Wundagore II (planet; former home to the High Evolutionary; Knights of Wundagore/New Men)

wundagoreii-planet-from space WUNDAGORE II

Official Name: Wundagore II;
name prior to colonization by the New Men unrevealed

Nature: Extraterrestrial planet (allegedly the 5th planet in the Sirius star system, Milky Way galaxy; see comments);
presumably Earth-like in terms of gravity, atmosphere, etc., as the New Men did not require any sort of life support, etc.

knights_of_wundagore-im110-space

Natives: "Swamp creatures";
presumably some unidentified semi-humanoid race previously existed there

Inhabitants: Wundagorians/Knights of Wundagore/New Men/"Sons of the Lost Creator" (notably "Lady Ewe" (and female counterparts to all of the original Knights arriving there), Sir Hogg, Sir Lyan, Sir Ram (successor and likely son or descendant);
unidentified bull, a cow woman, dog, deer, goat, horse, lizard, monkey, rabbit, rat, possibly an anteater, a fox or jackal and various other New Men; a bear may or may not have been evolved into one of the New Men);
formerly Sir Lepard, Sir Ossilot, Sir Porga, Sir Ram (all deceased); formerly Count Tagar, the High Evolutionary (Herbert Wyndham)

Population: Unrevealed;
the High Evolutionary brought 38 male New Men and then created a mate for each of them, so there were 76 at the start of that society.
it appeared that there may be a hundred or perhaps hundred during the war with the Rigellians

Capital City: Presumably New Earth

Government: Unrevealed;
formerly ruled by the High Evolutionary

Languages: Apparently English

Planetary Defense: Knights of Wundagore, using atomic steeds equipped for space travel, space suits, and power-lances, the blasts of which could rupture the hull of a Rigellian ship, at least with repeated strikes.

They utilized a large mother ship, which could carry perhaps 100 or even several hundred Knights and their atomic steeds into space and from which the atomic steeds could be launched.

On the surface, some Knights, such as Sir Lyan, traveled via small floater craft

Places of Interest: New Earth city and its House of Healing;
swamplands

Visitors: Hulk (Bruce Banner), Iron Man (Tony Stark);
Jack of Hearts (Jack Hart) allied with the Knights of Wundagore, but never actually traveled to Wundagore II;
Rigellians captured and tortured some New Men/Knights from the planet's surface and then battled them in the space nearby the planet; there is not evidence that the Rigellian fleet commander Arcturus ever set foot on the planet

Aliases: "New Rigel" (briefly named by Arcturus' Rigellian fleet before encountering the Knights of Wundagore)

First Appearance: Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (August, 1967);
(identified as Wundagore II) Tales to Astonish I#95/2 (September, 1967)

History:
(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb) - BTS) - At some point in the past, unidentified beings established a city on the planet that would later be known as Wundagore II.

Under unrevealed circumstances, the city was abandoned (see comments)

(Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - Giant, radiation-generating, praying mantis-like creatures existed on the world that would become Wundagore II, in "the before-time..."

wundagoreii-planet-awcan3-flight (Thor I#135 / Silver Surfer Annual#1/5 (fb) / West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb)) - Deciding that his New Men/Knights of Wundagore would continue to endanger mankind if they remained on Earth, the High Evolutionary took his citadel -- which had been constructed in the form of a starship by Dr. Horace Grabsheid -- and departed with his Knights.

(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb)) - There were 38 Knights of Wundagore aboard the Evolutionary's Citadel-turned-ship as it departed Mount Wundagore. Eventually -- after traveling through hyperspace --the Evolutionary's ship...

(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb) / Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (fb) - BTS) - ...emerged near an apparently hospitable star system, and they landed on a near-Earth-like planet.

wundagoreii-planet-awcan3-city wundagoreii-planet-awcan3-claimed

(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb) - BTS) - The Evolutionary sent forth his Knights to explore this planet, and they discovered and reported an abandoned city.

(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb)) - One of the Knights (presumably Count Tagar), officially claimed the world in the name of the High Evolutionary...

(Tales to Astonish I#95/2 (fb) - BTS) - They named the world Wundagore II...

wundagoreii-planet-im111-buildcity wundagoreii-planet-tta95-citybuild

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (fb) - BTS / West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb) - BTS) - ...and they (re)built the city, adapting it to their use.

(Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - The Evolutionary and his Knights encountered the giant praying mantis-like creatures.

As these creatures made no use of the world's riches, the High Evolutionary banished them to the swamps.

