Captain America (vol. 2) #9
Serpents and Eagles Part II: Horror from Hollywood
Captain America has hit the road to find out what present day America is all about.[1] However, his trip has also become a search for the Sons of the Serpent, a racist militia that has been causing problems for law enforcement across the country. Every place he stops he ends up finding a Serpent cell that he has to break up.
Eventually, he makes his way to Hollywood, Califronia. Having been here back in 1938, Cap sees how much the place has changed in all the many years since and the place seems dirtier and grey.
Later, as Captain America, he breaks up a local cell of the Sons of the Serpent. When he calls in the police to take them in, he speaks with Detective O’Brien in charge. The detective, who is Hispanic, as a specific dislike for the racist Serpents. However, Captain America reminds him that ones race and ethnicity shouldn’t play into why the Sons of the Serpent need to be stopped, it should matter to all Americans. He points to how their brand of hate creates divides between ordinary people, making them create barriers between their differences as a means of defense. This sort of divisiveness needs to be stopped. When none of the Serpents are willing to talk, Captain America asks for two minutes to speak with one of them alone. Cap takes the captured Serpent to the Le Brea Tar Pits and begins dunking him in the tar, threatening to drown the man if he doesn’t talk. As he expected, the Serpent cracks and tells Cap where where the Sons of the Serpent has been keeping their arsenal of military grade and high tech weaponry.
Going to a warehouse, Captain America finds and knocks out the two guards on watch. He then access the Serpent’s computers and discovers that they are getting their equipment directly from a branch within the United States government. He also learns about the Serpent’s next strike. He races to the Hollywood Hills, calling the detective to tip him off to the cache of weapons. On the hill, the Sons of the Serpent have kidnapped a number of Hollywood writers and tied them to the Hollywood sign with a bomb. They intend to blow them up in order to send a message to the local film studios who they believe exclusively hire Jewish writers to make their films. Luckily, Captain America arrives in time to defeat the Sons of the Serpent and disarm the bombs. One of the writers is overjoyed to see Cap because, during World War II, he saved a member of his family from the Nazi concentration camps.
When Cap returns to report everything back O’Brien, they are told to turn on the news. The lead story is about how the Sons of the Serpent have launched attacks targeting mosques and synagogues in seventeen different states. The media has also received a recording from the King Serpent, leader of Sons of the Serpent. He announces that his organization is going to wipe out all those they view as inferior.[2] Hearing this, Captain America decides it is time to go back to Washington, DC and get the truth behind the Sons of the Serpents once and for all.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Sons of the Serpent (King Serpent)
Continuity Notes
Other than Captain America himself, all of the characters in this story are constructs created by Franklin Richards to populate the Heroes Reborn pocket dimension. See Heroes Reborn: The Return #1-4 for all the details.
The true identity of the King Serpent is later revealed to be a rogue Life Model Decoy fashioned to resemble Nick Fury. See Captain America (vol. 2) #10-11.
Topical References
This story states that World War II ended 50 years prior to this story. This should be considered a topical reference due to the Sliding Timescale. As the Modern Age is pushed forward in time, the gulf of years between the end of World War II and the start of the Age of Heroes will continue to grow.
Two of the sons of the Serpent are arguing over their favorite magical sitcom from the 1960s. The argument is over Elizabeth Montgomery’s role as Samanthe Stephens on Bewitched and Barbara Eden’s role as the titular character on I Dream of Jeannie. These shows ran from 1964 to 1972 and 1965 to 1970 respectively. Since this conversation is being made years after the shows ended their original runs, this wouldn’t necessarily be considered a topical reference, maybe they’re big on watching reruns of old TV shows.
One of the Sons of the Serpent states that he read Variety magazine and learned that on of the films that was produced by these writers grossed 100 million dollars. This should be considered a topical reference for two reasons: a) Variety is a real world publication, and b) 100,000,000 is not a lot of money for a movie thanks to inflation and a lot of other things. Adjusting for inflation $100,000,000 in 2022 money would be about $185,000,000. That said, at the time of this writing (July, 2022) $100,000,000 would barely put you in the 10 ten grossing films of the year these days.
When rescuing the writers, Captain America makes a crack about how this could have been a plot to an Oliver Stone film. Oliver Stone is a film director who — at the time — was best known his films JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), and Nixon (1995). At the time this comic was published Stone was at the height of his career. The reference to him here should be considered topical. References to director Frank Capra would not since he was a director during the period that Captain America was active during World War II.
One of the filmmakers states that Captain America saved his mother from one of the German concentration camps during World War II. While this is still possible, the Sliding Timescale will make it increasingly impossible for this writer to be directly related to someone who was alive during the war. This is because the Sliding Timescale bumps the Modern Age forward increasing the length of time from the end of the war and the start of the Heroic Age. One could assume that rather than his mother, the Holocaust survivor is an ancestor to the writer.
