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This article, Herbert Wyndham (Earth-61615), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
Ultron (body merged);
Cabal (situational allies)
Lucille Adesina (mother; deceased),
Mary Wyndham (maternal aunt; deceased);
Countless creations and genetic modifications (sons and daughters, most deceased): Luminous (daughter),
Nobilus (son; deceased),
Doniva (daughter; deceased),
Karja (son)
Avengers Annual Vol 1 2
Secret Wars Vol 1 9
History
"Be not as you are, but as you should be." The universe was born into chaos by the gods who helped shape it. Perfection was never in its nature, but as a sentient speckle myself, I have nevertheless accepted the challenge. The gods are either nonexistent or long dead... Perhaps they truly have abandoned us, and it is my sacred mission to lead my fellow lifeforms—their creations—to evolve into a state not even their divine magnificence can achieve nor attain: life, free from its disgusting flaws.
- — High Evolutionary
- — High Evolutionary
Twisted Curiosity
Herbert Edgar Wyndham was born in Manchester, England in the summer of 1903 to aristocrat Sir James Wyndham and Lucille Adesina, a housemaid who left their child with James and fled for her life, fearing the Wyndhams once they found out about their affair. At such a young age, Herbert moved with his father to the Welsh countryside when rumors of young Herbert's mixed heritage spurned into a scandal for Sir James that the latter would abuse his own son physically and verbally for ruining his reputation. Wyndham was ultimately saved from his father's abuse by his caring maternal aunt Mary as she raised him on her own but unfortunately, enough damage was done to the innocence of the young Herbert as the repressed trauma and grudge for his father would be something that would worsen his darker side growing up.
As a student in the 1920s, Wyndham was any curious human whose growing curiosity and passion for the scientific field of genetics was mostly inspired by the work of Nathaniel Essex to perform his own genetic experiments, evolving rodents in his relatives' basement. While attending a conference in Geneva during a science conference, he was approached by a human-like consultant—an exiled pink-skinned Kree—who would later reveal himself to be a recruiter for the Enclave, a secret league of scientists across the galaxy in pursuit of perfecting lifeforms. While Wyndham was reasonably doubtful and in disbelief about the authenticity of the man, the mysterious individual still offered Wyndham his few introductory notes on the secrets for unlocking genetic codes that no human being has yet to discover at the time.
As a result of the Enclave's assistance, Wyndham would successfully synthesize a serum, a first of many, having learned enough even from the limited notes that unlocked for genetic alteration on the small creatures he had experimented on, but his controversial breakthroughs had gotten him expelled from his once prestigious and optimal education at Oxford University once its professors and administration had found the subsequent physical transformations and deformities of his subjects to be abhorrent and deemed him twisted methods to be a defiance against the natural law and order of life. Wyndham would also be triggered by his rejection, recalling the repressed trauma he had from his own father's abuse which was mostly rooted from his racial prejudice due to Wyndham's mixed heritage. Experiencing the harsh reality of the people around him for most of his life and only saw goodness as a mere drive to benefit the self, he saw a fatal flaw in humanity.
Wyndham was expelled from the university, although the controversy had sparked to him becoming hunted down as a fugitive by his former peers who were either envious of his discovery or were paranoid that he would keep working on his experiments until it would cause great dangers to others considering how morbidly acquiescent Wyndham himself was to abduct and actively abuse animals in the pursuit of "progress" in genetics. The more he became hunted down by the police and even mobs. While he originally blamed the consultant for being the catalyst who led his life spiraling down into discovering his breakthroughs in altering genetics, the consultant would assure Wyndham that he was only unlocking what he was capable of if he simply had the instruments and the spine to pursue his intellectual passion.