The swamp creatures, as they were referred to, would periodically trap unwary travelers. Few reportedly survived such encounters.

wundagoreii-planet-awcan3-hoofstock (West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb)) - Meanwhile, the High Evolutionary used the menagerie of animals contained in his citadel to evolve a female of each species he had already evolved for his knights.

wundagoreii-planet-awcan3-couplings (West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb)) - The High Evolutionary presented the women to his knights to act as their wives.

The Evolutionary told the couples to go forth into the new city and to be fruitful and multiply; he further advised them that he had exhausted his stores and that from then on, they would be responsible for replenishing their numbers.

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (fb) - BTS) - Their little civilization thrived and flourished in peace and prosperity initially.

(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb) - BTS) - The High Evolutionary left his charges to their own pursuits as he remained in his laboratory and devoted himself to his research.

wundagoreii-planet-tta95-savagery

wundagoreii-planet-tta95-warfare (Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (fb)) - The New Men began reverting back to their bestial heritage, and they savagely attacked each other. The process began so gradually that the High Evolutionary did not notice right away.

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (fb)) - Eventually, like a flood tide, the savagery and destructiveness increased beyond belief, and they began to destroy their civilization.

(West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb)) - The dying Sir Porga crashed into the High Evolutionary's laboratory, telling him that without his supervision, the Knights had lost their honor and reverted to savagery in their quest for power.

The Evolutionary raced to his monitor room and confirmed Porga's findings.

.
.

wundagoreii-planet-tta94-hebase (West Coast Avengers Annual#3/3 (fb) - BTS) - Sir Ram was the only loyal/non-maddened member of the Knights/New Men.

The Evolutionary tried to reason with his rampant subjects to no avail, and he searched Wundagore II for new specimens to evolve in hopes of creating beings capable of restoring order, but there were none to be found.

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2 (fb) - BTS) - Seeking to find new specimens to experiment upon to find a remedy for this madness, the High Evolutionary sent Sir Ram back to Earth in starship.

Ram and the High Evolutionary enlisted a pair of hunters to capture animals for Sir Ram, and he transported them to Wundagore II in his ship..

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2) - After the hunters encountered the Hulk, they contacted the High Evolutionary, who received their message as the nearby city was devastated by warfare and while had had only one remaining specimen, a bear.

wundagoreii-planet-tta94-hebase-genacc

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2) - Per the High Evolutionary's instruction, the hunters used the special pellets he had provided to subdue the Hulk and then send the Hulk to him aboard the ship so that he might use the Hulk to fight off the rampaging New Men.

(Tales to Astonish I#94/2) - En route to Wundagore II, Sir Ram encountered and was punched out by the Hulk.

wundagoreii-planet-knights-savagearmy (Tales to Astonish I#95/2 - BTS) - Detecting a cosmic storm in the path of Sir Ram's ship, the High Evolutionary sent a message warning Sir Ram of this.

By the time Ram revived, appreciated the danger, and steered the ship away, he had been fatally irradiated, and he perished swiftly thereafter.

The radiation also forced the Hulk to return to the form of Bruce Banner.

(Tales to Astonish I#95/2) - The High Evolutionary established remote control over the ship and piloted it to within his base on Wundagore II.

Having witnessed the Hulk's transformation and changing his plans, the Evolutionary zapped Banner with his vacuum ray blaster to immobilize prevent him from turning back into the Hulk.

The Evolutionary then placed Banner in his genetic accelerator, planning on evolving him into what humanity would become in one million years.

wundagoreii-planet-tta96-hevsrogueknights .

(Tales to Astonish I#96/2) - The maddened New Men / Knights of Wundagore then broke into the High Evolutionary's base.

After the Evolutionary had freed Banner from the paralyzing ray, one of the Knights smashed him in the back of head, stunning him despite his armor, but the Evolutionary retained his wits long enough to activate his force field.

Without having had a chance to evolve Banner and his remaining in human form, the recovered Evolutionary subsequently dropped his force field physically assaulted his former knights with a sword and mace.

When one of the Knights attacked Banner, he turned into the Hulk, and the Knights futilely attacked him en masse.

wundagoreii-planet-tta96-devolving

Apparently mortally wounded, the Evolutionary subjected himself to his Genetic Accelerator.

After the Hulk had pummeled all of the Knights unconscious, the Evolutionary, now a being of psionic energy, devolved all of his Knights/New Men back into purely animal form, including a horse, goat, monkey, pig, lizard, , dog, some sort of gazelle, some sort of felid, etc.

