BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
While his theories were finally being put into practice, Wyndham received a surprise when 
Jonathan Drew returned to Wundagore. Drew claimed to be possessed by the spirit of a medieval mage named Magnus, the former lover and disciple of Morgan le Fay. Magnus reported that he and Morgan’s cult of the Darkhold once used that cursed tome to summon the Elder God known as Chthon. When Chthon proved intractable, they banished him back to his nether-plane, with only Mount Wundagore as his lingering foothold into this dimension. Magnus insisted Wyndham’s presence and mining activity threatened to release Chthon, but Herbert was a man of science and refused to believe in such hocus pocus. He thought only that Drew had suffered a breakdown following the loss of his wife and daughter, and was imagining things. [Amazing Spider-Man Annual #22]
Despite their differences of opinion, Wyndham and Magnus came to a meeting of the minds. If Wyndham would not leave Wundagore, then they needed to be prepared for the possibility of Chthon’s rise. Magnus suggested they train the New Men in the medieval tradition of knighthood, forging warriors who would be useful in the battle to come while also imposing a code of conduct and chivalry on the beast men to civilize them according to Wyndham’s standards. Intrigued by 
the possibility, Wyndham agreed to Magnus’ training regime and stylized himself as liege lord and master of the realm for Wundagore. Already taken to wearing his armor full time these days, Wyndham assumed the mantle of the Lord High Evolutionary, commander of these Knights of Wundagore. [Uncanny X-Men Annual #12]
As Magnus and the Evolutionary trained the New Men, a decade passed, perhaps several. Some of the New Men became envious towards Tagar and Porga, as their more human-like appearances made them seem closer to the master than others. Miles Warren was also sympathetic to the New Men and wanted to perform further studies in making them appear more human. However, Wyndham disagreed and felt the New Men should embrace their unique pedigree rather than worrying about emulating humans so closely. Warren worked closely with a jackal-man from the New Men, trying to evolve it further towards humanity, but the creature had a savage and unstable disposition. It attacked the local Transian villages, drawing attention to 
Wundagore and apparently even killed Warren’s family in a car crash. These incidents led to a division between Wyndham and Warren, the latter of whom took a faction of rogue New Men away from Wundagore to seek their own path towards evolution. [Scarlet Spider Unlimited #1]
The day Wyndham never expected came when Chthon truly rose again. Baron Russoff’s lycanthropy was a family curse also derived from the Darkhold. He became desperate enough to use the book again and read the Spell of Ascension to release Chthon in the hopes that his curse could be lifted. The Other, an elemental host and dread manifestation of Chthon’s power, arose first from the mountain. Unable to deny the truth any longer, the High Evolutionary joined his Knights in battle with the entity. They held their ground against the demon storm for hours until Magnus located Russoff while in his astral form. The long-dead mage possessed Russoff’s body to read the Spell of Binding, sending Chthon back into containment. [Uncanny X-Men Annual #12]
It was with a heavy cost, as Russoff died along with seventeen of the forty-two Knights in the High Evolutionary’s care. Wyndham regretted the deaths of his children and lamented over whether his dismissal of Chthon’s threat led them to this. With the Other, the werewolf and Magnus, the 
Evolutionary brooded on how his knowledge of science failed to prepare him for the existence of the supernatural, which he could no longer ignore. Magnus told Herbert he intended to depart now that the threat of Chthon had ended, returning Drew to his own mind and life. The High Evolutionary acknowledged Magnus by his true name for the first and last time as his cherished companion left the halls of Wundagore. [Web of Spider-Man Annual #4]
Much was happening on Wundagore the night of Chthon’s rise which is open to interpretation and contradiction. One tale, passed on by Bova, tells of a woman named Magda, pregnant and afraid of her husband’s strange powers, who stumbled onto Wundagore land. One of the Knights found the poor woman and brought her to Bova for care. Bova in turn alerted the High Evolutionary, and Wyndham instructed his servant to provide all the care that Magda required. Even as the Knights of Wundagore fought in the skies over the mountain with the Other, Bova was assisting Magda in giving birth to her twins, Wanda and Pietro. The children were born healthy but, unbeknownst to all present, Chthon marked the girl Wanda with his power as the Spell of Binding banished him from this realm once more. Shortly after the birth, Magda disappeared from the Citadel of Science and fled back into the hills, leaving her children behind.