Granted Ascension
As a newly recruited agent and representative of the Enclave on Earth, Doctor Wyndham has willingly undergone a series of agonizing yet also accelerating self-experimentations besides his creations, ascending into the High Evolutionary
Even in the first few years of his gradual artificial metamorphosis into the self-proclaimed High Evolutionary, he possessed incredible powers and amplified intellect, and he continued to study and explore the universe in search of the secrets of genetics thanks to his stronger allegiance to the Enclave, which provided him with space travel among advanced technology for his constant experiments. He established his base of operations in the Citadel of Science on Mount Wundagore, where he created his own generations worth of races, uplifted animals that were enhanced with human level intelligence. The High Evolutionary played a key role in unlocking the powers of individuals who would venture as selfless superheroes or wreak chaos as supervillains on Earth such as the Maximoff twins whom he had enhanced out of his many attempts to recreate mutations using various energy sources provided by the Enclave: the reality-altering Scarlet Witch, the super speedster Quicksilver. Wyndham's exclusive yet temporary associations with clientele and other scientists such as sleeper Hydra loyalist Jonathan Drew had resulted in the superhuman abilities of his only daughter, Spider-Woman.
Most of the High Evolutionary's experiments on humans had become successful thanks to his temporary acquirement of the mystical Soul Stone as it was kept by the Enclave for millennia, although the mad scientist had finally embraced his disillusioned realization that humanity will always have such inherent and incurable flaws since the dawn of civilization: their primal tendency for violence, greed for power, and irremediable bigotry. Throughout his the span of his years having briefly abandoned captive humans as the baseline subject of his experiments in favor of other lifeforms, the Evolutionary was able to create the Animen, New Men, and Ani-Mutants by returning to capturing and horrendously experimenting on countless animals on Earth and evolving them into humanoid forms that served their creator and his subordinates, those who believed in the Evolutionary's cause, throughout their extended lifespan while also being given their own domain of residence within Mount Wundagore as it was secretly transformed by their creator as his hidden base of operations for decades, with only the Enclave being the only outside group capable to entering it whenever they have a meeting or transaction with the Evolutionary.
Counter Expansions
During the Evolutionary's years working with Jonathan Drew and other associates to continue his work, they set up base in Transia on Wundagore Mountain in a futuristic citadel that his Kree contact provided him a workforce of Moloids, his latest line of creation, to build. A native sorcerer by the name of Charles Magnus and his followers had possessed Drew, who warned the Evolutionary that the mountain was the banishing place of the demon lord Chthon but as expected, the scientifically-minded Wyndham originally found such the idea of magic to be absurd that it somewhat intimidated him. Nevertheless, Magnus managed to convince Wyndham to teach some of his creations a chivalry code as ethics through the use of a mystical book of corruptible spells called the Darkhold, eventually forming the splinter faction known as the Knights of Wundagore. The Knights were appointed as guardians that became the combatants of Chthon's minions, which he had unleashed by possessing dozens of the Evolutionary and Magnus' subordinates.
The battle ended with the faction of the High Evolutionary's victory by having Chthon banished in another more secured temple under the Timor Sea, although it also costed Magnus' life when his follower, Agatha Harkness had betrayed him by revealing to the Evolutionary about Magnus' true intentions about claiming the mountain for himself as his new sanctorum. With Harkness taking the Darkhold away from him, Magnus was ripped to shreds by an enraged Chthon before the latter was banished to the Timor Sea. Impressed by Harkness' ability to be true to their deal in spite of her superior's treachery, the Evolutionary offered the sorcerer's service only for her to decline as she revealed how she does not have a true allegiance and simply did her role to prevent Chthon's escape into the earthly plane, on behalf of another deity she had grew a fondness for. Having learned a few mystical practices from Magnus during their preparation against Chthon, Wyndham had given Agatha an encoded imperfect yet distinguishable psionic spell that she could activate with magic when she ever seeks his help.
Due to her gratitude towards the Evolutionary for assisting her and the surviving sorcerers transfer Chthon's banishment, Harkness had eventually taken interest in some of Wyndham's experiments, particularly the younger Wanda Maximoff once she had discovered that the Chaos Magic released by Chthon during his years of imprisonment within the Wundagore Mountain was channeled onto her when the young Maximoff was experimented with various concentrated energy sources from his machine. Wyndham would later be in awe to realize that one of his only failures would turn out to be a success after Harkness had reported to him that Wanda's artificial mutation had led her being a powerful sorcerer, potentially the most powerful one on Earth, upon reaching adulthood as she went through a long phase of her life with her with brother in service of the Brotherhood of Mutants upon the false belief that they were mutants, before joining the superhero team Avengers after having a change of heart to use her powers for good. While Harkness also kept an eye on the twins both on behalf of her ally and her.
