The series, set in the shared Marvel Universe, stars the titular Wonder Man, Simon Williams, an immortal superhero who's a member of The Avengers.
When the supervillain Ladykiller is captured after Simon foils an assassination attempt, Simon is persuaded that he ought to try to reform her. His attempts to do so (aided by Ms. Marvel and the Beast) will be the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Neal Saroyan, "My Fair Superhero".
But Ladykiller has no intention of being reformed, and Simon and his friends have some doubts about the morality of their actions. It may not end well...
Wonder Man (2006) provides the following tropes:
- Bad Future: Simon's far future prologues show the aftermath of a nuclear war and a dry, desolate Africa where nothing lives.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: The rest of the Nobility kill Big Bad Neal Saroyan after his plan leads to their teammate Huan's death.
- Big Bad: Neal Saroyan, leader of the Nobility. He arranged for Huan's capture by ensuring that Wonder Man would foil her assassination attempt, then used Mind Control to nudge Simon into the rehabilitation scheme. All of which was to get Huan into a position where he could reassert his mental control over her and use her to poison the Avengers.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Implied. Ladykiller is never shown to have actual powers, and her origin shows nothing but training, but is never directly said to be a normal human. Either way, she's fast, strong and durable enough to brawl with superheroes.
- Curse Cut Short: Simon during his fight with the assassin, Ladykiller.Wonder Man: Ah-ah. None of that. This is Hollywood, and this fight's been rated PG.
- Dark Action Girl: Ladykiller, a lethal assassin who dresses in black.
- Downer Ending: Huan wrecks the plan to poison the Avengers, but then immediately kills herself to escape from Neal's mind control. Neal is dead, killed by the Nobility, before Simon reaches him. The Nobility themselves have vanished, and are never brought to justice.
- Dying as Yourself: Huan kills herself before Neal's Mind Control can ensnare her again.
- Killed Off for Real: Huan and Neal are both dead at the end of the series. As of July 2022, neither has been resurrected.
- Meaningful Name: A Bilingual Bonus one, as it's never explained in the series. Saroyan is an Armenian surname that means "prince" - and Neal Saroyan is the leader of the Nobility.
- Monumental Damage: The remains of the Statue of Liberty appear in issue #3. The statue was relocated to Paris after relations between the United States and France break down.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Averted when the rest of the Nobility intervene, but Lord Thunder has to be stopped from stabbing himself in the chest after Saroyan tells him to kill himself.
- Redemption Equals Death: Ladykiller kills herself to escape from Neal's Mind Control and thwart his plan to poison the Avengers.
- Shout-Out: Issue #3 directly references Planet of the Apes using the Statue of Liberty. In the same issue, Beast uses Frasier Crane's "I'm listening" catchphrase, which is a reference to Kelsey Grammer, who played Beast in X-Men: The Last Stand.
- Title Drop: The My Fair Super Hero subtitle is also the title of the documentary Neal plans to make (although there's some discussion about whether Super Hero is one word, two words or hyphenated).
- The Unfought: Simon never actually meets or fights the Nobility, with the exception of Huan. He knows Neal Saroyan, but has no idea he has powers, or that he's the Big Bad behind the scheme, until the very end - and by that point the rest of the Nobility have already killed him in revenge for Huan's death.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The whole series is framed as a flashback, remembered by the immortal Simon in the future. Each issue's prologue moves further into the future.
- Whole-Plot Reference: An invoked trope, as Neal actively persuades Simon to test his theories on rehabilitation via Ladykiller, which he intends to use as the basis for a new documentary film. It's very deliberately modelled on My Fair Lady and he intends to call it My Fair Superhero.
