonder Man comes back as an ionic being and properly joins the Avengers, where he becomes best friends with the X-Man Beast, and later the West Coast Avengers. Along the way, Wonder Man has a stint as a Hollywood stunt man, a strange storyline that clearly inspired the Wonder Man TV series.