Captain America #257
Deadly Anniversary
An a midwestern hotel room a group of armed men ambush Bruce Banner as he sleeps and gas him before he can turn into the Hulk.
Meanwhile, Captain America is still visiting in the United Kingdom. After a flight to Northern England, he takes a cab out to an abandoned airfield to reflect on the past. There he is ambushed by armed men in uniform who attempt to incapacitate him with knock out gas.[1] Captain America tries his best to fight back but is taken down by force. They then bring him down into a secret complex beneath the airfield. There he is greeted by the group’s leader, who calls himself the Master of Matrix Eight. They are a group of scientists put in charge by Baron Zemo near the end of World War II and they have spent the convening decades working on new weapons that they have sold to criminal organizations all over the world.
As Captain America is being hauled to their latest experiment, he is taken past a cell containing Bruce Banner who is also their prisoner. Banner is unable to free himself as the Hulk because they have been keeping him to drugged to trigger a transformation. In one of the labs, Cap is introduced to their latest creation, the Gammaroid, a synthetic life form they created using cells from Banner to make it as powerful as the Hulk. Knowing that Captain America came to this very spot every year, they decided to capture him and pit the hero against their creation. As the Master explains all of this, Captain America begins scanning the room for a way to get free. His keen eye picks up the locations of various booby traps and makes a run for it. He easily evades enemy fire as well as pits filled with gas and roof mounted flame throwers.
He races back down to the cell block where he breaks into Bruce Banner’s cell. Banner, unfortunately, is still too drugged to do anything so Cap begins slapping the scientist around and insulting him in order to make him angry enough to transform into the Hulk. As the guards come to recapture him, Captain America’s gambit pays off and Banner turns into the Hulk. Cap then convinces the gamma-spawned brute that these men work for Banner and want to kill him. This is more then enough to convince the dim witted monster to fight by Captain America’s side. However, the Matrix Eight staff was prepared for this and use Baron Zemo’s old Adhesive X formula to try and contain the Hulk. However, Captain America only needs to make the Hulk mad enough to break free because, as the old adage goes, the madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets.
When confronted by the Gammroid, the Hulk is able to hold his own against the artificial construct and easily destroys it. While the Hulk is busy, Captain America goes into one of the control rooms and rigs the entire facility to explode. However, by this time, the Hulk has decided that Cap is his new enemy and is about to attack. That’s when the Master seals the escape hatches and pumps the room full of gas. Trying to get free, the Hulk smashes the door open before he reverts back to Bruce Banner, allowing Captain America to get them out.
Meanwhile, the Master tries to make his own escape but ends up getting trapped when he is showered with Adhesive X when a overhead pipe bursts, gluing him to the floor. When the facility explodes, the Master is buried alive.
Moments later, Captain America and Bruce Banner get to shore just as the facility goes up in a massive explosion. Now that they are safe, Captain America explains how both he and Banner got here, telling the tortured scientist that he comes to this spot every year to remember his fallen partner, Bucky, who died in this very spot back in 1945. Seeing that Captain America still mourns the loss of his friend, Bruce understands how hard it is losing someone you love and offers to listen if he wants someone to talk to.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Hulk
Continuity Notes
This story is centered around the location where Baron Zemo tried to kill Captain America and Bucky at the end of World War II a battle that saw Bucky apparently killed in an explosion and Cap put in suspended animation for decades, as seen in Avengers #4. Some ancillary facts about that pivotal moment:
Buck didn’t actually die back then. His body was recovered by the Russian military who then transformed him into the assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Captain America won’t learn this until many years later in Captain America (vol. 5) #14.
Baron Zemo survived into the Modern Age, but died in final battle against Captain America in Avengers #15.
Topical References
This story infers that the men working at Matrix Eight have all be working since the end of World War II. All the men present are depicted as being in their prime, which would be impossible due to the fact that the Sliding Timescale moves the Modern Age forward in time taking it further away from the end of World War II. See below for more details.
This story also states that World War II happened forty years prior to this story. This should be considered topical. As the Sliding Timescale pushes the Modern Age forward, the gulf of time between the end of the war and the start of the Modern Age grows larger. Click here for more on that.
How Can The Men of Matrix Eight Still Be Alive?
This is yet another instance where characters appear that claim to have been alive since World War II, putting it at odds with the Sliding Timescale. When this story was originally published in 1981, the idea wasn’t so outlandish. However, at the time of this writing (November, 2021) it would push the ages of the men into their senior years.
As such, there has to be something to explain how Matrix Eight is still operational after the ever expanding gulf of time between World War II and the Modern Age. Marvel has yet to explain how this be, however there are a few possible explanations. The simplest being that perhaps these men are not the original crew of Matrix Eight but successors to the original group, much like other long running organizations like Hydra. Alternatively, since they did work for Baron Zemo, perhaps they had access to some kind of age slowing process. As details in Thunderbolts #-1, Zemo extended his life with a special chemical bath. While it may be a stretch that he shared this process with his minions the idea is not entirely impossible.