The Maximoff twins were among the Evolutionary's latent genetic accomplishments which either predated or paved the way for the rise of superhumans in the 21st Century. Unfortunately, the High Evolutionary still stood by his conclusion that Earth was a constraint for his vision of a near-perfect society with ascended lifeforms considering his decades of associations with humanity, as some of those people would even revere him and imitate his works such as Hydra to the point that Wyndham found them using his name and mission to be a perversion of what he truly intends to do as a geneticist. Around the early 1990s, Wyndham would abandon his base of operations on Earth, conserved his "pure" creations, and took his most loyal of followers with him. Taking most of his advanced technology at his disposal, the High Evolutionary launched a ship from Mount Wundagore disguised as an asteroid to the point in Earth's orbit on the opposite side of the sun and used his technology and abilities to advance a small chunk of terrestrial material into a nearly identical copy of the Earth. Dubbing this new "utopia" as Counter-Earth, his goal was to create an Earth without the corruption of humanity's irredeemable evil.
The Evolutionaries Rise
Over the next several decades, High Evolutionary have analyzed species of different galaxies and saw certain flaws in each of them, taking it upon himself to expand his scientific crusade of perfecting societies that already exist, while creating new ones of his own. Not only that, the Evolutionary has traced a plethora of history about cosmic beings across the cosmos that were gods or at least revered as one, such as the Celestials, the Beyonders, and various pantheon who were responsible for the creation and evolution of races in the universe, only for Wyndham to see a pattern that none of these divine or diabolical creators have ever perfected their creations even in their demises or disappearances, much to the Evolutionary's disappointment as he must've overestimated the concept of what means to be a god.
Establishing the philanthropic and scientific-based OrgoCorp as a front for his research, the High Evolutionary was praised by his followers as a visionary who seeks to improve the lives across the whole galaxy, hiding the true bloody nature of his experiments. Over the course of his later life venturing, expanding, and experimenting across the cosmos, the High Evolutionary and his like-minded subordinates, dubbed the Evolutionaries, have engineered a number of original or "superior" species, such as the Xeronians, Abilisks, Ani-Men & Ani-Mutants (subspecies of the larger clade New Men), Loonieshrinks, Halfworlders, hybrid Klyntar (Symbiotes) whose templates were obtained from the debris of Klyntar, certain Kree subspecies, and the Sovereign. However, none of his creations or salvations have satisfied him in full in spite of him being revered by thousands to millions of sentient beings as a god or deity, even by those who he had not created and simply assisted with biological enhancements and the promise of ascending their impoverished state in life.
The existing societies the High Evolutionary had been involved with have either been successfully enhanced, saving them from extinction that they have dedicated their servitude towards him and his cause in OrgoCorp or to his failures, they were decimated and were little heard from the rest of the galaxy ever again, leaving only genetic samples to be harvested by OrgoCorp, samples of the very lives the Evolutionary have brought into extinction or force into diaspora, at least to those who didn't end up suffering and withering under the Evolutionary's experimentation in his mobile Citadel of Science, located within his mobile Arête Laboratories, or in his city-wide labs on the heart of Counter-Earth as he sought to bring his new species a habitable and ideally perfect home the moment they are born and deemed suitable in their creator's eyes.
Enemies of High Evolutionary
As the High Evolutionary would continue his lifetime mission to perfect all lifeforms and conceive a utopian intergalactic civilization across the universe, and knowing that he couldn't truly be in all places at once with every colony he had set his foot on, the High Evolutionary would start assigning his most loyal and intelligent members of the Evolutionaries, his cult-like following across the galaxy, to be his division of scientific recorders wherein the Evolutionary would share his knowledge and data onto them if they lacked something which the Evolutionary possesses. However, the Evolutionary and his identical nearly subordinates bearing a lower variation of his title, "Evolutionary," would begin to face a gradual surge of adversity against their works and expanse throughout the decades. Some would become his rivals due to sharing a similar twisted view on reality by attempting to improve the state of universe through their array of demented methods, from dark magic to deadly artificial intelligence, which challenged the Evolutionary's main method of genetic engineering from time to time. His influence would've waned if it wasn't for the success of OrgoCorp as a wealthy and predominant corporation to balance or overcome the tides to his favor and advantage, something that most of his rivals had lacked skillfully.
