Nomad in the 1990s
Nomad is not a bad comic to read if you can deal with the guns, trench coats, edginess, extremeness, and grit. It’s an even better comic to read if you love that stuff. Me and Nomad go together like a dick and a car door.
But seriously, Nomad is actually not that bad of a title. But before we get into the series itself, lets get into how it came to be. To be honest, I was kind of reluctant to read the book because the covers all look like the typical type of GIGO 90’s comic book cheese that were all too common of the era. I fell for the old adage about judging a book by its cover. Upon making myself reading the series, I discovered that there was actually a lot more to it than a character that was looked like Renegade the comic book. If you don’t know what Renegade is ask your parents.
The title follows the adventures of Jack Monroe, aka Nomad, who was the Bucky to the 1950s Captain America, who first appeared in Young Men #24 in 1953. At the time, the pair were intended to be the real Captain America and Bucky. However, when Captain America returned in Avengers #4, it was explained that Cap had been in suspended animation since 1945. In Captain America #153-156 it was explained that the 50s Cap and Bucky were others posing as the originals. They were thawed out in the present day and went bad leading to the real Captain America taking them down. Monroe would return in Captain America #281 and become the original Cap’s new partner, taking on the identity of Nomad. He would serve in this capacity until issue #345 when differences between Cap and Nomad would drive them apart.
Nomad would be featured in solo stories written by writer Fabian Nicieza in Marvel Comics Presents #14 and Captain America Annual #9. Here is when Nomad started making a tonal shift. Giving up the goofy Nomad costume for long hair, sun glasses, a dark outfit, trench coat and a shotgun. This dark and gritty interpretation of the character was in following with comic book trends at the time.
These solo stories were enough for Nicieza to get a Nomad mini-series green lit in 1990. With art by James Fry, the mini-series followed Nomad as he traveled across the country trying to figure out the connection between a Miami drug lord and a new cybernetic gun that could operated by thought. It had the character weeding his way through the seedier side of crime such as drugs and prostitution, something that most other superheroes of the era tended not to get too deeply involved in with the exception of characters like Daredevil and the Punisher.
The Nomad limited series is not really much to write home about. I think it goes a little too hard on being edgy that the character sounds laughable when you read him today. Just saying all sorts of edgelord kind of stuff that 29 year old Nicieza thought sounded really cool. It all feels kind of forced. It also adds on a bizarre note where Nomad kills the big bad guy with the cyborg gun right in front of Captain America and Cap doesn’t protest and (even stranger) allows Nomad to flee the scene. It’s an odd choice for a character that typically is against killing. I don’t really see a reason why Cap would have let Nomad go, but whatever. Another odd creative choice was for Nomad to take custody of a baby girl from her mother, a drug addicted prostitute. He would go on to name the kid Bucky and carry her around on his adventures.
This limited series was quite a product of its time and hasn’t aged all that well. Particularly for its depiction of drug addicts and its attitudes toward illegal drugs and the people who use them. Nomad would come off as very unforgiving of addicts, and caring very little for their well being or trying to get them help. This harshness would soften as Nicieza found his voice for the character when the series was picked up for a second volume.
From here, Nomad have his own solo story in Captain America Annual #10 that was a prologue to the soon to be released Nomad on going series. The series ran for 25 issues between 1992 and 1994. It came out at a time when the comic book speculation market created a push for new titles for collectors seeking out #1 comics that may be worth something in the future. As many of you reading this will know is that this spectator market crashed hard by the mid to late 90s putting a lot of comic book companies — especially Marvel — in financial jeopardy at the time. Incidentally, if you managed to pick up the 1st issue of Nomad volume 2, you’ll be happy to know that your $2 investment in 1992 is now worth $3 20 years later, quite the investment! But I digress.
The second volume of Nomad was a little more grounded with Nicieza toning back some of the edgy dialogue. Nomad sounded a lot better when he didn’t talk so much like a clichéd action hero. The stories were a lot more grounded in reality and were often commentaries on what was going on at the time. These stories did not mince words on what the opinion on those subjects were either. For people who complain that CoMiCs ArE tOo PoLiTiCaL today this is yet another example on how you’re wrong. Comics have always been political and either you’ve been too dumb or outraged to notice. Nomad is a perfect example of comics being political. It was because of these real life topics that Nomad gained quite the cult following.
However, we’ll get into that in a second, because I want to take some time to talk about the creative team on the book. Most of the issues were written by Fabian Nicieza. With a fill in story by Neil Hansen for issue #21.
The series actually had quite a number of interesting artists such as S. Clarke Hawbaker (issues #1-3 and 7), some early work by Pat Olliffe (issues #4-6, 8-10, 12-13 and 15), Rick Mays (issues #11, 14, 17-18, 20, 22-23) while Pete Garcia wrapped up the series for its final 4 issues.
The second volume of Nomad, as I said above, also tackled real world issues and got very political. Issue #2 was in support of animal rights, while issue #8 provided commentary on the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD the year before, it tackled Indigenous rights in issue #10, while issue #11 was an then unheard of pro-LGTBQ+ story featuring trans men without using them as the butt of a joke. Issue #12 also tackled hate crimes targeted as gays that was rampant at the time and denounced far right talk radio personalities who fan the flames of bigotry. It (and issue #13) also addressed the seriousness of HIV and AIDS in a time where there was a lot of stigma an misinformation floating around about the disease. The remainder of the series featured more action orientated stories that were more in line with superhero fare of the time, however it was interwoven with a b-plot that was a huge rebuke of the populist Reform Party run by Ross Perot at the time and dealt with the rise of nationalism in America in the form of Neo-Nazis.
