Wonder Man (vol. 2) #21
Facing It
Lotus Newmark has sent Splice and Rampage to eliminate the Crazy 8 after they exposed her Armed Response security team as a fraud. With Auteur injured, the rest of the team race her to the hospital. Unfortunately, they are ambushed by Splice who begins taking down the team with his ion-disrupters.
Meanwhile, Glamour Girl has been trying to use her time jumping abilities to find Wonder Man and get him to help the others. First she jumps back some 50 years in the past where she witnesses her younger self coming home from a date. Gloria remembers how she came to Hollywood to become a star after winning her local beauty pageant and reminisces on how happy she was back in those days. She then refocuses on the task at hand and time jumps again. This time she returns to what appears to be the present. Wonder Man is at the apartment building after receiving a distress call from Dreamer about how the Crazy 8 were attacked. Simon had to run for hours across the California desert to get there. As the pair try to figure out where the others went, a police detective arrives on the scene and informs them that the Crazy 8 were just murdered a few hours earlier, around 8 pm that evening.
While Wonder Man laments that he was too late, Gloria realizes that she didn’t return to the present, but hours in the future from when she left. She figures that if she concentrates hard enough she can roll back the clock by a few hours so Wonder Man can save his friends.[1]
Gloria succeeds and Wonder Man arrives at the scene outside the hospital just in time to stop Splice from murdering Dreamer, aka Jamie Flores. Simon wants to pummel Splice for hurting Auteur, Jamie’s mother Alex. However, Jamie tells him that her mother is bleeding help and needs medical attention immediately. Wonder Man turns to grab Alex, prompting Splice to try and shoot him with one of his ion disruptors. Seeing this, Jamie leaps in the way taking the hit meant for Simon instead. Splice then tells Wonder Man that he has two options: face him one-on-one again thereby putting Alex’s life further at risk, or rush her to the hospital while Splice kills the other. As the assassin is making this ultimatum, Rampage is arriving on the scene with the other defeated members of the Crazy 8: Visionary, Attractive Lad, and Buff.[2]
By this time, word of Wonder Man’s arrival has reached Lotus Newmark. She is furious at her assistant Andrew for interrupting her as she was whipping a member of the Los Angeles city council. However, she is more upset to hear that Williams is back in town when he should be out in the desert shooting a movie. She decides to deploy Armed Response to help Splice and Rampage deal with Wonder Man.
Back at the scene of the battle, Wonder Man puts Alex down so he can fight Splice. The assassin then hits him with one of his ion-disruptors which weakens the hero. That’s when Rampage arrives on the scene and knocks Splice aside. He is fed up with Splice’s vendetta and decides to get the job over with. However, the ion-disruptor wasn’t quite as effective against Wonder Man as it was for the members of Crazy 8. When Jamie tells Simon that she isn’t sure if her mother is still breathing, Wonder Man enters a fit of rage that boosts his powers to the extreme. He then easily trounces both Splice and Rampage by himself, leaving the two villains incapacitated. Simon and the Crazy 8 then rush Alex to the hospital. However, before they can get inside they are surrounded by Armed Response.
His rage still growing, Wonder Man warns them that if they get in his way and Alex dies he will not stop until he kills each and every last one of the high tech mercenaries. The members of Armed Response decide not to call Wonder Man’s bluff and retreat.
Seeing this, Lotus Newmark’s scheme is finished and she decides that it is time to go into hiding, ordering Andrew to take the fall for her crimes so she can escape unscathed.[3]
Back at the hospital, Alex is finally getting the medical attention she needs but is still in critical condition. Jamie is deeply upset and blames Wonder Man for everything that happened and asks why he left. He tires to explain to her that he left because he determined that he wasn’t human anymore and wanted to try to be apart from a normal life.[4] When asked why he came back, Simon says that he realized that his friends needed him and because whatever he is and will become he has to confront it now and forever.
Recurring Characters
Wonder Man, Crazy 8 (Attractive Lad, Auteur, Buff, Dreamer, Glamour Girl, Snap, Stat, Visionary), Splice, Rampage, Lotus Newmark, Armed Response
Continuity Notes
Gloria’s use of time travel here doesn’t make any sense as it breaks the rules of how time travel works in the Marvel Universe in most cases. Bringing Wonder Man back in time to prevent the deaths of the Crazy 8 should create a divergent reality. However, as of this writing (October, 2022) a reality number hasn’t been identified nor has there been any acknowledgement of this divergence in any printed media. That said, the time traveling has its problems, see below.
Rampage mentions how Splice is driven by wanting revenge against Wonder Man following his previous defeat at his hands. This was in Wonder Man (vol. 2) #4.
Lotus Newmark will turn up again in Avengers Two: Wonder Man & Beast #1-3.
Wonder Man has been going through an identity crisis. First his powers were thrown out of whack from a nega-bomb explosion in Wonder Man (vol. 2) #9. Then a mental probe from Galactus in issue #13 revived old fears and made him start questioning his existence.
Topical References
Gloria Angel time jumps to her own past when she was a young actress in Hollywood. Gloria states that this was in the 1940s. However, as a character who exists in the Modern Age who has an ordinary lifespan this is impossible due to the Sliding Timescale. As such, references to her past taking place in the 40s should be considered topical. Modern readers should interpret this scene as happening around 50 years in the past relative to this story rather than a specific time period or date.
The Problem with Gloria’s Time Traveling Powers
In this story, Gloria Angel is able to leap backward and forwards in time. For the most part this is fine because she doesn’t interact with anyone until she ends up a few hours into the future and finds Wonder Man, then uses her powers to bring them back a few hours into the past.
Under normal perimeters of time travel, pulling the future Wonder Man back in time a few hours to prevent the deaths of the Crazy 8 would have created a divergent reality where they were murdered since Wonder Man was brought back in time to prevent those events.
Because of that divergence, the Wonder Man who ran across the desert would still have arrived hours later, making two Wonder Men. However, this story only features one Wonder Man. Not only that, but the Wonder Man who is brought back in time would be from a divergent reality, not Earth-616. None of the subsequent handbooks referencing this time period glosses over these events and so we don’t get a forthright explanation.
I think the cleanest way to explain this discrepancy is that Gloria didn’t jump to a future where the Crazy 8 were dead. Instead, the police arriving at the scene received an incorrect report that the Crazy 8 were killed or the at least assumed they had been. Police investigating based on incorrect or incomplete information happens regularly enough that this wouldn’t be such an outlandish situation.
If we accept that the police were mistaken, then Gloria did indeed end up a few hours in the future of Earth-616, plucked Wonder Man from that time period and brought him into the past without creating a divergence. Wonder Man from the future would then go and save the Crazy 8 while his past self is still running across the desert. Since there was no divergence, the past Wonder Man would run into Gloria upon his arrival and go back into the past, completing the loop and preventing a divergence.
