Captain America #384
Lair of the Ice Worm
Captain America has just mandated that every Avenger is to now undergo an annual physical check-up to make sure they are fighting trim. This is mostly so that Steve can get a full examination himself as he hasn’t felt all that different since having the Super-Soldier Serum removed from his body via a blood transfusion.[1] Overseeing the tests are Keith Kincaid, the Avengers resident doctor. He determines that Steve’s body isn’t producing any fatigue toxins, something that only happened thanks to the Super Soldier Serum in his veins, something that should be impossible now. He theorizes that his body is somehow reproducing the serum and theorizes that perhaps the serum itself operates less like a drug and more like a virus and is continuing to self-replicate in his body.
Kincaid also wants to go over Steve’s medical history and the one subject of interest he has is about the period that Steve spend in suspended animation from the end of the war and when he was found and revived by the Avengers. Steve recounts how he fell in the Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland in a drone plane explosion that took the life of his partner Bucky. Steve recalls blacking out as his lungs began filling with water. When he woke up next, he was being revived by the Avengers decades later. He notes that the extreme cold reacted with the Super Soldier Serum in his blood and put him in suspended animation with seemingly no ill effects.[2]
Kincaid finds this interesting and asks Steve if he has experienced the same situation when in extreme cold conditions. Steve recounts the time when he was fighting ULTIMATUM with Demolition Man about a year prior. During that fight, D-Man was aboard a Quinjet as it exploded over the Arctic Ocean. Seeking to save his friend, Cap dived into the freezing waters and found no trace of his friend.[3] Since Dennis underwent a strength augmentation process, Steve is convinced that he survived the explosion and is missing somewhere. That’s when Peggy Carter enters the room to show him a tabloid news story about a northern Inuit tribe that worships a man frozen in the chunk of ice. Although Keith dismisses this as a made up story — it being in a tabloid and all — Steve still wants to check it out in the hopes that it is his long lost friend.
John Jameson fires up the Flagship and the pair fly to the location of magnetic north. There, near the abandoned ULTIMATUM base they find a pair of Inuit ice fishing and stop to ask them about the man frozen in ice. They confirm that the story is true and that they worship it as a god, the elder of the pair telling a grand story about the ice man protecting them from an ancient evil. Sure enough, they take Cap and John to the large chunk of ice that has a body frozen inside. Cap can’t tell who it is, but is confident that it is his friend Demolition Man. Ignoring the Inuit’s protests, Steve uses his shield to try and break through the ice and free his friend. However, the ice suddenly comes to life as it is a giant worm-like creature. As Steve fights off the beast, he radios Peggy Carter back at base and tells her to send Thor to their location, suspecting this ice worm might be Asgardian in nature.
After struggling with the beat, Captain America cannot grab hold of its slippery hide and gets swallowed alive. The ice worm’s belly is filled with liquid so cold it burns. As he is sucked deeper into the ice worm, he strikes another body stuck inside and wonders if this might be D-Man. Unable to hold his breath, Cap’s lungs fill with water and as he blacks out, he sees an image of the Grim Reaper fighting Lady Liberty and he briefly recalls seeing this same image the first time he went into suspended animation before the darkness claims him.
An unknown amount of time later, Cap wakes up and finds himself in an ice hut with Jack Frost standing over him. Steve hasn’t seen Frost since World War II and asks how they got free.[4] Jack reveals that he was the person trapped inside the ice worm. He got in that situation not long after the end of the war when he went up north to try and find answers to his mysterious past.[5] He was then attacked by the ice worm. He was able to stop its rampage by grabbing onto its tail and forcing the creature to swallow it in order to get him. This stopped the creature dead in its tracks until Captain America accidentally revived it. Luckily, after Steve was swallowed, his remaining body heat was enough to revive Jack Frost when they bumped into each other that he was able to free themselves from the belly of the beast.
