Biography - page 10
Simon's experiences with the Lethal Legion and Osborn's reign turned him bitter and opposed to the Avengers as a concept, and he started to descend into an unstable state of mind. As had happened in the past, Simon's unstable mind led to an unstable body, and his ionic energy form became more chaotic at the same time. Wonder Man developed a myopic mania, blaming the Avengers for all the world's recent problems, tying them to Wanda's breakdown, the creation of Ultron, the tolerance of the Hulk, the Superhuman Civil War, the Skrull invasion and Osborn's rise to power. He came to believe the Avengers brand was unsalvageable and needed to be retired for the good of the world. Perhaps he had a point, but Simon's viewpoint became narrow and unyielding as his instability grew. It continued, despite Osborn's fall from grace and Steve Rogers assuming his position as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and leader of the Avengers. Even after Steve pardoned Simon and got him released from jail, Simon refused an invitation to join the Avengers. He cautioned Steve that, if he persisted with supporting the Avengers, Wonder Man would step in to stop him. [Avengers (4th series) #1]
Although he was hurt by Simon's rejection, Steve Rogers did not take the warning seriously and began assembling Avengers teams again. True to his word, Wonder Man arrived at Avengers 
Tower just after the team formed. He attacked his former teammates, screaming about how Rogers did not listen to his warning and how the Avengers ultimately caused more problems than they solved. His ranting only went on for a brief period, however, before he disappeared in a flux of ionic energy. [Avengers (4th series) #2] Days later, Iron Man and Thor tracked Wonder Man down to talk to him, but he was still in no mood to listen. Simon insisted the Avengers were a threat to the world, and would not stop until they were disbanded again. [Avengers (4th series) #7]
To their peril, the Avengers continued to see Simon's accusations as an argument with a friend, not a potential threat. Willing to press his point by force, Wonder Man assembled a team of Revengers to stand beside him, including Century, Atlas, D-Man, Captain Ultra, Goliath, Devil-
Slayer, Anti-Venom and Ethan Edwards, aka Virtue. Simon brought the fight to Avengers Mansion, reducing it to rubble as his team battled Luke Cage's Avengers in residence. Despite their past, he even beat on Carol Danvers in single combat, all the while lecturing the Avengers that they only needed to disband and he would stop.
After trouncing the mansion team, the Revengers moved on to an assault on Avengers Tower, while Wonder Man also used his Hollywood connections to assemble a press conference. He brought his case against the Avengers to the media and the people, acknowledging the team's accomplishments, but saying they simply weren't enough in light of the team's failures. Despite their friendship, Iron Man had prepared for Wonder Man going rogue. He assaulted Simon during his press conference and contained his energy form in an ionic trap of his own design.
Imprisoned, Simon Williams was confronted by Hank McCoy, one of his oldest friends. During their conversation, the depths of Simon's identity crisis were laid bare. In the past, Simon feared 
he was no longer truly human, but some sort of ionic energy matrix that merely remembered being human. Now, he was no longer convinced he was real at all. Simon's mind had latched onto the idea that, since Wanda wished him back to life because she needed him, maybe he wasn't even Simon at all, but Wanda's vision of him. This thought was both freeing and crippling for Wonder Man, and it led him down the path he had wandered. As the public began to turn against the Avengers on the outside, Simon Williams melted away from his cell, vanishing as a trickle of pure ionic energy. [Avengers Annual (2nd series) #1, New Avengers Annual (2nd series) #1]
When Wonder Man next appeared, his personality was beginning to shift back towards a stable medium. He came to Captain America seeking forgiveness and redemption, but their talk was 
impulsively interrupted by the Red Hulk, who saw Simon's arrival as an attack. After disappearing, Simon returned during a gathering in Central Park, joining the original Avengers on a mission to the Microverse which succeeded in rescuing the believed-dead Janet van Dyne. In the aftermath, the Avengers started to accept Wonder Man again, as he moved closer to reconciliation with the team he had denounced months earlier. [Avengers (4th series) #31-34]
Wonder Man resolved his conflicting opinions on super-heroics by adopting a staunch stance of pacifism. He intended to spread his message of non-violence in the hopes that the Avengers and other heroes would not be so quick to use force in situations that may not require it. His newfound 
principles were tested almost immediately as Wanda requested Simon join her in the Avengers Unity Division, a joint task force formed after the war between the Avengers and the X-Men to progressively bring mutants and non-mutant super-heroes together under the Avengers banner. Despite the ongoing difficulty being a member of the Avengers would present his pacifism, Simon was unable to deny Wanda. He and the Wasp returned to the Avengers specifically to act as the public relations arm of the Unity Division and smooth over race relations and growing anti-mutant tensions using the Avengers brand.
