Hidden in View Part I: But Words Will Never Hurt Me

The town of Fort Worth, Texas is a hot bed of discrimination towards the gay community. This has been spurred on by a local radio talk show host named Martin Elliot, aka the Roar. Elliot frequently tells his audience that the gay community are carrying a deadly auto-immune disease and need to be wiped out. That evening, he is encouraging his listeners to go out and beat up gay people and they are more than happy to oblige. One mob of miscreants finds a young man and begin beating him.

The attack is interrupted by Nomad, who happens to be in the area. He had rolled into town and the local Undergrounders hooked him up with a roadwork gig. He cut his hand on the job and was just on his way back to his hotel room after getting his hand fixed up by an Undergrounder doctor. That’s when he came upon the swarming and comes to the aid of the young man. Jack sends the bigots packing, using one of his stun discs to smash their radio which is tuned on to the Roar’s show. With the battle over, Monroe then helps the young man to a nearby clinic for medical attention.

Jack then heads down to Bouncing Betty’s a diner where the local chapter of Undergrounders hang out. There, two of its members — the elderly Ma Bell and the beautiful Horserose — have been looking after Bucky while he worked. When he tells them what happened, they caution him not to get involved since there is no combating the type of hate that is rampant in town. That’s when Kildare, the Undergrounders’ doctor, arrives and says they need to try. He points out that the gay community are becoming targets because of this disease due to the lack of education on the illness as well as a lack of treatment options in the area. He points to other cities that have clinics that specially treat the disease in question and they don’t see this level of violence. Ma Bell disagrees, saying that it could happen there as easily as it does here if the right people are around to stoke the flames. She tells Jack that he’ll see what she’s talking about if he opens his eyes to it.

Monroe decides to follow Ma Bell’s advice, he goes around interviewing locals about the virus in question and what they know about it. What he discovers is how ignorant people are about the illness any how little they know about it. A lot of people have no idea how it is contracted, thinking you can get it from kissing someone or holding their hand. These people are scared and angry and also have bigoted notions towards the gay community who have been disproportionately affected by the illness, making them scapegoats at to be ostracized. Some even use religion as justification for their bigotry. This makes Jack realize two things: That this isn’t a regional issue unique to Texas, it is a people problem bred from stupidity and ignorance. It has also made Jack realize how little he knew about the illness. He just now remembers that Bucky’s mother was a drug addict who was at high risk for infection and Jack — being forced to use unlicensed doctors to treat his injuries — might have also been exposed as well. He reminds himself that they both need to be tested to make sure they don’t have the illness.

Speaking of Bucky’s mother, the woman has been approached by Giscard Epuruer — the favor broker — who offered to help her get her daughter back.[1] To this end, Epuruer has transported the woman to a private drug rehabilitation clinic in Marseilles, France to get her cleaned up. However, one of the doctors who works at the clinic tries to use drugs to coerce her into giving him sexual favors. Caught in the act by Giscard, the man has his neck snapped. He is disappointed because the doctor was good at his job despite his proclivities. However, he is even more disappointed in the woman as he needs her to be clean so he can start training her to kill. Bucky’s mother apologizes for giving in to temptation and asks why she needs to be trained in such a way. Epurer tells her that she needs these skills because she is going to kill Jack Monroe, the man who took her child.

Meanwhile, back in America, Jack Monroe’s investigation takes him to radio station KRSH and Martin Elliot’s Roar radio show. He arrives just as Elliot is on the air, spouting his usual far-right rhetoric to his base, warning them of the “trenchcoated liberal” who prevented some of his listeners from beating a gay man to death. During a commercial break, Elliot is more than happy to have an interview with Jack. At first, Elliot says he is just an entertainer but then goes into a disgusting rant about how there is a culture war going on with one side trying to stamp out a deadly disease and the others doing nothing to protect society from the vermin spreading it. Hearing this reminds Jack of his days as a sidekick to the Captain America of the 1950s and how their activities were dictated by such bigoted paranoia.[2]

Angered by these statements, Jack accuses Martin of fomenting anger and inciting people to violence and is part of the problem, not the solution. Elliot brushes this off, saying that all he knows is that his producers turn on his microphone for six hours a day and tell him to talk. When Jack asks if he believes what he says on air, Martin unconvincingly says that he does but stresses that he is mostly there to entertain his listeners. When asked how he feels about the people negatively impacted by his rhetoric, Elliot says that it’s a big country and they don’t have to stay here if they don’t like what he has to say. With the commercial break over, Elliot goes back into the booth and begins telling his audience about how he was just interviewed by a “liberal rag”. When Jack is told by one of the producers that he just gave Elliot an hours worth of material he apologizes. The producer tells him not to be, saying that he arranged for this interviews in between ad breaks because it pumps Elliot up when he gets back on air.

A few nights later, Elliot Martin learns that the local medical clinic — run by the Undergrounders Kildare — is providing medical treatment to those infected with the virus. He uses The Roar to whip people up into a frenzy and a group of good ol’ boys head down to attack the clinic. In response, the Undergrounders have gathered to stand up to them. When the local bigots arrive in their pick-up truck, Nomad shoots out their tire and attacks them directly. As he fights the group, one of them breaks away and runs toward the clinic. He is instantly swarmed and beaten by the Undergrounders. Jack is horrified by this and tells them to stop, pointing out that they are being no better than the bigots who are threatening the clinic to begin with. That’s when he notices that the Martin’s radio show has been playing in the background this entire time and realizes that to stop this madness he’s going to have to deal with The Roar directly.

