Nomad #2
The Wild Horses
While getting revenge against Umberto Stafilios, Nomad has uncovered a conspiracy involving Cyberoptics, an electronics company developing some kind of new hardware for the military. Clues have led him to a horse ranch in Lexington, Kentucky. Jack manages to get himself a job as a ranch hand in order to learn what the connection between it and a Miami drug dealer would be.
One day while working on the ranch, some of the horses get spooked while Jennifer Boothe, the ranch owner’s daughter, was out riding. Jack comes to her rescue and seeing her for the first time he is distracted by her beauty. When her father Orinn arrives to make sure she is ok, he thanks Jack for saving her life. As Jack and the other hands get back to work, he is warned to steer clear of Jennifer because she is addicted to cocaine.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, the Commission on Superhuman Affairs has become concerned that Nomad is interfering in one of their operations. In order to develop a plan to deal with him, they have hired psychologist Andra Sterman to go through the government’s records on Monroe and write up a psychological profile on him. Andrea has to go into the basement of the Library of Congress and go through all the hard files stored down there in order to find the information she’s been looking for. She learns that Jack was born on December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, leading to America’s entry into World War II. Orphaned, Jack was raised in McMurty’s Foster Home in Connecticut where he fell in love with the stories of Captain America during the war.[1]
By the 1950s he found friendship in one of his teachers who was just as big a fan of Captain America as he was. This teacher soon rediscovered the long lost Super-Soldier Formula and tried to convince the US government to allow him to become the next Captain America. When the Korean War came to an end shortly thereafter, the government got cold feet about having a new Captain America. Deciding to go it alone, Jack and his mentor injected themselves with the formula and became the new Captain America and Bucky anyway. Unfortunately, the process wasn’t done properly and the two became increasingly paranoid and began attacking innocent people thinking they were communist spies. The government was forced to round the rouge superhumans up and placed them in suspended animation in order to stop their increasingly violent attacks.[2]
By this time, the only thing that Jack can uncovered about the Boothe ranch is that they have had a high number of horses on the ranch die. Because these were all considered accidents, Orin Boothe filed insurance claims for every single one. Posing as a reporter named Jack Ward, Monroe pays a visit to the insurance company to see what he can learn about these insurance claims. Jack learns that Boothe made a lot of money off his insurance claims and apparently nobody found it suspicious. As Jack leaves the insurance company he notices that a car is tailing him and runs its plates through a computer he has built into his truck and learns that it is registered to Boothe’s business. Putting his truck on auto-pilot, Jack climbs into the back where he has a rail gun set up and begins opening fire on the pursuing vehicle. This forces the two men in the other car to surrender. Monroe assumes that they were hired by Orrin Boothe, but soon learns that they were actually sent after him by Jennifer.
Heading back to the Boothe ranch, Jack confronts Jennifer in her bedroom and finds her on the floor strung out on drugs. She reveals that she knows all about him and that he has come trying to find out why her father’s trucking company has been smuggling drugs out of Miami. She tells Jack that she’ll tell him everything if he agrees to kill her father.
Back in Washington, Andrea Sterman continues her investigation into Jack Monroe’s background. She learns how he and the 50’s Captain America were revived in the present day to fight the real Captain America and the Falcon. The pair were easily defeated and turned over to the authorities for treatment.[3] From there, Jack was put through years of psychotherapy and drug treatments to recalibrate his mind so he could be integrated into modern society. After he was released, Jack soon became a partner to the original Captain America and took on the Nomad identity.[4] After a time, Nomad ended up going solo and tried to take down the Slug’s drug operation in Florida all by himself.[5] Her initial analysis of Monroe is that he is a young man who has been manipulated nearly his entire life and is now desperately trying to find a meaningful role in society. Unfortunately, as time progresses Jack Monroe has become increasingly violent in his vigilante behavior.