Their efforts were threatened from the start when the Grim Reaper attacked the Avengers Unity Division at their inaugural press conference. Eric had apparently turned suicidal and discovered he was incapable of killing himself, ultimately concluding that Wanda's spell that brought him back to life could only be reversed by Wanda herself or, possibly, Simon who also was revived by her power. As the Grim Reaper attempted "Death By Cape", Simon tried to reason with his brother and still refused to raise his fists in combat. When Eric struck him down, however, Rogue stole a portion of Simon's power to fight back FOR him. Unfortunately, Rogue misjudged how strong Simon truly was, and she accidentally killed Grim Reaper with a single blow. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #5]
Simon was quietly distraught over the death of his brother. He tried turning to Wanda for comfort, but she rejected his advances in favor of keeping things platonic between them. Wonder Man's 
grief was put on hold when the Grim Reaper returned to life, empowered by the Celestial Lifeseed and Deathseed stolen by the Apocalypse Twins, making him one of the Four Horsemen of Death. The revived Eric attacked Simon at Avengers Mansion and captured him for the twins, who had also secured Wanda in the meantime. The Apocalypse Twins wanted Wanda to cast a spell, "rapturing" mutantkind into a space ark, abandoning Earth before a final genocidal war began between the two factions of humanity. Wanda was swayed by the Twins' future knowledge that the newly telepathic Red Skull would use her as a weapon to force his twisted hatred onto the people of Earth. Wanda was not as powerful as she once was, however, and to complete the spell she would need Simon as a power source to fulfill the rapture. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #9-11]
In the interest of letting Wanda feel she made her own decision, the Apocalypse Twins released Simon into Wanda's care. Because of his love for Wanda, Simon agreed to act as her "battery" for the spell, trusting her to do what was right. Out of earshot of the Twins, Wanda confessed to Simon her real plan was to bring the mutants to the ark not as sleepers in the cryo-stasis vaults, but as an army to defeat the Apocalypse Twins and save the Earth. Because he trusted her even 
before hearing her full plan, Simon had earned Wanda's heart again and the two of them made love while the ark was prepped for the Apocalypse Twins' final move. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #12-13]
Wanda and Simon prepared to perform the hex spell, a taxing one which would require nearly all of Simon’s ionic energies to coalesce. Unfortunately, the Apocalypse Twins were prepared for treachery. Not only was their technology sufficient enough to force the mutants into the vaults once they arrived (regardless of Wanda's intentions), they had also seeded the Avengers Unity Division with mistrust and half-truths, leaving Wolverine, Rogue and Sunfire of the team believing Wanda had turned against mutants again, as she did in the Decimation.