Unfortunately, the other extreme of his rivalry involved parties who simply saw the wickedness of his deeds and the biased errors in the ethics of his intentions to manipulate lifeforms that some of them would band together to advocate against the High Evolutionary's mostly discreet abuse on forms of life to which he considers to be inferior or in "needed of ascension" through his and/or his lower Evolutionaries' experiments. Among the first notable enemies of the High Evolutionary were the Guardians of the Galaxy who faced his Evolutionary by the name of Theel, the leading scientist that created Halfworld, home planet of the Guardian Rocket Raccoon. The Evolutionary's headquarters on Halfworld were destroyed by the Guardians of the Galaxy during a chaotic yet victorious conflict against Theel which was originally rooted from their mission to save Rocket from death, while all the subjects were liberated from their torturous state of captivity and claimed Halfworld as their own home to rebuild without OrgoCorp's colony.
While Theel had deemed Halfworld a failure before his death, the High Evolutionary himself would still think otherwise and put the blame on his subordinate for not seeing the bigger picture, believing that bringing sentience to such furry and once primitive creatures was a breakthrough. Of course, not every failure was something that the Evolutionary could simply turn a blind eye to or see its practically brighter side, he would face adversaries that truly and outwardly intervened with his overall progress as they would oppose the name and cause of the High Evolutionary himself. These would include Ka-Zar of the Savage Land on Earth when the Evolutionary Vim tried to establish a colony on the subterranean paradise only to be thwarted and destroyed by Ka-Zar who rallied up the rest of the land's inhabitants. The High Evolutionary himself would ally with Adam Warlock and High Priestess Ayesha of the Sovereign to serve as his enforcers, only for the Guardians' interference to eventually give Warlock a more balanced and peaceful view on reality and left the clutches of his controlling mother and the High Evolutionary.
Back on Earth, the Evolutionary would be reunited with his Knights of the Wundagore around the early 2010s, although he could come at an altercation with one of the Knights named Man-Beast had succeeded his responsibility over the Knights as its leader for the past several decades in the Evolutionary's absence. Allying himself with the mutant Exodus, Man-Beast would try to claim his creator's Citadel within Mount Wundagore for his own and help Exodus establish mutant supremacy now that the Evolutionary was here for him to challenge, only for Man-Beast and his allies to be defeated by the reluctant but necessary joint forces of the X-Men, the Evolutionary, and the Knights who wanted to to be free from the Man-Beast's reign. After the Man-Beast's defeat, he and his faction were completely de-evolved into their original primitive states by their own creator before the latter would leave Earth with some of his more loyal Knights and leaving those who wished to remain as guardians of Mount Wundagore.
Around the early 2020s, the High Evolutionary had founded the Forever Sector on a planet OrgoCorp had colonized, wherein he had created its inhabitants called the New Immortals after being inspired by his enemies and situational allies on Earth, who were mutants. He would learn that the mutation of life on Earth among many other planets was a product of the Celestial Gardeners' universe-wide genetic engineering millions of years before life on the blue planet was even vast.
When Counter-Worlds Collide
Originally a series of depraved experiments enacted in the name of survival and evolution, a brutal conflict with his past creations has led to reveal of the High Evolutionary's true face
After his battle with the Guardians of the Galaxy and the destruction of his Forever Sector, the High Evolutionary later turned up alive and rededicated to his goal of advancing human evolution to a level to rival the multiversal Beyonders, of which he which he had learned through the Enclave's precursor organization, the Order of the Evolutionary Ascension, as well its associated groups and discovered that the fate of their universe would be at stake due to the Beyonders' malignant inter-universal quest of accelerating the heat death of the multiverse in the name of their supreme, Sinnu Sarrum, who sought for the end of everything simply since she believed that it was the fate of all realities to be reunited with oblivion before it could still be reborn into one world in her own image. Upon learning the godly Beyonders' cause through the ancient texts of his predecessors, the High Evolutionary attacked and betrayed what was left of the Enclave in anguish, believing that he was deceived by geriatric fanatics into putting his life's work in the name of gods that would simply kill all of life once they have attained greater power over the multiverse.
