It is a truth universally acknowledged that in comics, no group of characters exists in a more sprawling, complicated family tree than that of Scott Summers and his family. Yet while I am loathe to take any accolade, no matter how backhanded, from my man Cyclops, I contend that the Summers clan has nothing on the family tree of recently minted MCU star Wonder Man, which counts among its branches heroic robots, killer robots, the Master of Magnetism and at least one member of the Summers family.
Will we ever see Katie Summers in the MCU? Probably not. But that’s no reason not to celebrate the twisty, turny family tree of Wonder Man.
Branch 1: Simon & Eric
Let’s start off relatively simply. Wonder Man, aka Simon Williams, first appeared in Avengers #9 (Oct. 1964) as a failed Tony Stark wannabe accused of embezzlement. He is given superpowers by Baron Zemo (the first one, who could give people superpowers but not figure out how to unglue the hood from his face) and set against the Avengers, with the caveat that if he doesn’t come back to Zemo on the reg for treatment, his new power set will kill him. Ingratiating himself to the Avengers in order to defeat them from within, Wonder Man is so overwhelmed by the compassion and zeal with which his new teammates try to cure him of Zemo’s control that he ultimately turns face, saves the Avengers and dies in the process. For a while, that was all they wrote on Wonder Man.
Avengers #52 (March 1968) introduces Eric Williams, Simon’s older brother, as the villainous Grim Reaper. Always a ne’er do well, Eric had connections to the Maggia (Marvel’s version of the Mafia) and, after his brother died, did what any grieving sibling with mob connections would do: mount a high-tech scythe on his arm and adopt the guise of the Grim Reaper to attack the Avengers and get revenge.
As comics go, this is all pretty straightforward stuff. Eric and Simon’s dad, Sandford, died young (inadvertently at Eric’s hands) while their mother Martha lived on as a saintly old lady, appearing in Steve Englehart’s early West Coast Avengers stories.
Branch 2: Ultron, Human Torch and the Pyms
Things start to get a little complicated with the introduction of Vision in Avengers #57 (Oct. 1968), a “synthezoid” created by the evil robot Ultron out of the body of the original android Human Torch (introduced in the very first Marvel comic in 1939) and using the recorded brain patterns of the deceased Wonder Man. Both Grim Reaper (for a time) and Wonder Man (upon his eventual resurrection) considered Vision a brother as a result of his connection to Simon, thereby opening up a number of new branches on the family tree.
Vision’s existence links both the original Human Torch — Jim Hammond — and Ultron to the family tree. Given his connection to Hammond, Vision would later feel that Phineas Horton, the creator of the original Human Torch, and his family, were like family to Vision. But that particular branch is relatively self-contained, given Horton is very much a Golden Age character.
By comparison, the connection to Ultron is sprawling. Just as Ultron created Vision only to have Vision turn against him, Ultron was created by Hank Pym before turning evil, and has long carried a grudge against his “father.” This would also make Hank’s longtime girlfriend and sometimes wife, Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, Ultron’s mother, which gets another branch added to the sprawling Williams family tree when Wasp and Havok, Cyclops’ brother, hook up in Uncanny Avengers and have a daughter, Katie Summers, in an alternate timeline.
Ultron isn’t the only child of Hank Pym, however. In 2010, it was revealed that a Skrull masquerading as a genetic duplicate of Hank had a child with fellow Avenger Tigra, William Grant Nelson. While Hank was out of the mix for that act of procreation, William is considered genetically his son due to the thoroughness of the Skrull DNA replication. And in 2016, readers were introduced to Nadia Van Dyne, the secret daughter of Hank and his first wife, Maria Pym, who took up the mantle of the Wasp and was officially adopted by Janet as well.
So that’s one crazy robot uncle in Ultron, plus Katie, William, and Nadia, plus their progenitors, Hank Pym, Janet Van Dyne and Tigra, all looped in via Vision.
Branch 3: Ultron’s Oedipal Family
Ultron, however, wasn’t done building his family. With Ultron having been based on the brain patterns of Hank Pym (a secret Hank held onto for a long time and which drove many of his mental issues), Ultron eventually created a robot bride for himself, Jocasta. In true Oedipal fashion, he based Jocasta on the brain patterns of his “mother,” Janet.
Years later, after Jocasta, like Vision before her, turned face and left Ultron to join the Avengers, he tried again with Alkhema, a robot companion he based on the mind of the Avenger Mockingbird. Given the real Mockingbird was married at the time to Clint Barton, this makes Hawkeye, like, a weird carny cousin hanging off the Williams family tree.
Ultron also took another stab at destroying the Avengers via a son by creating Victor Mancha, a robot disguised as a human with the express purpose of one day infiltrating the team. But while living as a regular teenager as part of Ultron’s long con, Victor was befriended by the Los Angeles-based teen superheroes the Runaways, becoming a steadfast member of their team while leaving behind his father’s programming.
Branch 4: Vision’s First Family
Vision, somewhat famously, eventually married the Scarlet Witch, and in doing so, added a whole bunch of new branches to the Williams family tree. There’s her brother, Quicksilver, and through him and his one-time marriage to Crystal of the Inhumans, a connection to the entire Inhuman royal court, including Crystal’s sister Medusa and her husband, Black Bolt. Eventually, it would be established that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were the children of Magneto (and then established not to be, but then re-established as such, thanks to the vagaries of film licensing). From Magneto comes Wanda and Pietro’s half-sister Polaris (another character who was, then wasn’t, then was again related to Magneto). Plus, the question of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver’s parentage was such that a number of occasional/honorary/adoptive parents enter into the mix as well, including Golden Age heroes Whizzer and Miss America, puppet enthusiasts the Maximoffs, and Bova, the cow woman.
Also somewhat famously, Vision and Scarlet Witch had children, twin boys who, like Magneto’s parentage, existed, then didn’t, then did. These boys grew up to become Wiccan and Speed of the Young Avengers. Wiccan eventually marries his teammate Hulking, the child of the Skrull emperor’s daughter and the first Captain Marvel (which also means Hulkling is the half-brother of Genis-Vell and his sister Phyla-Vell, aka Quasar/Martyr). So at one point in time, Wonder Man’s nephew was married to the leader of a unified Kree/Skrull empire.
Branch 5: Vision’s Second Family
Ultimately, Scarlet Witch and Vision ended their marriage, for various reasons (but mostly because John Byrne). After various twists and turns — including Wonder Man admitting he had a thing for Scarlet Witch himself, given, you know, it’s a copy of his brain in Vision’s head; Vision getting a new body; Scarlet Witch blowing up that body (because Brian Michael Bendis, and also Doctor Doom); and then Vision eventually getting another new body after being a teenager for a while — Vision decided he wanted to be a family man again. And so he created a family for himself — Virginia Vision (based on a copy of Wanda’s brain patterns) and their children, Vin and Viv Vision (based on an amalgamation of Vision and Wanda’s minds) — giving Wonder Man a brand new sister-in-law and niece/nephew in the process (though sadly, only Viv made it out of Tom King and Gabriel Walta’s series alive).
Branch 6: TL;DR, Wonder Man is an X-Men character
Finally, if we accept the premise, as Wonder Man does, that Vision is his brother because he’s composed, at least in part, of Wonder Man’s mind, then we must extend the same thought to loop in Rogue, who, for a good chunk of Uncanny Avengers, carried Wonder Man around in her head and had access to his powers (similar to how she had earlier absorbed Ms. Marvel’s memories and powers just before her first appearance). While Simon eventually made his way back into a body of his own, to this day, Rogue’s flight, super-strength and invulnerability are Wonder Man’s.
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him @austingorton.bsky.social.