Bova and the High Evolutionary pondered what to do with the twins, and Wyndham instructed Porga to search for potential guardians in the countryside. As it happened, an American couple named Bob and Madeline Frank arrived in Transia within a fortnight, also with child. Madeline’s first child had been born radioactive and mutated due to their previous exposure to radiation while working at a nuclear facility, and they sought the High Evolutionary’s supervision to guide their next pregnancy to a healthy birth. Porga intimated they might provide the Franks with the twins in addition to their own child, convincing Madeline Frank she gave birth to multiple children under 
anesthesia. Tragically, however, Madeline and her baby did not survive the labor. When Bova attempted to present Bob Frank with Wanda and Pietro as his own children, he fled Wundagore in grief over his wife’s death, leaving the babies behind. In time, the High Evolutionary located a Romany camp at the base of Wundagore. A couple named Django and Marya Maximoff had lost their children, Ana and Mateo, and so he offered them the twins to raise as their own. The Maximoffs eagerly agreed, and loved Wanda and Pietro from that day forward. [Giant-Size Avengers #1, Avengers (1st series) #185-187, Web of Spider-Man Annual #4]
However, a very different tale has also been told of those days. In this sequence of events, the High Evolutionary had an interest in evolving human genetics using infants long before his previously reported experiments on human beings. [Iron Man (5th series) #10] He scoured the countryside for human babies that might possess unique powers or genetic potential for him to exploit in his experiments. According to a cowardly Serbian priest, the Knights of Wundagore intimidated him into pointing the Evolutionary’s attention to Natalya Maximoff, the sorceress known as the Scarlet Witch, and her recently born twins. Dasha Kolarov, Natalya’s friend and sidekick, knew the story of how the High Evolutionary took the Scarlet Witch’s children and experimented on them to produce their fantastic powers, and Natalya stormed Wundagore to get her twins back. It was an epic battle, with the Scarlet Witch weaker than usual due to Chthon’s influence on the mountain, leading to her death. [Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #11-12] Or so the story goes. When Wanda Maximoff met the ghost of her birth mother on the Witches’ Road, she promised to take revenge on the High Evolutionary for Natalya’s death. Natalya corrected her daughter, claiming she didn’t die fighting the High Evolutionary, but rather the twins’ mysterious and unnamed father. Given that Natalya never returned from the mountain, Dasha may have only presumed and imagined her great battle with the Knights and the Evolutionary. [Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #14]
The High Evolutionary himself admitted to Wanda and Pietro that they weren’t mutants, but rather had been altered deliberately through his own experiments in evolution. After being unsatisfied with the results, Wyndham returned the twins to the Romany beneath a genetic mask that ensured they would read as typical mutants and hide his work. [Uncanny Avengers (2nd series) 
#4-5] The truth of his encounter with Natalya is obscured by lies and second-hand accounts, but the High Evolutionary allegedly held respect for her power, even after her death. He deliberately arranged for Wanda and Pietro to be delivered to Natalya’s blood relatives, her brother Django and his wife Marya, though at the time he hid the fact that he knew about the connection. [Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #12]
[Note: The High Evolutionary’s past is incredibly difficult to understand thanks to retcons, acknowledged lies, and the complications of Marvel-Time. First is Wyndham’s age. As a man attending college in 1930, he should have been 100 years old in his first appearance, for only events taking place during the Age of Marvels gave him youth and vitality beyond his years. Similarly, his oldest New Men must also have lifespans significantly longer than the average human, or the animals they evolved from. Admittedly, only a few topical references tie Wyndham’s youth to 1930, as opposed to “XX years ago, Marvel-Time,” outside of that one, long, complicated night on the mountain.
The fixed story of Wanda and Pietro’s birth that appeared from 1983 until 2015 mostly made sense, even if it was a Shakespearean comedy of errors. Roughly 30 years ago, two pregnant women arrived on Wundagore. One mother and one baby died, one father and one mother fled without taking any children with them. The High Evolutionary, a passive bystander for much of this drama, arranged for the surviving twins to be given to a third couple to raise. The first two couples definitely met during World War II, tying their ages to that event, but OHOTMU A-Z entries waived it away by saying the High Evolutionary put Wanda and Pietro in stasis next to Jessica Drew for however long Marvel-Time deemed it necessary.