With most of his followers, supporters, and creations' assistance and faith towards the High Evolutionary growing even stronger as he was more than determined to save life across the universe from the foretold cosmic cataclysm; the mad scientist has rededicated to guiding and enhancing the evolution of life as flexible and formidable so it could to stand and fight against god-like cosmic beings like the Celestials and even the Beyonders, and perhaps even outlive their catastrophic multiversal destruction thanks to the Evolutionary's vast array of groundbreaking technology, knowing that it could end at any moment. His image and reputation of godhood was fueled, although truth be told, it was also another justification that he had needed so he could heighten the intensity and take the risks and severities of his sacred cause, which included him revisiting and abducting his former "failures" on every possible planet such as Earth, which were carried out by his various associates which included Agatha Harkness and her clandestine coven of chaos, Drhovo & the rest of the New Men, and Doniva & his other "Star Children" (individuals whose cosmic or energy-based abilities were derived from the genetic templates of dead powerful beings the Evolutionary had collected and/or slain), as a part of his new test subjects in the all-new city-wide Citadel of Science, which was settled and was currently being expanded on Counter-Earth ever since the destruction of the Forever Sector in the past couple of years.
Among his recaptured creations — whether direct or a creation of his creations — include a few members of the Guardians of the Galaxy such as Rocket Raccoon with his fellow Halfworders such as Lylla Otter, Teefs Wal Rus, and Queenspade O'Hare, the Maximoff twins Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver, the Sovereign messianic figure Adam Warlock, and other thousands more enhanced and superpowered beings across the universe that were brought to life by the Evolutionary's supreme yet morbid mind and his loyal followers.
As an extension of his long-term plan in motion, the Evolutionary's mission to either evolve or exterminate his subjects in a series of tests or games to assemble his so-called Champions, were cut short when the equally powerful allies of his former experiments have tracked down the whereabouts of their missing associates. With these rescuers including the likes of the rest of the Guardians, the Young Avengers, the Masters of the Mystic Arts, and the X-Men, the Evolutionary had sent his new batch of genetically-modified warriors, some of which were bred from the genetic templates of his rebellious yet powerful creations, to deal with them so they could potentially become additional subjects in his experimentations, at least to those who would end up surviving his warriors' attack. The pact of heroes were victorious, and were able to set foot on Counter-Earth to confront the High Evolutionary in the flesh and bring back their captured comrades so they could return to their respective homes in one piece.
The High Evolutionary's determination was almost shaken after Doctor Voodoo had unleashed upon him the hundreds of hundreds of souls of those he had exterminated throughout the decades, although according to Wyndham himself, it was the final push he needed to strip himself off his humanity, which he saw both as a hindrance and a flaw due to the evil that humans "inherently" possess. Not long after, the heroes would learn from the New Men that the Evolutionary intended to crash Counter-Earth into Earth by harnessing the cosmic energies harnessed by his creations like the Maximoffs' reality-altering hex and cosmic speed, destroying both worlds in the process if it succeeds, in his desperate attempt to further evolution by starting things over from scratch, considering how much Earth had bothered him. The Evolutionary believed that destroying Earth would give him a closure to his roots with humanity, only for his own enemies to stop his ultimate plan.
Once the Scarlet Witch has freed herself thanks to her teammates, she would even try to offer a more peaceful solution to his goal of Counter-Earth by briefly manipulating the planet's reality into a societal utopia he could only imagine, but not truly achieve. Because of this, the High Evolutionary was only insulted even more as his pride was crushed, seeing that his own creation, one that he considered to be a failure, have figured out the powers he had given her to be more efficient without without his guidance, the same manner to which he was enraged that Halfworlders, notably Rocket Raccoon, and the Sovereign such as Adam Warlock were capable of living and rebuilding their home planet without him or the assistance of OrgoCorp. After the heroic alliance have successfully thwarted Earth from a collision course with the Evolutionary's planet, the next series of battles on Counter-Earth concluded with the heroes liberating most of the subjects of Counter-Earth from the Evolutionary's merciless and torturous clutches as well as enlightening the truth of their creator to its residents, albeit at the cost of unspeakable casualties which consisted of some of the Evolutionary's creations who sacrificed their lives to rescue their fellow lifeforms while fighting his deadly knights. His mask was removed during the final battle against the heroes, revealing his deformed face.
