THE HIGH EVOLUTIONARY

"THE GIFT" | "PET PROJECT" | "THE MEN, THE MINE, THE MOUNTAIN!"
"BLOOD DRAWN, BLOOD SPILT!" | "SILVER AND CRIMSON" | "KINDRED SPIRITS"
"DEMON NIGHT" | "ALL MY CHILDREN" | "THE FINAL FRONTIER"
"THE SON OF EARTH" | "BEYOND LIFE"

Story: Mark Gruenwald
Pencils: Paris Cullens & Ron Lim | Inks: Tony Dezuniga w/Jim Sinclair
Letters: Ken Lopez w/Joe Abelo | Colors: Gregory Wright
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: Beginning in England in 1928, the origin and history of Doctor Herbert Wyndham's path to becoming the High Evolutionary are told, from his days as a biology student at Oxford up to the point he declared the "Evolutionary War".

Continuity Notes: Well... where to begin? This story is one huge continuity note, as writer Mark Gruenwald codifies all previously known tidbits about the High Evolutionary and his acquaintances into one serialized story. I'll do my best to list everything I came across, but while my Marvel knowledge is pretty good, I'm no Gruenwald, so it's probable I missed a few things.

• He meets Jonathan Drew, father of future Spider-Woman Jessica Drew, at a genetics conference in Switzerland in 1928.
• The keynote speaker at the conference is Dr. Wladyslav Shinsky, an eventual member of the Enclave, a group of Fantastic Four villains and creators of "Him", who would become Adam Warlock (more on Him below). Also at the conference is Dr. Arnim Zola, an eventual foe of Captain America.
• Wyndham and Drew created a "Citadel of Science" at the base of Wundagore Mountain in the Balkan nation of Transia, using Subterranean Moloids as their labor force.
• The Citadel is located near the ancestral home of Baron Gregor Russoff, ancestor of Jack Russell, Marvel's WEREWOLF BY NIGHT. In his werewolf form, Russoff kills Drew's wife, Merriem.
• Jessica Drew, daughter of Jonathan and Merriem, suffers radiation poisoning and is placed into suspended animation by Wyndham in 1931. Between this and his wife's death, a despondent Jonathan leaves Wundagore.
• Fantastic Four enemy Puppet Master, a.k.a. Phillip Masters, also lived in Transia as a child and was friends with Jessica.
• The High Evolutionary's armor was originally created as protection against the werewolf.
• Jonathan returned to Wundagore possessed by a sixth century sorcerer named Magnus, who was once an enemy of Morgan Le Fay (she of the greatest dress in the Marvel Universe). Magnus reveals that the Citadel of Science is constructed atop the burial mound of the demon Chthon.
• Magnus spent over a decade in the body of Jonathan, helping the High Evolutionary create his animal-spawned "New Men" and training them as knights to battle Chthon.
• The night Chthon finally returned to Earth happened to be the same night a gypsy named Magda, babbling about her monstrous husband, Magnus, found sanctuary at the Citadel and gave birth to twins, Wanda and Pietro. Wanda was touched by Chthon's dark energy immediately after birth. Magda then left the Citadel rather than raise her twins.
• Robert and Madeleine Frank, former superheroes Whizzer and Miss America, came to the Citadel two days later to give birth as well. Madeleine and the baby died in labor and the Evolutionary attempted to pass off Wanda and Pietro as Robert's children, but he fled rather than accept them.
• The High Evolutionary then presented Wanda and Pietro to a gypsy couple named Django and Marya Maximoff in a camp near Wundagore.
• Some years later, in the pages of THOR #134 - 136, the High Evolutionary had his first appearance and fought alongside the Thunder God against his rogue creation, the Man-Beast, before leaving Earth with his New Men.
• The Evolutionary lost control of the New Men and summoned the Hulk to fight them for him in TALES TO ASTONISH 94 - 96. The Evolutionary was mortally wounded in the fight and used his machines to evolve himself into a being of pure energy.
• Some time later, the Evolutionary returned to his mortal form, albeit evolved about 100,000 years beyond a modern human, and created the planet of Counter-Earth.
• The High Evolutionary met Him and rechristened him Adam Warlock, appointing him the guardian of Counter-Earth. Warlock teamed up with the Hulk to fight Man-Beast, then left to explore the universe. Subsequently, the Evolutionary protected Counter-Earth from Galactus
• Warlock eventually returned to Counter-Earth and, thanks to the sinister Soul Gem which adorned his brow, mistakenly believed the High Evolutionary had destroyed the planet. He attempted to kill the Evolutionary with the Soul Gem.
• The Thing, Alicia Masters, Aleta Starhawk, Moondragon, and Warlock's female counterpart, Her, restored the High Evolutionary to normal after Warlock's attack. He found Counter-Earth had been stolen and went in search of it.
• Upon realizing Counter-Earth had been taken by a race of Beyonders to serve as a curiosity in their museum, the High Evolutionary lost his will to live and asked the Hulk to kill him. Hulk did so, but the Evolutionary's armor restored him to life with new purpose.

