One of the first Marvel series I ever collected was West Coast Avengers (Amazon affiliate link), which included Simon Williams, Wonder Man. Wonder Man has been around for a while and was really the powerhouse of the team.
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) expands, they are always looking for the next character to feature. It is no surprise that Wonder Man would be chosen and that he would be given a television series.
Despite my fondness for the character, I was fairly late in watching the series. Part of it was based on the previews. It was basically about actor Simon Williams playing the character of Wonder Man in a movie. How interesting could that be?
It turns out that it was very interesting.
Wonder Man is extremely different from the other projects in the MCU and perhaps because of that, it works. It is not about a powerful superhero fighting a powerful supervillain. It is about a person trying to figure out the way forward in life.
The premise is that there is a law that prevents actors from actually having super powers. They do explain why eventually. Simon Williams’s dream is to be a successful actor, but unfortunately he does have super powers. You can imagine the problems.
I thought Yahya Abdul-Mateen II did a tremendous job of playing the overthinking Williams who always is his own worst enemy. Then there is Ben Kingsley who plays Trevor Slattery. He is absolutely hilarious. And the relationship between them is so much fun.
One of the reasons Wonder Man works is that, unlike many of the recent MCU projects, the purpose is not about universe building but about telling a good story. And they do. In fact, Slattery is really the main connection to the MCU. You do not need to have watched six movies and twelve television series to understand the story.
I am hoping to see more of Wonder Man in the future, hopefully with the Avengers.