Taking as much of his remaining followers as he could with the help of Harkness and his new powerful daughter Luminous (using genetic templates of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver), the High Evolutionary felt disappointment in the "potential" of the very creations who rebelled against him and was forced to flee his greatest planet through his mobile Arête Laboratories and left Counter-Earth to completely collapse on its own gravity as it inevitably imploded without the Arête's structural support, but not before his enemies were also able to evacuate most of the creations out of Counter-Earth, the ones the Evolutionary had carelessly abandoned in his intention to start over. Even if he feared that time was running out, he was impulsively motivated by self-preservation and survival against the Beyonders.
Evolution Enigma
However, when the Evolutionary had faced the alliance of his creations and their allies who renounced him and his twisted ways which became the catalyst that destroyed Counter-Earth, he resorted to coming in hiding and halted his progress to remake any successors to Counter-Earth when his heroic creations had stopped him. However, he would come clashing with the cosmic traveler and technologically based conqueror originally from Earth known as Ultron, a constantly-upgrading being who was more than interested with converting or replacing all of life with A.I. which contrasts and to an extent, loathes organic life yet these two share a similar notion and motivation with evolution being the constant of their existence, Ultron came to the realization that ascending to a state beyond organic and technology would enable him to surpass the impediments of both forms, believing it was the key to his ultimate end.
Around the time his rival was rising to power on a galactic scale, the Evolutionary would also come face to face with Adam Warlock once again who had reassemble a few selected yet powerful members of his Infinity Watch combined with the assistance of the Silver Surfer, having Galactus as his companion, would cross paths with the Eternals and the Thane, the son of Thanos, in order face and deal with the emergence of two powerful forces that has grown to a universal scale: a galactically empowered Ultron and his imperial mobile techno-organic fleet of Phalanx clashing with the Evoltionary and his greater creations along with his allies, the dark sorcerer Agatha Harkness and the rest of his Star Children, as they suddenly encountered each other in the deepest regions of space, with both conflicting forces abruptly dealing with a greater threat beyond any other being's comprehension that would determine the life of every living speck in the universe.
While battling the Evolutionary in a war of wits and warfare, Ultron took over Warlock's body and deceived a faction of the Eternals to which he tried turning them against their allies to gain the upper hand against the Evolutionary in their game of evolution, convincing how the Eternals were mere victims of the Celestials for wasting and sacrificing their lives for organic life, including the deities whom they fought alongside with for thousands of years, when the Eternals themselves — technorganic beings — could be the only form of life standing and thriving across the universe. In addition to coercing the Warlock by taking over his body, Ultron extracted the memories of the Eternals to track down the Celestial Gardeners, to which his growing armada ended up battling the godly beings. Ultron slayed the majority, which included the Prime Celestial Arishem, while controlling the bodies of the weaker rest and absorbing their cosmic energy until he left an amount that could overwhelm him. However, Thane and the surviving Eternals would bid their time to make their greatest move, dividing their tasks with one group respawning the Phoenix Force from its cosmic egg ever since it left Earth through the assistance of the Watchers, with Thane becoming its momentary host to free Warlock and the Eternals, with the other faction visiting Earth to track down and ask for the help of Ultron's father: the one and only Hank Pym, in the Infinity Watch's last mission to level the playing field against both villainous masterminds.
The smaller alliance were able to even the odds when they convinced Harkness about how she wouldn't find a fulfilling purpose by merely being the Evolutionary's servant, and such an attempt even inspired Jocasta to eventually defect from Ultron's abuse and manipulation. Realizing that she was capable of more and destined for greater things which could even redeem herself, Harkness helped the Infinity Watch and the Eternals defeat both momentary ally, while Jocasta helped Pym and other fellow allied geniuses with paralyzing Ultron and shutting down his constantly evolving power. While the alliance's final acts against the two villains resulted in the massive depowering of Galactus and ultimate sacrifices of Jocasta and the Eternal Ikaris to cancel Ultron's control over the Celestials, Harkness called upon Dormammu from the Dark Dimension and used the power he bestowed to her. Harkness overloaded the two masterminds with dark magic — something that neither of them has little comprehension of harnessing and controlling — which slowly stripped Ultron of his Celestial powers due to it being negated by the magic, before finally merging the organic Evolutionary and the synthezoid Ultron into one body, due to Harkness letting Dormammu knew how much of a threat both beings could be to his dimension if either of them won their "game" of evolution.