Their conversation is interrupted when they hear the cry of the ice worm nearby. Racing outside their igloo, the pair save the elderly Inuit man Cap met earlier from the monster. Jack decides that the only way to stop the monster is to trick it into swallowing its tail again. Captain America is against Jack sacrificing his life again, but is unable to stop him. When the ice worm once again swallows Jack and its own tail it becomes immobilized and sinks into the ocean.
This is when Thor finally arrives on the scene and after hearing about Jack Frost, the thunder god recounts an Asgardian legend about the son of an Ice Giant being banished to Earth for being born tiny. However, he has never heard anything about an ice worm before and wonders if it might be the offspring of the Midgard Serpent. Cap tells Thor to look into all of this and get back to him. They then board the Flagship and head for home. On the way, Steve offers a prayer to Jack Frost and tells him if he bumps into his friend Demolition Man in the afterlife to tell him he says hello. As the Flagship leaves the Arctic it unknowingly passes by another frozen block of ice, this one holding the frozen form of the very man Cap came looking for to begin with.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Jack Frost, Thor, Keith Kincaid, Peggy Carter, John Jameson
Continuity Notes
After Captain America was caught in a meth lab explosion his Super Soldier Serum was tainted with Ice, a designer street drug created by the Red Skull. Cap was forced to get a full blood transfusion to get the drugs out of his system. This stripped the Super Soldier Serum from his blood as well. Even though the drugs were cleaned out of his tainted blood, Steve opted not to have the serum returned to his body, wanting to prove that it is the man not the serum that made him Captain America. See Captain America #372 to 378.
Cap is recounting the the events of Avengers #4. However there are some facts that are glossed over for narrative pacing and things that Cap wasn’t aware of at the time.
Cap didn’t just merely fall into the waters and go into suspended animation. He actually fell in the English Channel and was recovered by a Nazi operative named Lyle Dekker. In his subsequent clash with Dekker, Cap ended up falling into the waters off the coast of Newfoundland and that’s how he ended up frozen in suspended animation. See Captain America #220. This little fact is usually glossed over for narrative pacing because who wants to hear about the Ameriadroid guy over and over when recounting Cap’s origins? Yeah, me neither.
Although Cap believes Bucky had died here, James only lost and arm. His ruined body was recovered by the Russians who transformed him into their assassin called the Winter Soldier. Cap won’t learn the truth until Captain America (vol. 5) #14.
Cap’s battle with ULTIMATUM And the loss of D-Man happened in Captain America #349. As we’ll see at the end of this issue, Dennis Dunphy indeed got frozen in ice. He’ll eventually get free in Captain America #400.
Cap mentions that Jack Frost was a member of the Liberty Legion. Jack Frost was a founding member when that team was formed. Captain America first encountered Jack during a clash between the Liberty Legion and the Invaders. See Invaders #5-6 and Marvel Premiere #29.
Later this issue it is suggested that Jack Frost might be a diminutive Ice Giant exiled from Asgard. However, as of this writing (July, 2022) these theories have yet to be confirmed or not. Jack also hasn’t had a present day appearance since this issue either, usually only appearing in stories set in World War II. Jack was likely swallowed up sometime after 1953 as he was seen at the funeral for Brian Falsworth in Citizen V and the V-Battalion: Everlasting #1.
Topical References
Captain America states here that the time that passed between Captain America #349 and this issue was about a year. Measuring this up to the Sliding Timescale this is accurate give or take a couple of months.
This story refers to the norther Indigenous population of this story as Eskimos. This should be considered a topical reference as this term is no longer used to describe this tribe of people and to many it is now considered offensive. The proper term to use now is Inuit and as such I have used it in the summary above.
The original twin towers of the World Trade Center are depicted as part of the New York City skyline in this story. This should be considered a topical reference as these buildings were destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. They were subsequently replaced with the Freedom Tower.
Captain America states that its been about 45 years since World War II and states that it is the year 1991. Both the length of time since World War II and the year given should be considered topical relative to the date of publication. As the Sliding Timescale continues to bump the Modern Age forward, the gulf of time between the end of WWII and the start of the Modern Age continues to grow larger. Like math? You can figure out the time change here.