The High Evolutionary's Plot:

"I have been to both ends of human evolution. I have known first-hand the humble origins of life on this sphere -- as well as the ultimate genetic destiny of the Earth's highest lifeform, man...

"My encounter with the Beyonoders has demonstrated to me that mankind's genetic destiny is not glorious enough. left to our own natural path, we will never be the equal of the Beyonders.

"Thus, someone must guide the path of man's evolution and provide a catalyst to further our race's genetic potential. This someone, of course, must be me.

"I hereby assume proprietorship of man's racial destiny. Under my guidance, the human race will evolve further than the Beyonders, further than any other race in existence!

"No matter what it takes, I shall not stop until man reigns supreme in all the universe!"

So that's what he was up to! (Seriously -- we knew he wanted to evolve humanity for vaguely defined reasons. Understanding this earlier than the final chapter of the serial after the main feature in the final issue of the crossover might have made the guy seem like a sympathetic antagonist rather than the colossal A-hole he came across as in most of the previous installments.)

My Thoughts: I should note up front that I'm a sucker for stories like this. It's mostly just a bunch of previously told events with bridging transitions provided in between, but that's okay. I love when comic book historians are able to take a bunch of various tales written by several different writers and massage them into a cohesive whole. It's something kind of unique to comics, and it's one of my favorite comic book story concepts.

And there were few better suited to something like this than Mark Gruenwald. The man had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel Universe, and while I haven't read all the stories he references here, I have read some and I believe the way he ties them all together is pretty impressive.

That said, there are some items with which I take issue. First and foremost, there's a mysterious figure in a top hat who appears to Wyndham twice in the story; once to give him a DNA map which helps him with his research very early on, and again a few years later to introduce him to the Subterraneans in order to build the Citadel of Science. This man's identity is never revealed. Narration informs us that Wyndham would never learn who he was, but it seems odd to me that the story doesn't throw us that bone, considering that it meticulously explains every other facet of the High Evolutionary's history.

(I've learned from a little research that this guy is Phaeder, an Inhuman geneticist created by Gruenwald and his then writing partner -- and this serial's editor -- Ralph Macchio, in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #72, from 1981 -- but why he isn't identified here mystifies me.)

I also find some of the timing odd: Magnus lives in Jonathan Drew's body for ten years and the Evolutionary believes the entire time that his old friend is delusional but never tries to fix him? The Franks just happen to show up at Wundagore right after Pietro and Wanda were born? (To be fair, this was established prior to Gruenwald's story.) There are bizarre coincidences to be found as well, such as young Phillip Masters being a neighbor of Wyndham and the Drews, but again, this is just Gruenwald working around things set up by previous writers.

So the story hangs on coincidence and unusual timing, but in a way this makes Gruenwald's accomplishments in weaving all this stuff together even more impressive. Obviously in subsequent years the High Evolutionary's past would be further changed by other writers (we would learn, for example, during Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" that Professor Miles Warren spent some time at Wundagore as the Evolutionary's protégé), but for its time, this story is about as thorough an effort as anyone could've provided.