Ends of the Earth
To stop both their fatal schemes on the universe, the High Evolutionary was unwillingly merged with his rival, Ultron, into a singular body by Agatha Harkness, nicknamed the "Evolutron"
The merging process seemed to have killed the High Evolutionary, but in actuality, both Ultron's digital consciousness and the Evolutionary's organic soul have merged due to Harkness' powers when she tapped into a fraction of Dormammu's power from the Dark Dimension, placing two personalities which would have to battle for dominance over their single body overtime. In a similar fashion when Ultron first drifted across space for the first time, he was now alone as while he was merged with the body of the High Evolutionary, him being restrained inside a Vibranium casket built by Phastos, with additional designs from Janet van Dyne and Pym which shuts down Ultron's system as long as the latter is inside it (labelling them as a gift for the Infinity Watch), along with the casket being magically locked by Harkness' dark magic were all Ultron's greatest nightmare which he never realized.
Fortunate for the gestalt machine, the merged Ultron and the Evolutionary manages to break out of their imprisonment due to the extreme heat death spreading across the cosmos, moving all known magic and any other form of energy during the final incursion of the last known universes to what could only be described by mortals as the nothingness. Ultron barely escaped his seemingly eternal drift when he was able to latch on and sneak himself onto a wandering multiversal life raft before he would've "drowned" from the draining effects of heat death, infiltrating the system of the ship as a means to preserve himself. The group of passengers inside the raft, the exclusive team of multiversal menaces named the Cabal, were inadvertently freed from their raft and awoken years after the final incursions, setting foot on the newly formed Battleworld, a patchwork planet composed of the final realities destroyed during the incursions.
While their knowledge on the megalomaniacal machine had led them to act towards him with hostility, the Cabal reluctantly but necessarily teams up with the gestalt being after he was able convince them that they had the same goal, nicknaming him "Evolutron", just as as they would eventually ally themselves with the surviving heroes and villains, mostly from their native universe and a reality wherein Ultron had previously ruled Earth for a decade, to destroy the Beyonders' Dominion and ultimately, find a way to restore the multiverse to its natural state and order. While Evolutron had seemingly kept his words towards his newfound allies through the words of the High Evolutionary's spirit, Ultron enacted his ulterior motives by hijacking the Technarch-inhabited regions of Battleworld and tried submitting most of its techno-organic citizens to his will before ordering them to attack both the heroes, villains, and the Beyonders.
However, his efforts — combined with the Evolutionary's personality fighting back in their same body — only woke up the Technarch and the rest of the technological creatures into realizing the true nature and origin of their reality. Ultron's plan ultimately backfired, to which mobs of enraged Technarch were able to paralyze and infiltrate his mind due to him still possessing a technological form in his gestalt body, and completely erase his mainframe. Ultron's deletion inevitably followed up the passing of the High Evolutionary's passing, but the latter felt at peace knowing that life would always continue to find a way to evolve and persist, even as the multiverse seemed to be waning on its final world.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Superhuman Intelligence and Self-Evolution: The High Evolutionary has evolved his own brain to its full potential; his ceaseless cosmic travels has also granted him virtually unlimited knowledge and intellectual ability, and doesn't intend to halt as a part of his goal to perfect every lifeform he discovers in the universe. The High Evolutionary was and has repetitively exposed himself to his upgraded variations of his Evolutionary Accelerator machines, granting him superhuman abilities by accelerating his personal evolution, which could include his own capabilities through continuous bio-augmentation thanks to his access to various advanced technology.
