AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES S1x010

"EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL"
Written by Brandon Auman | Directed by Vinton Heuck

The Plot: Simon Williams visits Tony Stark in an attempt to stop Stark's hostile takeover of his company. But when Stark reveals he's now the majority shareholder of Williams Innovations, Williams storms out. Meanwhile Thor and Wasp battle AIM in the skies over Manhattan. At Avengers Mansion, Nick Fury visits Captain America. Elsewhere, Williams asks his brother, the Grim Reaper, for help in dealing with Stark. They go to an AIM facility, where MODOK invites Williams to become a test subject.

Fury takes Cap to SHIELD headquarters, Fury gives Cap his motorcycle from WOrld War II, which was passed down to him by his father, Jack Fury, and then promises Cap that SHIELD will always help him with anything he needs. Elswhere, Thor and Wasp have pursued the AIM agents back to their base. They raid the place, interrupting the Williams experiment. But Williams emerges, now made of ionic energy, and flies out of the base, straight for Stark Tower. Williams attacks Iron Man, but Ant-Man comes to his aid.

At AIM, Thor and Wasp continue their fight against MODOK, who kicks them out and seals the base, revealing it as a flying ship in which he escapes. Meanwhile, Giant-Man battles Williams in the streets of Manhattan, appealing to him as they go at it. Williams finally stops fighting, but when Iron Man shows up to continue the fight, Williams re-engages. Cap shows up, but Williams' body suddenly becomes unstable. Iron Man tries to help him with his arc reactor inside Stark Tower, but Williams fights back and disintegrates before he can be cured.

Later, after the Avengers have departed, the Echantress (accompanied by Baron Zemo and the Executioner) brings Williams back, and tasks him with destroying the Avengers.

Continuity Notes: The group shot at the end of the main title features Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp.

The episode's title is a reference to Simon Williams' codename of Wonder Man, though that name is never used in this episode. Though for the majority of the episode, he appears in the "ionic energy" form popularized by George Pérez in the "Heroes Return" era AVENGERS comics, for the experiment that changes him, Williams wears the original comic book Wonder Man costume.

While at the AIM base, the Grim Reaper asks MODOK for an update on the weapon AIM is creating for Baron Strucker. MODOK says he'll provide an update when he's ready.

The entrance to SHIELD HQ is concealed inside a barber shop, as in the classic comics.

Tony states that it's been "weeks" since the breakout. In the same scene, he and Pym discuss a shared history -- at one point, they had collaborated on Pym's Ultron project, which was intended to map human consciousness onto a machine.

In one scene, Thor flies (and hovers in midair) without his hammer, which is something I don't think he can do in the comics.

Captain America spends most of the issue wearing an Avengers-branded bomber jacket, which should make any Marvel fan of the nineties pretty happy.

Do I Know That Voice? Well, Phil LaMarr, who already voices JARVIS, also portrays Simon Williams. And Lance Henrikson (who I did mention before a few weeks back) is now credited as the Grim Reaper where he wasn't previously.

My Thoughts: Another episode loosely based on an early AVENGERS issue, and another winner. This story hews very closely to Wonder Man's origin, while taking some liberties. The original comic had Simon Williams arrested for embezzlement, but blaming Tony Stark for his woes. Here, he simply has a beef with Stark over the latter's takeover of his company. Also, the original story had the Masters of Evil responsible for Williams' transformation, while in this version he is changed by AIM and then encounters the (not yet named) Masters in the final scene. But the spirit of the classic story remains intact, and results in a very fun and fast-paced installment.

That said, the entire plot hinges on Tony Stark not getting to finish one sentence, thus leading to Williams' eventual "death". See, when Williams confronts Stark at the start of the episode, Tony is about to explain why he's buying up all the shares of Williams Innovations when Williams shuts him down, tells him he'll be sorry, and storms out. And that reason, revealed by Tony in the episode's final minutes, is that the company was going under and Tony wanted to buy it in order to keep it afloat and support Williams' continued work. And he couldn't chase Williams out into the hallway to let him know that? I mean, I get that Stark is arrogant and also had no way to know the lengths Williams would quickly go to in order to exact revenge, but still! If you're trying to help someone, why not let them know that instead of forcing them to stew in their own frustration about it?

But like I said, besides that one little issue (which, admittedly, is what the entire main conflict of the episode hinges on), I like this one a lot. It has some fun character moments, such as unlikely friendship between Thor and Wasp as they take on AIM (which leads to the laugh-out-loud moment of the episode, where the two are confused and troubled by MODOK's appearance, with Thor describing him as "the head of a frost giant on the body of an infant"), the first truly genuine moment for Nick Fury since the series started when he befriends Captain America, Ant-Man's joy at seeing Williams' ionic powers in action even in the heat of battle, and some arguments between Ant-Man and Iron Man over the latter's approach to science.

I'll now go off on a brief tangent: I'm sure this somehow makes me "problematic", but I've never quite understood why it's so bad nowadays that Tony Stark used to make weapons. I get that it's not exactly heroic, so I understand why the character was moved away from that occupation in all interpretations over the past however-many-years (though it's notable that back in the Silver Age, "defense contractor" was actually considered a noble profession for Stark). But I seriously, honestly don't understand why every character in every version of the Marvel Universe brings it up to throw in his face when they're really riled at him, like it's some skeleton in his closet that he should be ashamed of. He was working to keep the country and the world safe. You can go the route most versions do nowadays, where after he becomes a super hero, he gives it up because making things to kill people shouldn't be what heroes do -- but I don't see why it's something he needs to be ashamed of.

(This reminds me of a kerfuffle when Marvel had some kind of cross-promotion with a defense contractor a few years ago... Marvel created a custom comic for them and everything, to entice kids into the glamorous world of national security. My recollection is that fans threw a fit on Twitter, and Marvel pulled out of the partnership. To this day I find the entire thing bizarre. Like, it's a weird partnership in the first place, yes -- but who cares? We can't not have defense contractors. It's a business -- I would argue an extremely important business -- like any other. Why shouldn't Marvel be allowed to partner with such a firm?)

Anyway... editorializing over. Hopefully I didn't lose any readers over my hawkish stance on national security. Next week, we finally learn what Black Panther is up to in "Panther's Quest"!