Thursday, July 16, 2015

Repress all memory of this issue!


I know I have the previous chapter of this storyline; I just didn't care enough to follow-up and get the conclusion. Even with a Michael Golden cover! From 1993, Nomad #19, "Buried Treasure" Written by Fabian Nicieza, pencils by Bill Wylie, inks by Greg Adams and Scott Koblish.

Previously, in Captain America #421, a brainwashed Nomad (Cap's former sidekick Jack Monroe, who had been the insane anti-communist Bucky of the 1950's) was trying to murder Florida's crimelord, the Slug. This month, as Nomad tries to get back at his brainwasher, Dr. Faustus; Cap is surrounded by some of Faustus's goons, who are trying and failing to punch out of their weight class. Nomad leaves Cap to wrap them up, so he can get a head start at Faustus. Not to kill the evil psychiatrist, but to get his memories re-repressed: Faustus's treatments had caused Nomad to recall some of his abusive childhood, and he wanted none of that.

As Cap catches back up (and recollects about recently being turned into a werewolf, in a far more entertaining comic...) Nomad remembers everything: his parents had been Nazi sympathizers, Bundist agents. When FBI agents tell Jack they were friends of his family, Jack told them about his father's basement, apparently chock full of Nazi crap; and both his parents got the chair for it. Cap gets there in time to keep Jack from killing Faustus in cold blood...

...so Jack kills him a month later, at a minimum security prison. Shoots him right in the face and strolls off into the sunset. Except Faustus would return, during the "Death of Captain America" storyline, no explanation or anything. Save that maybe nobody read this one.

Cap just seems weary in this one, like a mom trying to take the remote control away from overstimulated children; even though he knows full well that Faustus is evil and dangerous. Nicieza would do better work with Jack Monroe years later in Thunderbolts, just in time for Jack to be killed by the Winter Soldier in an early issue of Ed Brubaker's Captain America run.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

More likley that people have already repressed the memory that this series even existed. Probably could've been better had it might come out today, but probably not. Poor Jack huh. Always someone's puppet.

He didn't even rate his own action figure.....