The Evolutionary sent tthe Hulk back to Earth before "becoming one with the cosmos." wundagoreii-planet-tta96-devolved

(Iron Man I#110 (fb) - BTS / Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - Following the destruction of Rigel-3 by the Rhunians, a group of Rigellians were seemingly separated from the main fleet by a cosmic storm. They were apparently uncertain whether the main fleet had survived. wundagoreii-planet-wildlife

(Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - The power-hungry Arcturus deliberately separated his group from the main fleet, seeking to build an empire under his rule.

(Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - Although Earth had been declared off-limits to the Colonizers of Rigel, Arcturus' fleet set a monitor in the inhabitable Blue Area of Earth's moon. wundagoreii-planet-wildlife-irradiated

(Avengers I#69 - BTS; Iron Man I#110 (fb) - BTS) - Finding an abandoned ship of the time-traveling Kang the Conqueror (Nathaniel Richards), Arcturus' group claimed the Growing Man to serve as their emissary in their sector.

(Fantastic Four I#175 - BTS/ Iron Man I#110 (fb) - BTS) - Finding Galactus' abandoned ship (after his seeming death) circling Earth's sun, Arcturus fleet confiscated Galactus' Punisher robot and then transported it with them when they traveled in search of a new homeworld.

(Thor I#256 (fb) - BTS) - The main Rigellian fleet subsequently colonized a new homeworld, also named Rigel-3.

(Iron Man I#111 (fb)) - The Rigellians serving Arcturus believed themselves to have found a new home when one of their space probes discovered Wundagore II. Not knowing the world's history, they considered it to be huge, alive, and lacking a sentient race.

The Rigellians found traces of a once-thriving civilization, but they saw only wild beasts foraging in it cities. The Rigellians were overjoyed, and they considered that this world would be New Rigel.

wundagoreii-planet-wildlife-revolved wundagoreii-planet-im111-returntocity

When the Rigellians' exploratory craft landed, the wild beast fled, but cosmic radiation born by the ship from its journeys through space somehow caused the beasts to re-evolve back into the forms of the New Men, bereft of the savagery that had previously afflicted them. Speaking and clothing themselves, the New Men returned to their cities to see if they could recall what had caused them to devolve.

Whether they learned what had happened to them, they recalled that they were the Knights of Wundagore and that they had returned to their home.

wundagoreii-planet-im111-returntoknighthood

(Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - From space, the Rigellians watched in horror as they saw "New Rigel" slipping from their grasp.

Although there was plenty of room on the planet for them all, the Rigellians were unwilling to live with beasts, and the Knights of Wundagore were willing to fight to keep their world and drive off the invaders.

(Iron Man I#111 (fb) - BTS) - Prior to any actual war being declared, the Rigellians allegedly attacked and wounded a number of the New Men. The Rigellians also allegedly tortured some of the New Men for information.

(Iron Man I#110 (fb) - BTS) - The Knights of Wundagore built a mothership to transport them at least to the space outside Wundagore II's atmosphere, and they built numerous space suits and either recovered or built numerous atomic steeds able to function in space.

(Iron Man I#109 - BTS / Iron Man I#110 (fb) - BTS) - Earth heroes Iron Man and Jack of Hearts were transported to Arcturus' ship via a Rigellian transport egg placed on Earth's moon's Blue Area (having traced the Growing Man as having come from there; it was a complex/convoluted plot), and Arcturus had them taken prisoner while noting that they were preparing for the final battle in the war of colonization with the resisting inhabitants of Wundagore II. wundagoreii-im110-rigellian_fleet

(Iron Man I#110) - Wearing space suits and astride their atomic steeds as well as dragonfly-like ships, the Knights of Wundagore -- including Sir Lepard, Sir Lyan, Sir Ossilot, another Sir Ram and many others -- assaulted Arcturus' fleet.

Although the Rigellians were caught by surprise and initially reeling, the Knights noted that the Rigellians would recover and counter-attack; however, win or lose, they vowed they fight for the realm as true sons of the lost creator.

(Iron Man I#111 - BTS) - The Rigellians in the ship carrying Iron Man and Jack of Hearts called an alert to battle stations as their space shields had been breached.