While these stories were pro-human rights and generally championed martialized groups (trans and gay people) it wasn’t entirely perfect. There are some pretty cringe moments in these stories. It had the best of intentions in mind and these stories haven’t exactly aged very gracefully. Still, I would argue that they are very important comics as they show that the medium is indeed a place where discourse on politics can and should be made. Its proof that not only that comic books have always been political, that they are also a progressive medium. It’s not always done very well but the writers try and that matters.
Flipping through these old issues I couldn’t help but stop and read the letter pages (something I don’t usually do) to see what sort of responses fans had regarding these hot button issues. Surprisingly, they were all very positive regarding Nicieza tackling subjects that were tough or taboo at the time. Perhaps the editor was very choosy on what letters to publish following those stories. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was just a metric ton of negative mail that never made it farther than the nearest trash can because horrible fans have always existed.
One thing that I found interesting that was never explained and later ignored by other writers was that Nicieza implied that either Jack or Bucky had contracted HIV. According to Sean Howe's “Marvel Comics: The Untold Story”, Nicieza wanted for Jack to have tested positive for HIV but this was ultimately nixed by Marvel editorial. From there the writer would only be able to allegorize the illness vis-a-vie the Legacy Virus during his run on the X-Men line of books. However, this was a plot that dragged on forever and went nowhere.
So while Nomad was able to push a lot of envelopes, editorial could still come in and reign things in.
But despite the strong social and political commentary, reading back-to-back issues of Nomad you can see that there wasn’t really much in the way of direction. Nomad as a character didn’t really grow or change as a character. Baby Bucky didn’t really add much to the story other than making her a hinderance in fights. Eventually stories would have to come up with excuses for Nomad not to bring a baby everywhere he fucking went. There is a sub-plot where Bucky’s mother gets clean and is trained to be an assassin by series regular Giscard Epurer (who Nomad uncouthly nicknames “Hey Poo-Poo” because he can’t pronounce his name). She gets her daughter back for a little bit but ultimately she gets summarily killed off during the final story arc for no good reason.
Surprisingly, Nomad was a title that managed to avoid the major summer crossovers of the time. Only being shoe-horned in the Infinity War event early on in the run. Still, the title was sucked into an 8 part story arc that crossed over in the Daredevil and Punisher titles that were running at the time.
I would say that the only interesting thing that was done with Nomad as a character was delving into his past before he became the Bucky of the 1950s. Nicieza goes back and reveals that Jack’s father (and a lot of people in his old home town) were Nazi sympathizers. This is an interesting wrinkle to add to a character who has been characterized as patriot.
I think more focus could have been made on having Nomad being disillusionment of the American Dream by living the American reality. However, this subject matter was only skirted on. Rather than finding himself in a personal conflict with what he was raised to believe and the reality he was living in, Nicieza instead chose to have Jack embrace the seedy underbelly of society a little too willingly.
Despite its cult following, Nomad just wasn’t selling very well and the title was slated to be scrapped after 25 issues. Had the series continued Nicieza would have turned the book over to writer Neil Hansen as self-proclaimed “professional hitchhiker” who was going to apply his experience thumbing it on the side of the road to the book. Hansen only did one issue (#21) which was a bizarre story involving a woman in a wheelchair falling in love with the Man-Thing or some such thing. It’s not very good in my opinions so I wouldn’t have been interested in whatever else he had on offer. Still, I am curious about Hansen’s hitchhiking skills but unfortunately there is not much to be found about him on the Internet other than the comics he either wrote or penciled. Guy doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.
The final four issues wrapped up all the lingering plot threads and wrapped things up. Nicieza ended the story with Nomad being cryogenically frozen again. In the letter pages for that issue, Fabian would say that he was relieved that the book was being cancelled because he had grown protective of the character and had a hard time with the idea of other writers taking on the character out of fear that they just wouldn’t understand the person that Fabian had been crafting for the past 4 years.
And that was all she wrote about Nomad until the 2000s when he became a recurring character in about a handful of issues of Thunderbolts as the new Scourge of the Underworld. He was then put back in the box for a bit until Captain America (vol. 5) #7 when it was revealed he was terminally ill and living on borrowed time only to be callously bumped off by the Winter Soldier. As I write this in 2022, Jack Monroe is still considered among the deceased and it doesn’t seem like anyone is that interested in bringing the guy back. However, we’ve seen worse characters make a come back so never say never. If the right creative team lines up someone will probably resurrect Jack Monroe since the only unique thing a dead character can do in the Marvel Universe these days is actually stay dead.
Since Jacky-boy has been dead his mantle has gone on to others. The first was Rikki Barnes. Yeah, Captain America’s sidekick from the awful Heroes Reborn run. She takes on the Nomad mantle after getting transplanted on Earth-616 as seen in Nomad: Girl Without a World #1-4. The name was also taken up by Ian Rogers who took on the mantle in Captain America (vol. 7) #10. Neither character has gotten much traction. Rogers has not been seen since 2015’s Secret Wars and Rikki Barnes while making a brief appearance 2019’s Future Foundation, hasn’t been all that visible in recent times as well.
Only the future knows when we’ll see Nomad again. The question is: Will it be one we already know, or some brand new iteration of the character?
