THE BREWER REPORT

An Evolutionary concept:
How odd, this god

By Byron Brewer

HIGH EVOLUTIONARY

Iron Man and Thor have been palling around since the early days of The Avengers, seeing each other and the team they founded through good times and bad. Most recently, they were at a cross-roads, enemies of a sort who could not agree to disagree.

Those days are over now, and the twin titans – Stark of the scientific equations and armored suit, Thor of the Norse mythology and swinging uru hammer – are together again, even serving on the same team of Avengers who are ushering in a new Heroic Age on Earth-616.

But soon a threat will rear its ugly head and bring these two heroes together in a tale spanning a new four-issue mini-series written by cosmic scribes par excellance Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA to us here at Cosmic Book News) and artist Scot Eaton.

And hang on! Although most of the action takes place on terra firma, there are definitely undertones of Marvel Cosmic herein!

In Iron Man/Thor, the two title characters come together to try and foil the scheme of the hyper-intelligent and ethically-challenged super-scientist known as the High Evolutionary, who was first introduced in Thor #134.

“This is a character who knows almost everything about the make-up of humanity and now he's taking a long, hard look at the 21st century and feels that it's lacking in terms of the divine entities that once held great sway over the world,” Abnett explained in a CBR interview. “He's stepping up to take care of that, but in order to do so he has to put various things together to accomplish this great scheme of world improvement as he sees it. So that involves adding some other players to the mix. We won't spoil the fun by revealing who they are now, but let's just say there are some other important characters in this story that will make things very, very interesting and very insane."

Of course, fans of the first Warlock series are no strangers to this side of the scientist. Not only did the High Evolutionary play God by creating a second Earth, called Counter-Earth, orbiting opposite Earth-616 on the other side of the sun, but he populated it with people! When his creation the Man-Beast (ala  Satan) made his way to Counter-Earth, Adam Warlock and his followers were sent to save it, Jesus-like. Before things were done, this allegory even included a crucifixion as eyewitness by the Incredible Hulk! (Nope, no God-complex here.) 

“I think the High Evolutionary sees himself as a very god-like figure and he wants to raise humanity up whether they want it or not,” Lanning said. "It doesn't matter to him if he breaks a few eggs along the way. He's got these lofty high views and his attempt to impose a new god for a new millennium is going to cause him to butt heads with our protagonists.”

For the uninitiated, the High Evolutionary was born Herbert Edgar Wyndhamin Manchester, England. While a student at Oxford in the 1930s, he took an interest in the work of heretical biologist Nathaniel Essex and began experimenting with genetic manipulation, building a machine (that he called the genetic accelerator) with which he attempted to “evolve” the rats in his mother's London basement. While attending a genetics conference in Geneva, Wyndham was approached by a mysterious man (in truth, the outcast Inhuman geneticist Phaeder) who handed to him papers containing blueprints for cracking the genetic code. With this information to bolster his experiments, Wyndham successfully developed a serum he dubbed “Isotope A.”

In partnership with scientist Jonathan Drew (father of Spider-Woman), Wyndham moved his experiments to the seclusion of Wundagore Mountain in the small Balkan nation of Transia. Discovery of uranium on the land (inherited by Drew's wife) provided vast funding, and they bought more land from local baron Gregor Russoff. Assembling a “citadel of science” designed by German scientist Horace Grayson (father of the future Marvel Boy) and built by Moloid slaves supplied by Phaeder, Wyndham and Drew continued to experiment until Drew's daughter Jessica fell ill from uranium poisoning, and was placed into suspended animation to save her life. Subsequently, Drew's wife was attacked and killed by a werewolf and Drew left Wundagore. Wyndham, on the other hand, developed a suit of protective silver armor for himself and continued his work. Now joined in his work by research assistant Miles Warren (future supervillain the Jackal), Wyndham was able to make more and more radical breakthroughs, including the genetic acceleration of some local animals into the half-human, half-animal beings that he dubbed his “New Men.”

Wyndham eventually saw the world as a far too confining place, so he converted his scientific research citadel into a spaceship, exploring the stars with his New Men. He later settled his New Men on a planet, Wundagore II, while he stayed on one of the planet's moons and began work on a detailed replica of Earth to be located on the opposite side of the sun. This would be Counter-Earth and led to his series of adventures with Adam Warlock. The High Evolutionary eventually evolved himself into a cosmic being, and devolved that group of New Men.

During Annihilation: Conquest, the High Evolutionary reappeared in Kree space, working on restructuring the Kree genome in a fortress inside a star. Adam Warlock brought Phyla-Vell and Moondragon to him after being overwhelmed by Phalanx warriors, who quickly invaded the High Evolutionary's vessel. Once Ultron was revealed to be the leader of the Phalanx militia, the High Evolutionary detonated the star, vaporizing his ship, Ultron and the invading Phalanx warriors. He subsequently was captured by the Phalanx and forced to transfer the essence of Ultron into the body of Adam Warlock, apparently killing him. However, the High Evolutionary was aware that Warlock's consciousness had survived and implied that Warlock would "lead the way" for the new Guardinans of the Galaxy.

Most recently, the High Evolutionary worked with Magneto and the Blob to determine why so many mutants were depowered on M-Day. He developed a suit for the depowered Magneto that replicates his original powers, and Magneto led an attack on San Francisco as a distraction so that the High Evolutionary could gain a currently unknown object from inside of the Dreaming Celestial. After extensively examining the Celestial, the High Evolutionary subjected Magneto to an extremely dangerous technological procedure in an attempt to restore his powers. It was a success.

Although no longer inhabiting Wundagore Mountain, the High Evolutionary still maintains a garrison there where the Elder God Chthon has recently re-emerged and slaughtered many of the remaining and loyal New Men.

Meanwhile, in the pages of Fantastic Four, the formerly abandoned City of the High Evolutionary has risen from the underworld to the surface and is said to be part of a future War Between Four Cities. The city was apparently a project that the High Evolutionary had started and was forced to abandon. An evolutionary engine that he had created ran wild and began devolving creatures instead of evolving them. After a time, Moloids discovered the city and began to live there, where they devolved into somewhat more human-looking creatures. The Moloids that lived there eventually stopped having children because, even though they had much higher intelligences than normal Moloids, they still were born with normal Moloid looks. Shunned, these children were abandoned beneath the city to live on their own. Eventually, according to the plan of the High Evolutionary, the city began to rise and breached the surface. The inhabitants of the city petitioned the U.S. government to be recognized as an independent nation-state within the continental U.S. border, but have thus far been denied.

Whatever the High Evolutionary’s plans, we hope Shellhead and Goldilocks (along with DnA) are up to the task. And we hope they do it in the Mighty Marvel Cosmic Manner!

The Iron Man/Thor mini hits stores in November!