(Iron Man I#111) - Sir Lyan exhorted the other Knights to slay the invaders, and other knights noted that their power-lances ruptured the ship's hull, and they hoped that they might destroy the command ship

When a blast hit a fuel storage cell, the explosion hurled Iron Man from the Rigellian ship into the middle of the attacking Wundagorians. Sir Lepard reported this to Sir Ram, who considered that this might be a destruct drone and ordered the others to attack it.

Seeking only to defend himself, Iron Man pulled the approaching Sir Lepard and Sir Ossilot from their atomic steeds. However, after the Rigellians fired in his vicinity, Iron Man dodged, but both Ossilot and Lepard were slain by the blast.

Siding with the out-powered Knights, Iron Man destroyed the Rigellian command ship's main gun, but both forces considered him an enemy due to his assaults, and combined blasts knocked Iron Man to Wundagore II's surface where he crashed in a swamp.

(Iron Man I#111 - BTS) - The Knights of Wundagore fled back to their mother ship.

wundagoreii-planet-im111-lyan&floater

(Iron Man I#111) - As Iron Man revived, he was attacked by one of the swamp creature. His power virtually depleted, Iron Man managed to only blind it and cause it to stumble away from him.

Sir Lyan and a group of Knights of Wundagore subsequently confronted Iron Man. Considering that the invader might be a spy, Lyan ignored suggestions to kill him and instead took Iron Man with them in their floater in hopes of learning the Rigellians' plans. Although Lyan threatened Iron Man, noting that his blaster was set to kill, Iron Man went along willingly, noting that he was no friend of the Colonizers.

wundagoreii-planet-im111-healinghouse While entreating Sir Lyan to tell him of their world, Iron Man turned his back and plugged into the Knights' floater's power-cells, recharging his armor. Assuring Lyan he was an ally against the Rigellians, Iron Man nonetheless warned Lyan that the Rigellians' weaponry exceeded the Knights, and that if there was a war, the Knights would lose. Acknowledging this, Lyan countered that as they had already lost everything they once were, they would fight for that which was left of them. He further noted that the Evolutionary had stripped away their innocence without their consent and given them pain and alienation in return before their journey to Wundagore II.

After the floater docked at the city of New Earth, Iron Man noted that Wundagore II was big enough to accommodate both the New Men and the Rigellians, but Lyan showed Iron Man the injured New Men who had been struck down before war had been declared or who had been tortured for information. After Lyan noted that the Rigellians considered them to be no more than beasts, Iron Man offered to aid them in battle, and Lyan -- having received reports of Iron Man's deeds in the space battle -- accepted his offer.

(Iron Man I#111 - BTS) - Arcturus tried to manipulate Jack of Hearts into joining the battle against the New Men, telling him the New Men had most likely slain Iron Man and threatening to instead conquer Earth if he refused to aid him in conquering Wundagore.

wundagoreii-im112-chargewithhogg

(Iron Man I#112) - Atop an atomic steed and wielding an energy sword, Iron Man led a charge of Knights from out of their mother ship.

wundagoreii-im112-vsrigellians

With the Rigellians' space screens weakened from the earlier attack, Iron Man led the Knights to breach and board the command ship, although he warned the Knights that the Rigellians' weaponry still exceeds theirs.

Sir Hogg followed Iron Man's order, attacking while they retained the element of surprise in hopes of surviving the day.

The battle swiftly spread to the entire Colonizer fleet, and blasters cracked and defense shields fell as New Men and Rigellians locked in deadly hand-to-hand combat.

(Iron Man I#112 - BTS) - When Iron Man and Jack of Hearts confronted Arcturus, the Rigellian commander sent the Punisher robot under his control to attack Earth via the transport chamber back to the egg on Earth's moon. Iron Man pursued the Punisher while telling Jack to stay and assist the New Men. Iron Man followed the Punisher to Earth and eventually subdued him.

(Iron Man I#112) - However, the Rigellians battling Jack of Hearts pulled him with them through the transport chamber, and an army of Rigellians and the New Men fighting them soon emerged in the Blue Area of Earth's moon. The Soviet Super-Soldiers -- who had been waiting by the egg following a previous encounter with Iron Man -- attacked both groups of aliens emerging through the portal until Jack of Hearts announced, "The furry ones are on our side."

wundagoreii-im112-parlez-arcturus wundagoreii-im112-wrecorder Realizing the battle was going against him, Arcturus urged both the Colonizers and Knights to listen to him, and he offered to allow the New Men to keep Wundagore II if they helped the Colonizers take over Earth.

