Red Zone, Part 4

A flesh-eating bioweapon called Project: Bloodwash has been unleashed in South Dakota. The first victims have been relocated to Custer National Park. However, with the bioweapon cloud — dubbed the Red Zone — spreading into this area, the military and the Avengers’ Warbird have to make an immediate evacuation. As they make their treat, Carol worries that they can’t just keep running.

Meanwhile, a team of Avengers consisting of Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, Vision, She-Hulk, Jack of Hearts, and Ant-Man have located the hidden bunker where Bloodwash was created. As it turned out, the facility was run by the United States government and the weapon was unleashed when it was attacked by operatives of Advance Idea Mechanics. In the ensuing clash, the AIM soldiers died from exposure to the bioweapon.

However, She-Hulk’s bio-suit was damaged prompting Cap to order Jack of Hearts to get her out of the Red Zone. Somehow, She-Hulk has reverted back to her human form making her vulnerable to Bloodtide. Calling out for help, Jack then checks Jennifer’s heartbeat. Suddenly, Jen begins to growl as she transforms back into the She-Hulk.[1]

Back in the bunker’s control room, the Avengers are still gathering intel on who ordered the creation of this bio-weapon and why. Ant-Man, who has hacked into the computers, discovers that the project was spearheaded by Dell Rusk, the current Secretary of Defense.[2] Apparently, nobody on the project were led to believe that they were developing a vaccine.

That’s when Jack of Hearts is knocked into the computers by the She-Hulk, who has gone totally savage. When the Vision tries to get her to calm down she pins him to the ground and rips open his chest. Deciding that she must find her cousin, Bruce Banner, the She-Hulk then runs off.[3] The first Avenger to regain consciousness is the Scarlet Witch who sees that the Vision needs help and begins trying to crawl out of the bunker.

Meanwhile, the Red Zone continues to expand and the quarantine zone will have to be moved again. Unfortunately, the number of infected has grown since Custer’s Grove and Warbird needs to make the tough decision of leaving behind those who aren’t expected to survive in order to save those who will. That’s when Hawkins, a Park Ranger, checks in on her and asks if she is doing ok. She tells him that she is coping given her past experience working as head of security for both the Air Force and NASA. Hawkins asks how someone like that could end up being a superhero. Carol admits that the story is unbelievable and glosses over how she got her powers from an alien weapon.[4] She explains that her drive to be in positions of power comes out of defiance toward her father, who believed that woman’s place was in the home raising a family.[5] That’s when she gets a call from the Scarlet Witch, who managed to get out of the bunker and in signal range to call for help.

At that same moment, Tony Stark and the Black Panther wake up in a concrete cell after being apprehended for treason. While T’Challa begins trying to find a way out, Stark instead uses this opportunity to try and find out why T’Challa doesn’t like him. When he accuses the Panther of being envious of his wealth, T’Challa points out that — as the king of his own nation — he is richer than Tony in more ways than one. Seeing he’s not going to get a straight answer, Stark tells T’Challa not to worry — this isn’t the first time he’s been captured and he has a contingency plan. Pushing a button on his watch, Tony remotely activates his Iron Man armor back at Stark Enterprises. The suit then begins flying to his present location.

While at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Dell Rusk is furious that Henry Gyrich — through his connections as the Avengers liaison to the UN — hasn’t been able to get any useful data from the team. Their conversation is interrupted by a call from the President who wants to know what Rusk is doing about the Red Zone. Having to go and talk to the Commander-in-Chief in person, Rusk excuses himself and leaves. Gyrich then walks out to the facility’s central park. There, Redwing lands on a security camera and disables it so its master the Falcon can arrive unseen. As it turns out, the two have been working together to find out what Rusk has been up to. Gyrich has been recording their entire conversation, getting evidence that proves that Rusk is not only behind the Red Zone, but has been hampering the Avengers efforts to contain the bioweapon.

However, before the Falcon can leave with this damaging evidence, someone shoots him in the back. That person turns out to be Dell Rusk, who was onto Gyrich from the beginning. When Henry tries to run, he is shot in the leg. As he scrambles away he gets a good look at Dell Rusk’s name tag and suddenly realizes that it’s an anagram. When he asks why he wants to destroy America, Rusk — removing his life-like mask and revealing that he is the Red Skull — tells Gyrich that he isn’t doing this because he hate’s America, but because he now loves it.

Recurring Characters

Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Vision, Falcon, Warbird, She-Hulk, Jack of Hearts, Ant-Man), Red Skull, Henry Gyrich, Redwing

Continuity Notes

1. Since Avengers (vol. 3) #58, Jack of Hearts needs to be placed in a specially prepared Zero Room to drain off his access energies, otherwise he will reach critical mass and explode. We learned this in issue #61, and that it is getting worse. It’s later reveal that his sudden instability is due to the fact that his body is absorbing gamma radiation from his teammate the She-Hulk something that won’t be uncovered until issue #67. So no, the Jack of Hearts situation isn’t really resolved. It’ll solve itself when Jack is seemingly killed when his body explodes in Avengers (vol. 3) #76.

2. Dell Rusk has been strong-arming Gyrich into leaking Avengers data to Rusk since Avengers (vol. 3) #61. Since issue #64, he and the Falcon have made arrangements to play along with Rusk’s requests in order to find out who he is and what his agenda is.

3. She-Hulk’s cousin Bruce Banner is better known as the Hulk. He was responsible for her becoming the She-Hulk via a blood transfusion back in Savage She-Hulk #1.

4. Warbird briefly glosses over how she became a superhero here. Her real gateway into the profession started when she was head of security at NASA and got caught in the middle of an attempted Kree invasion of Earth in Marvel Super-Heroes #13. This made her an ally of Captain Marvel, a Kree soldier who turned against his people. She attributes her powers to being exposed to a Kree Psychmagnetron in Captain Marvel #18. In reality, per Life of Captain Marvel (vol. 2) #1-5, Carol is actually half Kree and the device didn’t give her powers so much as it awoken her latent Kree physiology.

5. Joe Danvers was a life long misogynist, which is pretty ballsy when you’re wife was an alien soldier, but whatever. Anyway, we first saw this side of Joe in Ms. Marvel #13-14. We saw it on full display in a flashback from Iron Man (vol. 3) #21 and Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #31.

Topical References

• Ant-Man specifically states that the Project: Bloodwash team was led to believe that they were developing a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. Back when this comic was first published, this disease was still quite deadly and could drastically reduce an infected person’s life. While a vaccine is still elusive, time of this writing (February, 2023), medical advances have made the illness treatable and there are greater methods of blocking transmission. With a cure possible within our lifetime, this reference should be considered topical.

• When recounting her origins, Carol states that it is like something out of the Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone was a science fiction anthology series. It originally ran from 1959 to 1964. Its popularity has endured such that there was a feature film based on the series made in 1983, as well as three revivals: 1985-1989, 2002-2003, and 2019-2020. The term “Twilight Zone” has since been adopted as short hand to explain a situation that sounds like science fiction, as such this reference wouldn’t necessarily be considered topical.

• Gyrich has recorded the evidence on a pocket tape recorder that uses mini-cassettes to capture audio. This should be considered a topical reference as this is now an obsolete technology thanks to digital audio recording devices, particularly smart phones.