Secret Agent Danvers, Part 1: Ascention

Several Years Ago…[1]

At Karshi-Kanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan, Tony Stark is on sight to see a test of the new fighter jet he is providing to the military. He is taken aback when he meets the pilot, Carol Danvers, and instantly tries putting on the old Stark charm.[2] This doesn’t really work as Danvers and her commanding officer quickly go over the test flight. She is to use a holographic projector to map out the region. However, if she is engaged by any hostiles she is to not engage and return to base immediately.

Soon, Carol is in the air, scanning the area when her onboard computers tell her that there has been a missile lock on her plane. Unable to shake the missile, Danvers is ordered to eject even though she is too low to the ground. She tries to climb up high enough so her chute has time to open but has to bail out early to avoid getting blown up. As her ejection seat makes a hard landing, one of the straps breaks. Carol survives the crash but quickly discovers that her femur is broken and poking out of her skin. Suddenly, a number of jeeps carrying enemy soldiers arrive to collect Carol, but she quickly blacks out from her injuries.

When Danvers wakes up she is in a cell with her leg patched up in a splint. She calls out to her jailers and soon guards come in with a man named Ghazi Rashid. He welcomes her to Afghanistan, and then begins asking her about a project called Ascension. Carol refuses to him anything but her name, rank, and dog tag number. He slaps Carol across the face and makes his demands again. When she continues to defy him, he has Carol dragged to another room where she is stripped down to her underwear and strapped to a chair. He first tries zapping her with a pair of cattle prods, but Carol insists that she doesn’t know what Ascension is. From there, she continues giving her name, rank, and number.

After enduring a days worth of torture, Carol is tossed into her cell until the next morning. He is impressed that she withstood three hours of torture the day before. This time, when he takes her back to the interrogation room he begins pulling out her finger nails. Even though Carol is put through unbelievable amounts of pain, she still does not crack.

She eventually passes out and when Carol wakes up again, Rashid tries to convince her that three days have passed and that her superiors have declared dead and there is no rescue coming. Carol, however, knows Ghazi is lying as she has been keeping track of time despite his best efforts to disorientate her. When she laughs in his face, an enraged Rashid reveals that he always knew she knew nothing about Ascension and then smashes her wrist with a sledge hammer. The blood break allows Carol to finally pull her hand from the bonds and uses the broken wood from the chair to slit Ghazi’s throat. When a guard comes in to check on them, Carol uses the sledge hammer to take him out.

Luckily, there is only one man at the computers in the next room and after killing him she decides to use a hard drive to steal all the data as it could be of use to military intelligence. On one of the computers she discovers that the terrorists have somehow been granted access to the CIA’s Langley Server to try and get data on Ascension. This was until recently when their connection was severed on the inside. There is a email from the mole advising Rashid to wait for contact from an operative code named Vitamin.

With the data in hand, Carol disguises herself in a burqa to make the long journey back to the nearest emergency extraction point hoping that she doesn’t get caught along the way.

Recurring Characters

Carol Danvers, Tony Stark, Ghazi Rashid

Continuity Notes

1. Per last issue, Carol joined the Air Force when she was 18 years old. Based on available information and extrapolation it can be determined that this story takes place roughly 16 years prior to the present day around the time this story was published, and having happened about 4 years prior to the start of the Modern Age. See below.

2. Here, Carol tries to get Tony Stark to admit he is Iron Man. There is an issue with the chronology here (see below), but there was a period where Iron Man’s true identity was a secret. Tony ultimately revealed his true identity for the first time in Iron Man (vol. 3) #55.

Topical References

• Tony Stark references rival companies Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. This should be considered a topical reference as these are real world businesses.

• The terrorists that are working with Ghazi Rashid are depicted as being the Taliban, a religious extremist group that Muslim extremist group that exists in the Middle East. They are currently the ruling authority in the nation of Afghanistan as I write this in June, 2024. From the framing of this story, it seems like they are framing this story as taking place in the early 1990s (as that is the relative time from the date of publication), that said, I’m not sure that this story is very historically accurate. I’m not an expert on US presence in the middle east other than the basics about the first Iraq War. However, I feel like this is drawing from real world history and as such this should be considered a topical reference. Modern readers could assume that this flashback happens during a conflict that is unique to the fiction as opposed to something that happened IRL. Likewise you could assume the Taliban’s presence is also topical.

• The computers and technology depicted in the Taliban hideout is era specific, such as the use of CRT model monitors. This dated technology should also be considered topical.

• Carol finds a web browser open to Google Maps on one of the computers. This is topical as Google is a real world company.

How Long Ago is this Flashback? (and other issues of chronology)

In order to determine how far back this story takes requires a bit of research. As we learned last issue, Carol joined the Air Force when she turned 18 years of age. Per Avengers Annual #10, Carol was 29 years of age in that story. This would place her as being born 24 years prior to the start of the Modern Age, and making her 18th birthday and enlistment into the Air Force as happening 6 years prior to the start of the Modern Age. In this story, Carol is already flying aircraft for the Air Force. On average, it takes about 2 years of training for someone to become a fighter pilot in the Air Force. Assuming she qualified as quickly as possible, this flashback probably takes place about 4 years before the start of the Modern Age, making it take place 16 years prior to the stories that were published during this time period, as comics published in 2008 take place in “Year Twelve” of the Modern Age.

This creates some issues here since Carol asks Tony if he’s really Iron Man in this story, which would be impossible because Tony hadn’t invented his first suit of armor yet. Tales of Suspense #39 occurs in the first year of the Modern Age. I would consider this some kind of error because moving this even forward in time to a period where Tony is already Iron Man would mess up Carol’s chronology because she was already working at NASA during the first year of the Modern Age. One can assume that this is an error on the part of the writer. Since Iron Man doesn’t make an appearance in the story, I think we can dismiss this one-off reference.