As Arcturus added that humanity had made the New Men outcasts, Rigellian Recorder#211 then arrived, having tracked Arcturus via the transport egg's signal beam. The Recorder related that the Rigellians had since found a new homeworld, and it stated that Arcturus' deliberately breaking contact with the fleet, his attempting to colonize without authority, and his threatening the restricted Earth had all broken Rigellian law. The Recorder then noted that it had been authorized to strip Arcturus of his rank and title, and it further declared the war against the New Men to have been illegal to now be over.

The Recorder then used the transport egg to return the Knights of Wundagore to Wundagore II.

(Iron Man I#112 - BTS) - The rest of Arcturus' fleet was subsequently reunited with the rest of the Rigellians on Rigel-3, while Iron Man, Jack of Hearts, and the Soviet Super-Soldiers returned to Earth in a waiting craft provided by the Recorder.

Comments: Created by Stan Lee, Marie Severin, and Herb Trimpe.

Going purely by Marvel Time (which is roughly one year per 4-5 years of real time), the devolved New Men were present on Wundagore for close to 3 years before being re-evolved. It's anyone's guess how quickly those animals would have reproduced vs. how many were consumed by predators, and it is further unknown if when the radiation from the Rigellian ship re-evolved the New Men if their offspring were then evolved for the first time.

We're going with the assumption that the Sir Lyan, Sir Lepard, and Sir Ossilot in the Iron Man issues were the same as the ones from the Thor issues, and the various Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries on the New Men and Knights of Wundagore supports that, as do the Official Index to the Marvel Universe entries for the relevant issues.

Where is Wundagore II?

Tales to Astonish has Sir Ram's ship flying an apparently short time to get from Earth to Wundagore II. There is no discussion of hyperspace, warp drives, etc.

In Iron Man I#110, the Rigellian Arcturus refers to them as having come from the galaxy’s edge (they departed/were teleported from Earth’s moon), and then a later caption in the same issue notes that they are “in a galaxy inestimably distant."

In Iron Man#111, they are described as having transported "from Earth's moon to a far galaxy..."

Avengers West Coast Annual#3 has them traveling through hyperspace to reach their new home.

Donald Campbell further notes:

According to the Wundagore entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition#15, "The High Evolutionary and his New Men settled on a planet in Sirius's solar system. The High Evolutionary named the planet Wundagore II..."

In that same issue, the quarter-page entry for the Siris race has a Note that reads: "The third and fourth planets in the Sirius system is inhabited by the humanoid Sirians. The fifth planet of the system is now known as Wundagore II."

I have always considered this idea to be problematic since there were already at least three other planets in that star system that were inhabited by sentient beings.

As you mentioned, statements and captions from Iron Man I#110 indicate that the planet is very much farther away than Sirius, which is one of the ten closest stars to Earth.

The "before-time"....

In the flashbacks of Tales to Astonish I#94, the Knights found the apparently uninhabited planet and built the city.

In the flashbacks, in Iron Man I#111, the giant mantis-like creatures dwelled on that world before the New Men and their ship landed there.

Avengers West Coast Annual#3 noted that the Knights found an abandoned city when they explored their new world, and they rebuilt this city as their new base...

So...who built that city?

I have not seen references to skeletons, corpses, or any remains of the previous inhabitants.

Maybe the radiation mutated the city-builders to become the swamp creatures...maybe they were insectoid beings who were transformed into giant, monstrous form...

Further comments, courtesy of Don Cambell:

I first encountered Wundagore II when I read Iron Man I#110-112, only a few years (I think) after I had first started to collect comics. As a long-time fan of science fiction, I was tremendously impressed by the whole "evolved animals vs. aliens in space" storyline. I knew of the High Evolutionary from the Galactus/Counter-Earth storyline that appeared in some of the earliest Fantastic Four issues I ever bought and the IM storyline included very informative flashbacks that provided enough background for me to understand and appreciate the story.

Now, over forty years later, I still really like the storyline but have come to realize that it is not without its weaknesses. For the story itself, the only real problem I have is that the artists insisted on drawing multiple large spherical objects in close proximity to Wundagore II. I know that this counts as artistic license and is a commonly-used way to reinforce the idea that events are taking place in outer space but, as a science fiction fan, the very idea that planets could be orbiting so closely together really strains my suspension of disbelief. All three issues feature images of Wundagore II with multiple planets or moons in close proximity to it. Your profile includes two images which show a relatively large spherical body with visible surface features that is very close to Wundagore II. Judging by its size, that body must be either a large moon or the other component of a double planet system. However, since it plays no part in the story, nothing was ever revealed about it.