The X-Men arrived to stop the Avengers, forcibly separating Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch during the spell. Rogue, distraught and off-balance after the death of Charles Xavier, went further 
than anyone expected (other than the Twins) and murdered Wanda with Wolverine’s stolen powers. Simon raced back to Wanda as she lay on the brink of death. Wanda still wanted to use the last of her power to complete the spell and bring forth her army of mutants to oppose the Apocalypse Twins. Restarting the spell meant draining more of Simon’s energies than they expected, though, and so Simon died moments before Wanda, as his energies were consumed by the hex casting. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #14]
Things only got worse after that. The spell succeeded in summoning all the mutants of Earth, but Uriel and Eimin were able to contain them in stasis despite Wanda's intentions. Rogue and Captain America died in battle soon after Wanda and Simon, but worse yet the Earth itself was destroyed by Exitar, the Celestial Executioner. Fortunately, only six years later, and with the help of Kang, the surviving members of the Unity Division succeeded in casting their minds back in time to their earlier bodies, allowing them to avoid Rogue's mistake and undo the Twins' plan.
The Avengers Unity Division gathered and reassessed their options. While several of the heavies went after the tachyon dam, Simon, Wanda and Rogue returned to Earth to supplement the defenses against Exitar. Rogue presented herself to absorb ALL the power of Earth's defenders, combining Avenger and X-Man alike for true unity of purpose to hold back the Celestial long enough for Thor to reclaim Jarnbjorn, the Wrecker of Worlds. Wonder Man accepted Rogue's 
gestalt idea first and took hold of her hands so she could absorb his powers. A side-effect, though, was that Simon's unique ionic energy form was absorbed as well, causing him to be physically absorbed into Rogue instead of merely passing on his powers. Rogue accumulated hundreds of powers in a true test of her ability and, with the aid of a redirected Sentry, held off Exitar until Thor killed the Executioner.
Rogue overwhelmed herself in the task, however, and began to suffer under the accumulated thoughts and memories after her focused goal was completed. Wanda attempted to use chaos magic to reverse Rogue's abilities, restoring the powers to the various heroes she touched. The Scarlet Witch was mostly successful, but Wonder Man remained the sole exception. For some reason, Simon and his ionic form bonded with Rogue like none other. Even after weeks of stasis therapy, neither Rogue nor Wanda could extract Simon's energy form and powers from inside of her. Even worse for Rogue, the years of effort she spent learning to control her powers were gone as well, and she once more couldn't touch another person without draining from them. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #21-23]
When events grew even more chaotic after that, with the rise of the Red Onslaught and the Inversion effect turning the Avengers and X-Men against each other again, Simon's plight was largely forgotten. When Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch learned Magneto wasn't their true father, they went in search of the High Evolutionary to learn more about their origins. Rogue and the Unity Squad pursued them to Counter-Earth after they went missing, but she was captured by the High Evolutionary's chief scientist. During his experimentations on her, the scientist claimed to have expunged Simon's consciousness entirely. [Uncanny Avengers (2nd series) #1]
In fact, Simon's mind went into a dormant state, unaware of the outside world or the passage of time. He was eventually restored by accident months later when Rogue kissed Deadpool and absorbed his regenerative powers. This healing factor acted a circuit breaker for Simon's energy, causing it to escape Rogue's body and materialize independently of her once more. [Uncanny Avengers (3rd series) #22-23]
Before he could pick up the pieces of his life, the world fell into chaos. An evil version of Captain America manipulated the United States government into giving him dictator levels of power and control over the country. Rogue and most of the Unity Division were trapped behind a Darkforce barrier in New York while Wanda was corrupted by Chthon on behalf of the evil Rogers and his HYDRA forces. Simon joined Hawkeye and Black Widow in the underground, fighting against HYDRA's oppressive control. [Secret Empire #0-10]
In the aftermath, Simon met with Hank and Wanda to decide where he stood. Wanda, unfortunately, had moved on spiritually in her life, and no longer felt the same as she did for Simon in the Apocalypse Twins' ark. Simon dejectedly accepted her preferences and they parted on awkward terms. Wonder Man and Beast had a better reconciliation, with each man providing a much needed shoulder for the other. With his acting fortune used up by Deadpool to fund the Avengers, and Wanda active on the team, Simon didn't know what his future held. He remained positive about what was to come, however, and expected his life would be full of wonders. [Uncanny Avengers (3rd series) #28,30]