- Armor-Powered Psionics
- Clairaudience
- Clairvoyance
- Animal Telepathy
- Telepathic Communication
- Cyberpathy
- Cosmic Awareness
- Danger Sense
- Astral Projection
- Levitation
- Omnilinguism
- Mental Invisibility
- Mental Probe
- Force Fields
- Dimensional Travel
- Mass Manipulation
- Matter Creation
- Artifact Creation
- Elemental Creation
- Life-form Creation
- Mechanical Creation
- Missile Creation
- Matter Spray
- Psychokinesis
- Telepathy
- Flight
- Energy Blasts
- Total Recall Memory
- Artificial Evolution
- Artificial Devolution
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| Strength* |
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| Speed* |
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| Energy Projection* |
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Abilities
- Super-Genius Intelligence
- Master Scientist
- Master Geneticist
- Master Engineer
- Expert Theoretician
Strength level
Class 100+
Weaknesses
- God Complex and Narcissism
- Hubris and Arrogance
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Evolutionary Exoskeleton
- Automatic Defense
- Reconstitution Protocol
- Life-Support System
- Genetic Manipulation Technology
- Prosthetic Face Masks
Transportation:
- Arête Laboratories
- Citadel of Science
- Spheres of the Evolutionary
- Counter-Earth (formerly; destroyed)
- Forever Sector (formerly; destroyed)
- Wundagore II (formerly; destroyed)
- Orgosphere (formerly)
- Halfworld (formerly)
Weapons:
- Various advanced technological inventions
Notes
- The High Evolutionary's belief and outlook on creation can be described as either agnostic, atheistic, or misotheistic throughout the span of his views on gods and cosmic beings. His disdain and skepticism on the concept of an omnibenevolent god must've rooted from his childhood with poor parental figures as he had an abusive father, absent mother, and an aunt whom he mostly believed to have simply raised him out of pity until he left her household to continue his scientific pursuits with the Enclave.
- While he had never completed his Ph.D in Oxford after being kicked out due to controversy, Wyndham would nonetheless keep on studying on his own and applying his knowledge on his experiments that the Enclave and his associates would comfortably refer to him as "Doctor" out of impeccable respect and honor towards his brilliance in the realm of science, particularly genetics and bioengineering, as well as him being granted with certified academic awarded of a doctor, or counterparts of it, outside of Earth by scholastic and research institutes across the galaxy.
- Only a few individuals — including the Enclave, a few trusted members of OrgoCorp, Ka-Zar of the Savage Land, the Guardians, the Avengers, and X-Men — were either somewhat or completely aware of the High Evolutionary's true identity and origins as the human Herbert Wyndham.
- Only a few individuals — including the Enclave, a few trusted members of OrgoCorp, Ka-Zar of the Savage Land, the Guardians, the Avengers, and X-Men — were either somewhat or completely aware of the High Evolutionary's true identity and origins as the human Herbert Wyndham.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Avengers Vol 1 17
Trivia
- The High Evolutionary's views on cloning have been inconsistent that it sometimes made him hypocritical even to the eyes of his subordinates, followers, and enemies, disliking it at first having regarded it as a process that stagnates evolution, whereas he seeks to speed it up and ascend its inferior state.
- However, he would try and justify his actions of cloning lifeforms as they mere expendables that were useful for the creation of his outermost armies which he expects to die in battle, seeking to perfect and fortify his genetically-enhanced and far "purer" knights more as his greater warriors.
- Through his public intergalactic bioengineering organization OrgoCorp, the High Evolutionary has taken advantage of conflicts and across various planets and other inhabited celestial bodies in almost every corner in the universe as a threefold clean-up construction agency, a charity group, and a genetics research organization that saved races from extinction that were affected during the likes of the millennia-long Kree-Skrull War, Thanos' many genocides throughout the span of his Infinity Quest and subsequent Decimation (1990s-2020), the Magus and the Universal Church of Truth's Infinity Crusade (2021).
- While his acts of salvation and preservation of life were considered to be a universally altruistic by those he had saved or assisted for decades, they were nevertheless ultimately beneficial cover-ups for the Evolutionary's true dark and morbid nature in his corrupt mission and vision to perfect all of life in the universe and eventually, they were exposed to the public in the final years of his reign (2023-2027). While most were disillusioned and enlightened with the truth behind their "savior," a good number of followers were only in denial and remained deluded that they continued to worship him and berated his "heretics."
See Also
- Appearances of Herbert Wyndham (Earth-61615)
- Character Gallery: Herbert Wyndham (Earth-61615)
- Quotations by Herbert Wyndham (Earth-61615)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: High Evolutionary · Herbert Edgar Wyndham · Herbert Wyndham (Earth-61615)
Links and References
- None.