By this time, Nomad has learned that Orrin Boothe owns Cyberoptics, the company in the center of the conspiracy he is unraveling. That evening he breaks into of the office of Boothe Enterprises to learn more from their computer records. He learns that the insurance premiums on the horses are being paid by Cyberoptics for some reason and that the corpses are shipped off out of state to be examined. Jack is once more interrupted by a wandering security guard and has to make a hasty retreat. Monroe then races back to the ranch where he finds some men preparing to transport the more recent horse corpses from a refrigerated room so they can be shipped out. He also finds piles of cocaine there as well. Ambushing them, he takes them all out but one who tells him that the horses are shipped out to a veterinary pathology lab out in Minneapolis.
That’s when he hears Jennifer crying for help over by the house and races to rescue her. He finds Jennifer and her father Orrin pointing guns at each other. As it turned out, Orrin is being blackmailed by his daughter to smuggle the drugs that she has become dependent upon. She has been using information she found out regarding the Cyberoptics program and has threatened to leak it to the press. Both Jennifer and Orrin order Jack to kill the other. Jack does neither and ultimately, the Boothe’s end up shooting each other instead. With both of his leads now dead, Jack decides to follow the clues to Minneapolis.
At that same time, Andrea Sterman has completed her preliminary report on Jack Monrore and has presented her findings to the Commission. They all agree that Jack is a potential danger to society and they have to bring him in dead or alive.
Recurring Characters
Nomad, Andrea Sterman, Val Cooper, Henry Gyrich, Lewis Hayworth
Continuity Notes
Jack wasn’t actually orphaned as we’ll learn in Nomad (vol. 2) #18 and 24-25. His parents were actually Nazi sympathizers and they ended up getting arrested when Jack blabbed about his father’s Nazi memorabilia kept in the basement. After their arrest, Jack and his sister were put in foster care.
Jack teamed up with William Burnside to become the Captain America and Bucky of the 1950s. This was a period where the original Cap and Bucky were lost in 1945 and believed to be dead, as per Avengers #4. For Burnside and Monroe’s time as Cap and Bucky see Young Men #24-28, Captain America Comics #76-78, Men’s Adventures #26-28, and Captain America #155.
The 50s Cap and Bucky were released from cryo-stasis by a government agent who thought they would better serve America’s interest. They clashed with the real Cap and Falcon in Captain America #153-156.
Jack convinced Steve Rogers to let him become his new sidekick in Captain America #281 to 305. They paired up again from issues #336 until issue #345 when Jack left over differing ideas on how to deal with crime. See the next point below on why that was….
Nomad went after the Slug on his own in Captain America #324-325. Cap had to stop Nomad from going over the edge and killing him.
Topical References
When Nomad is distracted by Jennifer Booth’s beauty he snaps himself back to reality by referring to himself as Buck Rogers. Buck Rogers was a science fiction character that first started appearing in newspaper comic strips in 1929. The character was a “man out of time”, who woke up some 500 years in the distant future. A reference like this would be considered topical when made by most characters, but Jack Monroe grew up in the 1950s and spent decades in suspended animation. He would have grown up during the time Buck Rogers was a comic strip and later when it became a radio play. As such this reference would not be considered topical.
Orrin Booth’s insurance clams are stated as being over a million dollars. Which was a lot of money back in 1990 but not so much now. Adjusting for inflation this would be about 2.2 million in 2022 money.
When running the plates on the car that is tailing him, the vehicle is identified as a 1987 Lincoln Continental. This should be considered topical as this is a real world vehicle and there are very few on the road still. Maybe a vintage car collector would have one? I guess you could argue that Orrin is a collector of late 80s vehicles, or whatever.
The computer at the insurance company is depicted as having a monochrome (green text on a black background) CRT monitor. This should be considered a topical reference as this is an obsolete technology.
The dates of the insurance claims by Orrin Booth are listed as being made in 1986, 1988, and 1989. These dates should be considered topical. Rather than specific years, modern readers should interpret this to mean that Booth has been making his bizarre claims for the four years prior to this story.
