Stephen Hammonds, former superstar of the eighties, was cast from stardom as he fell into obscurity. His inability to handle failure contributed to a cluster of scandals that served to excommunicate him from the life he nurtured, compelling him to whittle away his fortune on frivolous spending in a futile attempt to fill the void. Narcissistic in tendency, his illusions of grandeur were founded on self-loathing and an insufficient sense of self, making him suicidally depressed when ousted from his primary source of identification. Using destructive self-medication as a method to cope as a husk of a man, his lack of escape from reality relegated him to being a relic of the past, buried in time, and still alive to witness the next generation surpass him. Seeing that he was detested by those who he relied upon for adoration, he impetuously decided to commit suicide to settle the deficit. However, he overdosed as he attempted to do this, and this mixture of highly imbalanced hormones and badly produced street drugs served to activate his latent metahuman ancestry. With the ability to manipulate photons, his resolution shifted in lieu of the recently debuted Godspeed. Obsessed with his heyday, he became a copycat vigilante that debuted as a faux-superhero who used illusions to stage crime. Though he was incarcerated after clashing with Godspeed, he was supplied with the means to break out of his confines by a cohort of mysterious patrons.
In truth, these benefactors had a simplistic goal: a financial scheme built on the back of a superhero. Seeing as he had little to turn to, he agreed and hence underwent a variety of training and plastic surgery to reinvent his image. Throughout his time serving as the corporate superhero Wonder Man, Stephen enacted destruction with a series of illusions, subsequently triumphing over these Illusory Rogues in spectacular battles for his benefactors to reap the the stock and insurance market in the aftermath. Wonder Man was then marketed as a heroic saviour, founding a media empire on the world's greatest lie. This facade would not be without opposition, as the regional criminal factions targeted him in a preemptive strike, during which they incited their own decimation. The following spate of the Illusory Rogues' battles prompted Godspeed into beginning an enquiry, enduring for years as he struggled with both the detriment and the benign that Hammonds’ actions posited for the world. Despite their contention, he remained adamant in the capacity for good that Stephen had, and true to this, he'd intermittently relent, answering the call to arms when times proved dire. In his duplicity, Stephen made himself indispensable. His fraudulence energetically bolstered metahuman reputation in addition to the economy, serving as the mouthpiece of a powerful conglomerate who proudly stands shoulder-to-shoulder as one of the world’s beloved idols.
Tailor made to be a paragon of good in the public eye, Hammonds is the superficial man. Each layer of his being is segregated and embellished as to add to his fable. With a notable tendency to act on sheer impulse and avenge the tiniest slight against him, his true nature is grounded behind an affable façade. In recent times, Stephen has reconciled with the children he absconded years ago as he rehabilitates his narcissistic traits, actively seeking humility. His mixed identity has become indelible, as he’s started to foster some of the empathy of the hero that he purports to be, each day coming to understand the emotions he feels and thus who he is to a greater extent. To him, the adoration is stroking the ego of someone he isn't, and whilst he lives the life of a king, he feels sullied and hollow by a world in which he has a severe lack of control. Nonetheless, Stephen is a media juggernaut, ushering in a new era of fame as the perfect exhibitionist; a pompous, solicitous, and contemptuous narcissist unabated by no man but himself.