Subsequent retcons, however, have turned the High Evolutionary (and by extension, Bova) into liars and active parties in the confusion. First, the idea that Wanda and Pietro were born first and then brought to Wundagore conflicts with the story that Chthon’s influence over her began the night she was born. Second, there is no longer any credible evidence that Magneto’s wife Magda was ever pregnant or on Wundagore. Third, the twins’ birth is now more firmly tied to the modern era – they could not have spent decades in stasis if their birth mother and their adopted father were siblings. But then, Bob Frank couldn’t have been presented with infants named Wanda and Pietro back in the 1950’s. Ultimately, the incomplete new origin of Wanda and Pietro creates a number of timeline problems surrounding the High Evolutionary and Wundagore which have yet to be resolved.]
Around the time that Chthon arose and Magnus / Drew departed, Jessica Drew was also released from stasis for the first time. The spider serum seemed to be having the desired effect, helping the young girl recover from radiation poisoning. The process was not complete, however, and the High Evolutionary felt it necessary to return Jessica to stasis following repeat exposures to his genetic accelerator until the full effects took root. Over time, Jessica grew into a young woman, 
receiving tutelage from Bova, and began moving freely among the Knights. However, they could sense she was different from them, and Jessica never felt fully at home among the New Men. Just as Bova kept a small cottage further down Mount Wundagore from the Citadel of Science, Jessica eventually moved on from Wundagore altogether and began living among the people of Transia. An emotional shock after the death of a young man she was seeing left Jessica amnesiac and in a virtual fugue state. Further manipulation by Count Otto Vermis and Hydra distorted her memories, and she had to rediscover her origins over time. At one point, her confused memories made her believe the High Evolutionary created her wholly from an arachnid with his accelerator, merely making her look human like Tagar and Porga. [Marvel Spotlight #32, Spider-Woman (1st series) #1]
[Note: Spider-Woman: Origin #1-5 would later completely rewrite the saga of the Drew family. All of Jonathan’s work was sponsored by Hydra, Jessica was born on Wundagore after mutating in utero after exposure to Drew’s invention, and Miriam went on the run from 
her husband and Hydra as Jessica lay in a coma for years in Hydra’s control. The High Evolutionary was completely written out of the story, with the exception of a “General Wyndham” who acted as a Hydra section chief overseeing Drew’s work. Jessica had a fully human nanny named Bova. After joining Hydra, Jessica experienced flashes of the High Evolutionary, Bova the cow-woman, and the werewolf killing her mother. These were specifically explained as delusions forced upon her mind by Hydra’s psychic implants to torment her if she thought about betraying Hydra.
Why Marvel and Bendis essentially tried to retcon the High Evolutionary and the New Men out of existence at one point is unknown. Spider-Woman (7th series) #4-10 would later use both the classic High Evolutionary and the Origin version of the Drew family saga side-by-side. No mention was made of “General Wyndham.” These elements are completely incongruous with each other for various reasons. Now Miriam didn’t die on Wundagore, but her death is what led to Herbert fashioning his armor. Now Jon was an indentured scientist to Hydra, except when he left for several years to be possessed by Magnus and inspire the Knights of Wundagore. As a result, we have chronicled the original story of Wyndham and the Drews above, and the only new material relevant to Wyndham below.]
When Miriam Drew went on the run from Hydra, she knew she needed some advantage to stay ahead of them. She first turned to Miles Warren, but he had become too unstable to rely upon, and so she met with Herbert Wyndham. Although it wasn’t his field per se, Wyndham agreed to grow ultimately seventy-five clones of Miriam as potential decoys. [Spider-Woman (7th series) #5] Before they could be strategically disseminated in the world, however, Hydra located and murdered the real Miriam. [Spider-Woman: Origin #3] Herbert also discovered his work in the unfamiliar area of cloning was flawed. The Miriam clones had a tendency to deteriorate 
psychologically. Wyndham managed to sustain the majority of the batch as lab support for a remote facility, using mental blockers engineered to keep them in line. As it happened, he also assisted Octavia Vermis, daughter of Hydra section chief Count Otto Vermis. Octavia broke from Hydra after being experimented on, and she wanted a cloned daughter of herself to raise. Octavia was vicious and exacting, though, murdering her daughter as a failure several times. Wyndham perhaps appreciated this asinine “trial by error” method of parenting, and provided Octavia with new clones over the years. [Spider-Woman (7th series) #9-10]