Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #33
Secret Agent Danvers, Part 2: Vitamin
Arlington National Cemetery, Today
Carol Danvers is standing at the grave of the late Michael Rossi. She hasn’t visited until today because she doesn’t like saying goodbyes to the dead. However, she isn’t so certain Michael is gone since his body was never recovered from the plane he crashed in.[1] She is soon joined by Rick Mason, aka the Agent, who is surprised to see Carol out in the open given her recent troubles.[2] He is there for the same reason Carol is. Someone sent both of them a letter that said Ghazi Rashid is still alive and that Ascension is back in play and to meet in Arlington for more.[3]
Mazar-E Sharif, Afganistan, Several Years Ago[4]
Michael Rossi was a member of the Air Force’s Spec-Ops unit and is summoned to a safehouse. There he finds Carol Danvers, recovering from her ordeals after she was captured by the enemy and tortured for days. However, Carol is reluctant to trust Rossi with what went down. Michael tries to assuage her concerns by saying that he was sent to Afghanistan under the cover that he is seeking to negotiate an oil pipeline on behalf of Roxxon. In reality, this was to place him in the area to set up the safehouse to extract any Air Force pilots that might get shot down while on missions in the area.[5]
He tells her that he is also looking to get a line on a terrorist named Ghazi Rashid. After Carol confirms that Rossi isn’t connected with the CIA, she turns over the data she stole from Rashid’s hideout that reveal a mole named Vitamin was providing Rashid with CIA intelligence. When Rossi asks what happened to Ghazi, Carol tells him that she killed him. She then admits that he was the first person she was ever forced to kill, and that she had to do it a few more times to get where she is now and feels horrible about it.
Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Three Weeks Later
After having some time to heal, Carol meets with her superiors to petition her return to flying once she has fully recovered from her injuries. However, they tell her that after what happened she is being grounded indefinitely and reassigned stateside. Danvers is crushed by this but accepts their orders. When she leaves the meeting she is stopped by Michael Rossi. Taking her outside, he reveals that the reason why she is being grounded is because she is being reassigned to the AFSO starting immediately. This is because nobody in Spec-Ops are cleared for flight, but he assures her that her new position will give her plenty enough adrenaline.
Between physio-therapy and training to get Carol back to her fighting trim, she and Rossi go over the data she was able to smuggle out of Rashid’s hideout. They aren’t able to pull much intel from the data, but what they do know is that Vitamin is a code name for CIA field handlers. That Vitamin isn’t the name for a specific individual, but a team of field handlers. Going over what they know, they deduce that Rashid may have been transmitting information from a satellite and that by narrowing down which one he was using for communication they can recall all the encrypted data.
Berlin, Germany, Eight Months Later
They eventually narrow down which Vitamin field agent was working with Rashid and start staking out his home from a building across the way. They watch the operative for days and he goes through a daily routine like clock work. Until one day he breaks from this routine, worrying Carol. Michael tries to tell her that they have to wait for the right moment to act. As if on cue, the apartment Vitamin was staying in is blown up by a bomb. Watching as people flee from the building, Michael spots someone calmly walking out and figures this man was the one who planted the bomb.
They chase the man, who turns out to be Rick Mason, someone who Rossi has worked for in the past. The Agent doesn’t surrender and flees into an apartment building. Chasing Mason up onto the roof, they wing him with a bullet as he leaps from one building to the next. Landing hard, Mason activates a cloaking device given to him by his father to trick Rossi and Danvers into thinking he somehow got away by hiding in plain sight.[6]
Arlington, the Present
As Carol and Mason recall all of this, a limo suddenly pulls up in front of them. From it emerges Michael Rossi. He tells them that not only has Ghazi resurfaced alive, Norman Osborn has given him access to Ascension making him a global threat. The CIA also has kill orders on both himself and Mason. He then asks his fellow fugitives if they are up for saving the world!
Recurring Characters
Ms. Marvel, Michael Rossi, The Agent
Continuity Notes
Carol is referring to when Rossi’s plane was shot down by Stephen Lang in X-Men #96. What Carol doesn’t know is that Rossi survived the crash thanks to the Hellfire Club as revealed in Classic X-Men #7.
Namely, Carol is an outlaw after refusing to join Norman Osborn’s Avengers, as seen in Dark Avengers #1.
As seen last issue, years earlier, Carol slit Rashid’s throat. However, if you read Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #31, you’ll note that we already know that Ghazi Rashid is still alive.
In the index for last issue, I calculated that this story likely happens 4 years prior to the start of the Modern Age and 16 years prior to the main story.
Carol and Michael Rossi act like they have never met before. This seemingly contradicts with Uncanny X-Men #182, that suggests that they met prior to this. That said, that memory was recalled second had by Rogue after she stole Carol’s memories (circa Avengers Annual #10). This suggests that Rogue is either misremembering (they aren’t her memories after all) or Carol and Rossi are pretending to not know each for plausible deniability.
Here, Rossi states that last he heard the Agent was working in Costa Brava. This is seemingly a reference to Marvel Graphic Novel: The Agent #1. However, that story takes place in the Modern Age many years after this flashback. That said, one can assume that Mason has had more than one mission in Costa Brava. Here, Mason refers to his cloaking device as being given to him by his father. His father, as revealed in that same graphic novel, is Phineas Mason, aka the Tinkerer. The Tinkerer is a criminal inventor who first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #2.
Topical References
Carol refers to Rossi as her own personal “James Bond”, She is comparing him to the fictional secret agent that is featured in a number of stories written by Ian Flemming. The series of books have been spun out to various other films including a franchise of popular films. Time of this writing (June, 2024) there have been 24 movies about James Bond. That said, this could be considered a topical reference as you could replace this with a more contemporary one and it’d still work. However, on the other hand, James Bond has become a literary classics.
It is stated that Ghazi Rashid was working with al-Queda, a real world terrorist organization that is still active today. This could be considered a topical reference as their status could change at some point in the future making references to them in this story dated.