Jack races to the radio station where he confronts Elliot for working people up to the point to incite violence and accuses him of tipping off the local bigots about the clinic. Martin denies culpability, suggesting that maybe the clinic warned him about the attack, saying that it was his duty to report the incident. Still thinking Jack is a reporter, he then accuses him of hypocrisy for inserting himself in the middle of a news story. Jack suddenly realizes that everything he has done in town has only worked to help Elliot boost his own ratings. Martin isn’t afraid to admit it either, saying that he’s already in talks to having his show become nationally syndicated and how he intends to use his influence to pressure city council into cutting funding for the clinic. After boasting that the more he talks the more people listen, Jack decides to shut him up for a while by punching Elliot with enough force to break his jaw.

In the days that follow, Jack decides that it is time to get moving. As he is saying goodbye, he has learned that Elliot’s on air admissions have led to the FCC opening an investigation on him. As he says his goodbyes, Kildare gives him the contact information of a doctor up in Dallas that can run tests on him and Bucky. Before he goes, Horserose asks if she can come along, saying that it’s bound to quiet down and get boring once Jack is gone and also she thinks he’s cute. He tells her that she is more than welcome to tag along if she wants to do the walking. Horserose isn’t too concerned about how sore her feet will get since she’ll have Jack to rub them down at the end of the day. As they leave they pass by an ominious newspaper article that reports a third man who has been infected with the virus through unknown means.

Recurring Characters

Nomad, Bucky, Undergrounders (Horserose), Giscard Epurer, Bucky’s mother

Continuity Notes

1. Nomad took Bucky away from her mother back in Nomad #3 because he thought a drug addicted sex worker was unfit to raise a baby. Giscard later tracked the mother down in Nomad (vol. 2) #9 and offered her the chance to get her daughter back. She is unnamed here. As of this writing in October, 2022, her name has yet to be revealed.

2. As detailed in Captain America #155, a man named William Burnside sought to become the new Captain America in the 1950s and selected Jack to be his new Bucky. The two injected themselves with a derivative of the Super Soldier Formula that created the original Captain America. However, their process was incomplete and as a side-effect the pair became increasingly paranoid. Motivated by the communist witch hunts of the era, this Cap and Bucky started attacking anyone they viewed as “Un-American” and frequently attacked visible minorities. That was until they were stopped by the government who then put them in suspended animation. William and Jack were thawed out in the modern age circa Captain America #153. After his defeat at the hands of the real Captain America in issue #156, Jack underwent a battery of mental health treatments to deprogram his paranoia more or less making him a functional person by his return in Captain America #281.

Topical References

• This story was inspired by the AIDS epidemic that began in 1981 as well as bigotry toward the homosexual community. It was also written in a time when treating the illness was in its infancy and mortality rates were high. A lot has changed since then and as such those elements should be considered topical. See below on how one could frame this in a modern context.

• In this story, the bigots refer to gay people as being queer. At the time, the word was used as a slur toward homosexual individuals. While some still use it in a pejorative manner today, it has since been coopeted and recontextualized by the LGTBQ+ community and made their own. Rather than a slur it has become an identifier for some. So it hits different now. There are worse words that can be used today so this is probably the most double edged topical reference I’ve commented on.

• Jack states that he has been in Fort Worth for about a month. Due to the Sliding Timescale this should be reduced to about a week.

• One of the Undergrounders is nicknamed Ma Bell. “Ma Bell” was the nickname for Bell Systems, a telecommunications business that has been around since 1877 in one form or another. Usually a reference like that would be considered topical since Bell is a real world company. However, in this instance since its being used as a nickname for a character to denote how old she is (just like Bell Systems) then it would not be in this case.

• When Jack poses as a reporter he states that he is writing for Rolling Stone and is using a pocket tape recorder to take people’s statements. Rolling Stone is a magazine that publishes stories about rock music, politics, and popular culture that was established in 1967. When this comic was published, reporters commonly used pocket tape recorders to take statements so they could be transcribed later. Both of these references should be considered topical because (a) Rolling Stone is a real world publication and (b) pocket tape recorders have now become an obsolete technology.

• Speaking of cassette tapes, a number of the radios in this story are depicted as having tape decks. This should also be considered a topical reference as this is yet another obsolete technology.

How to Frame This Story in a Modern Context

When this story was first written, the United States had a terrible track record of trying to mitigate the spread of the illness. Mostly because it was viewed as a “gay disease” during a time when homosexuality was one of the most marginalized groups in America at the time. If being gay wasn’t illegal where you lived, it was frowned upon as being “morally wrong”. When asked what he was doing about the AIDS epidemic, President Ronald Reagan made jokes and ignored the problem.

This backward way of thinking made the epidemic worse as the virus found its way into the general population. This happened for a lot of reasons: tainted blood donations, drug addicts sharing needles, bi-sexual people having unprotected sex with multiple partners of both genders.

That’s when the panic set in because, due to nothing being done HIV and AIDS were incredibly deadly back then. Someone infected with the illness would be hard pressed to survive longer than 18 months after infection. With the advancement in treatments someone infected can live for decades after infection. Proper treatments didn’t become widely available until 1996.

This story is very much a product of its time as it details the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS and how little people know about it at the time, how deadly it actually was, and the attitudes that it was a “gay disease”.

That said, AIDS/HIV are not the death sentence they used to be and since this story operates on a Sliding Timescale, you have to generalize the illness because of the advancements in medicine that have come out since this story was first published.

So, rather than HIV/AIDS, modern readers could interpret this as being some kind of general autoimmune disease instead of something specific. Thus maintaining the rest of the story elements.

The idea that gay people would be scapegoated and discriminated against because of an illness hasn’t gone away. Sadly, bigotry has never really become topical in the Marvel Universe. Neither in the real world either as we’ve seen when it comes to the stigma surrounding the monkey pox outbreak that is going on right now as I write this in 2022.

America never learns from its mistakes.