Captain America #313
Mission: Murder MODOK!
Bushmaster and Diamondback of the Serpent Society have been hired by Advance Idea Mechanics to kill their former leader, MODOK.[1] Searching for AIM facilities, the pair infiltrate the long abandoned submarine base that was once operated by the group located off the shores of New Jersey.[2] They hit pay dirt as they find MODOK in the process of feeding his massive body. Caught off guard, MODOK tries to defend himself, but is still to weak. Summoning his hover chair, the disgraced AIM leader is forced to flee the scene. Bushmaster tries to swim after him but MODOK severs Bushmaster’s cybernetic limbs with a powerful mental blast.
Meanwhile, back in New York City, Captain America shows up at the office where his hotline service operates. His fiancée Bernie Rosenthal is there sorting through print outs of all the messages they have received and the sheer volume is overwhelming. Bernie tells Steve that the response is impossible to manage without hiring staff to filter through all the messages and find the most important calls that are coming in. Steve begins to consider the idea when he notices that someone has hacked into his phone system and begun trying to access the messages. Wanting to find out who is trying to remotely access his database, Cap begins a trace to learn their location.
Back in New Jersey, Bushmaster has been rescued and brought to shore by Diamondback who then heads to their Serpent Saucer to call for reinforcements. Meanwhile, MODOK’s hoverchair loses its vertical lift, preventing him from flying away. Growing weaker and weaker, the cyborg climbs into the back of a tractor trailer hauling merchandise to a nearby toy store. As MODOK makes his getaway, Diamondback finally reaches her leader, Sidewinder who dispatches the rest of the Serpent Squad to help hunt for their target.
Meanwhile, Captain America has tracked down the hacker to a suburban home in the town of Montclair, New Jersey. When the door is answered by a single mother, Cap deduces that she has a son with access to a computer. The boy turns out to be a young hacker named Hiram Ridley. The boy is excited to see Captain America since he is the boy’s hero and he takes Cap upstairs to his room to show off his computer and hacking skills. He explains that the reason why he and his hacker buddies tapped into his hotline computers was so they could get an insider scoop of Captain America’s latest adventures. Captain America isn’t comfortable with his these boys have compromised people’s privacy but he can’t help but be impressed with their system of parsing calls and sorting singling out the important calls. Looking over the data, he sees that his hotline has been receiving a lot of calls from the area reporting in strange UFO sightings. Deciding that it is too frequent to be a prank, Captain America decides to investigate.
These sightings are of the Serpent Society who have descended on the area and begun a search for MODOK. The rogue leader of AIM has managed to evade them so far by hiding out in a nearby shopping mall. The Serpent Society eventually track MODOK to the mall and, after putting on trench coats to hide their costumes, go inside to look for their target. Captain America happens by moments later and catches Princess Python trying to slink away. She willingly tells Captain America what’s going on. She has had second thoughts about being a member of the Serpent Squad since she has not special powers or weapons, making her fear for her survival against a threat like MODOK.[3]
Racing inside, Captain America convinces the manager of the shopping mall to evacuate the building by announcing that there is a gas leak in the building. While the regular customers are filtering out of the building, the members of the Serpent Society stick around to continue hunting MODOK, making it easy for Captain America to see them on the security monitors.[4] One all the shoppers are gone, Captain America goes into action. At first, Captain America uses stealth and takes down the Cobra. However, when the Serpent Society finally locates MODOK and starts attacking him, Cap decides to attack the Serpents head on.
During the fight, Diamondback finds herself smitten by Captain America’s good-looks. While Diamondback, Asp, and Black Mamba keep Captain America busy, Death Adder and Cottonmouth begin to swarm MODOK. Captain America fights free but is too late to stop MODOK from being savagely attacked. Although Captain America drives off Death Adder and Cottonmouth, he is too late to save MODOK’s life who dies from a combination of blood loss and deadly snake venom.[5]
In the aftermath of the battle, Captain America returns to the Ridley home where he tells Hiram what went down. Although he failed to stop the Serpent Society from killing MODOK, his intervention made sure nobody else got hurt and it was thanks to Ridley’s hacking skills that he was able to intervene to begin with. Since he needs a dedicated team to parse through his hotline information, Captain America asks Hiram if he and his hacker friends want the job. The boy is overjoyed to be able to help his hero and accepts the job on the spot.[6]
Recurring Characters
Captain America, MODOK, Serpent Society (Cobra, Anaconda, Asp, Black Mamba, Bushmaster, Cottonmouth, Death Adder, Princess Python, Rattler, Sidewinder), Bernie Rosenthal, Hiram Ridley
Continuity Notes
AIM has been divided between two camps of those loyal to MODOK and those who are not since Ms. Marvel #7 culminating in a war between the two group in Incredible Hulk #289.
This facility was used waaaay back when MODOK first took over the group and was scuttled by Captain America. See Tales of Suspense #93-94.
Captain America recognizes Princess Python as he clashed with her a few times in the past. First, with the Avengers during the wedding of Yellowjacket and the Wasp in Avengers #60 and later when she was a member of the original Serpent Squad in Captain America #180-181 during his brief stint as Nomad.
Captain America instantly recognizes Anaconda from their recent battle. That happened in Captain America #310.
This is not the end of MODOK. At first, his corpse is used as an automated pawn of AIM in Iron Man #205. Ultimately, MODOK is resurrected by AIM in Captain America #440-441 and Avengers #387-388.
Captain America likens Hiram to the Teen Brigade, who helped both the Hulk and the Avengers early on in their careers. See Incredible Hulk #6 and Avengers #1-14.
Topical References
Captain America’s hotline is said to be operated by a Zue Voice Transcriber that translates speech to text. I tried looking this up on Google and found nothing about that specific type of speech-to-text device, that’s how dated this term is. Anyway, all the technical specifications for this service should be considered topical as this story was written before the internet age.
The truck that MODOK ducks into is stopped at a 76 gas station. This should be considered a topical reference as 76 is a real world business.
The truck drive also sings “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen. You could call that a topical reference, however dude is a trucker so he probably listens to classic rock.
Hirah’s mother is singing “We Are the World” a 1985 charity song that was recorded to raise money for famine ravaged Africa. It was quite popular at the time, but it seems unlikely that a mother would be singing it while doing the dishes.
Speaking of outdated topical references, then we have Hiram Riddley’s computer. He boasts that he connects with hackers on message boards using a dial-up modem. All of the technical specifications and jargen that Riddley uses here is also incredibly dated as it was written in the pre-internet age. It’s hilariously topical.
On that token, Hiram Riddley hacks into Captain America’s system using an old hacking skill called phreaking, which is slang for Phone Freaking. Phreakers would hack into telephone systems by duplicating special touch tone codes to hack the system. See, those beeping noises you get when you dial a phone number to actually talk to someone? Those were specific tones that a machine could read and interpret as numbers. The right combination of tones gave early phone systems an tonal passcode for specific functions. Anyway, once telecommunications moved away analog systems and the internet became a thing, phreaking became obsolete. Those tones you get when you dial a number now is only there as it is familiar to people. Anyway, how Hiram hacks into Captain America’s hotline database should be considered topical. Modern readers could assume that Hiram was using a more common place computer hack and that Captain America was tracing his IP address or whatever the current hacking/tracing thing is if you’re reading this at some ungodly distant future.
In this story, Captain America states that Teen Brigade were a group of ham radio operators. This has changed due to the Sliding Timescale and the fact that ham radio is not longer a cutting edge technology. Per Avengers: The Origin #1-5, they have seen been depicted as a group of young hackers. Modern readers could assume that now Cap refers to Hiram as a hacker just like Teen Brigrade.