Aside from this internal flaw, both storylines featuring Wundagore II are fine in and of themselves. However, it's when one begins to consider them in relation to the wider Marvel Universe that two major problems become apparent.

    The first problem has to do with elapsed time. Specifically, the time between when the High Evoutionary left Earth (in Thor I#135) and the first appearance of Wundagore II (in Tales to Astonish I#94/2). Those two issues were published only eight months apart and that is not much time for the High Evolutionary to fly through space, find a habitable planet and colonize it, for the New Men to turn savage, and for the High Evolutionary to be able to hire two hunters from Earth to ship specimens to him. If you incorpoate Marvel Time (which passes only one-fifth to one-quarter as fast as time does in the real world), then that period shrinks to no more than two months. In my opinion, either option is definitely too short a period to accomodate those events, espcecially since Sir Lyan told Iron Man that Wundagore II was found "after much wandering." I suspect that writer Mark Gruenwald introduced the idea that the New Men had found an abandoned city on that new world as a way to minimize how long they had to have been on the planet before it could have matched what was shown in Tales to Astonish I#94, but it's not enough.
   It is compressed time, for sure, but "after much wandering" could be that they traveled for 4-6 weeks...trapped in a spaceship, that may seem like a long time. And then, with a city already present, perhaps only 2-4 weeks went by on Wundagore II before the events of Tales to Astonish I#94.
    Yes, it would seem like more time would have taken place, but it's not impossible. On a further note, I don't think the sliding timescale was a real thing until ...maybe Uncanny X-Men#137? Prior to that, writers would have thought real time and Marvel Time were one and the same...
    --Snood

The second problem has to do with population. When all I knew about Wundagore II came from Iron Man I#111, I had no problem with believing that this "huge" world had been a planet where hundreds or even thousands of New Men had lived in "cities" before the High Evolutionary had turned them back into their original forms. And while the first Wundagore II storyline does imply that their "little civilization" would probably have a similarly-small population, that idea is never actually stated in the story, aside from the fact that only a relatively small number of New Men were ever depicted in those issues. However, this time the story in West Coast Avengers Annual #3/3 does not help since it establishes that only thirty-eight Knights of Wundagore accompanied the High Evolutionary into space and that his citadel's menagerie of unevolved animals was exhausted after he had evolved female New Men to be the ladies of the knights. This implies that there were only about seventy-six New Men on Wundagore II when the High Evolutionary told them to go forth and multiply. And since only "months" passed before they reverted to savagery, it seems unlikely that there could have been enough time for them to have increased the population size much. Plus, it seems probable that some of the New Men must have died when their savagery caused them to fight each other. So, with these factors in mind, how could there have been so many Wundagorians present on Wundagore II when their devolution was reversed by the cosmic energy from the Rigellian space-probe?

    The best explanation I have the rapid proliferation of creatures on Wundagore is that rabbits have a gestation period of 31 days with 1-14 babies, and rats have a gestation period of 21 days with 6-20 offspring in a litter, ferrets/weasels/ocelots of 48 days, lions of 110 days with 1-6 cubs, etc.

    The animals rapidly reach sexual maturity, and numbers can magnify rapidly if they are not being preyed upon.
    That's my take. They rapidly reproduced and matured in the three years or so that they in pure animal form, and then when the radiation triggered the New Men to return to their evolved form, their offspring contained the same genetic/whatever trigger, and they all evolved as well.
--Snood

    As I said, I still really like this storyline but it's impossible to deny that, as things currently stand, it just does not work within the framework of the Marvel Universe. What it really needs is for some future storyline to introduce something that does solve the problems of too little elapsed time and too small a population. As for what this retcon could be, the only idea that has occurred to me is that maybe there was a temporal element to their journey from Earth to Wundagore II. Maybe, while traveling across countless light-years, they unknowingly also traveled back years or even decades in time. This would give them the time needed to wander space, find and colonize the planet, and greatly increase their population before the present-day (in 1967) when they began to revert.
    However, this idea would contradict the statement that the reversion to their bestial nature occurred "months" after their arrival. Unless what was "months" to the High Evolutionary could somehow have been years or even decades to those New Men outside his Citadel? Hmmm. Perhaps a localized time field?
    As I mentioned above, it is unlikely, but not impossible.
--Snood