Hidden in View Part II: If It Weren’t For Love

After a night of drinking a man takes home a woman for a one night stand. As they are in the middle of love making, the woman suddenly pulls out a needle and stabs the man with it.

The following day, Jack Monroe — who has been in Dallas, Texas for a while — is at a clinic getting himself and Bucky tested for an autoimmune illness that has become a recent epidemic. Across the street, people are protesting outside the sheriffs office. Apparently, a woman who has been injecting men with the virus back in Fort Worth has also started appearing the area.[1] People are deeply upset and want the local police to catch whoever is responsible. The media has since nicknamed the woman “The Needle” after her method of transmission.

That’s when Doctor Felisa Soto comes out of her office and tells Jack she has done taking samples from Bucky. She is going to send them to a lab to get the results and tells Jack that they should be ready within a few days. Jack asks Soto about her thoughts on law enforcement’s efforts to catch the Needle. Felisa says that it’s going to be a hard job since it’s not like they can stop people from having sex. Since the cops don’t seem prepared to deal with this crisis she isn’t sure who can.

When Jack leaves the clinic he is shocked that Horserose — the Undergrounder who came to Dallas with him — is part of the protestors. Seeing how inflamed the mob is getting, Jack pulls her away but a cop tries to stop her from leaving. Horserose knocks the officer down with a single punch because she is a trained kickboxer. Jack yanks her away so they can get away before someone tries to have them arrested. As they leave, they fail to notice a strange man with glowing eyes watching them from the crowd.[2] When they get back to their hotel, Horserose starts feeling sick because she is diabetic and forgot to take her insulin shot. Jack reminds her that she needs to keep better care of herself, but Horserose dismisses his concern, reminding him that she likes to live life on the edge.

Meanwhile, in at a drug rehabilitation clinic in Marseilles, France, Bucky’s mother has finally kicked her addiction. She is now undergoing fire arm training by Giscard Epurer. He tells her that this training is important as she needs the skills to kill Jack Monroe and get her baby back.[3]

While in Washington, DC, a politician named Bart Ingrid is meeting with his colleague Hugh Greider. Greider is trying to convince Ingrid not to try passing a bill through the Senate as it will fail. However, Bart refuses to give up and threatens to expose a family secret regarding Hugh’s son that could be damaging to his political career.[4]

That evening, at a Dallas nightclub, one of of Needle’s victims has shown up with two uzis and begins opening fire. He demands that the woman show herself, telling everyone that she lured him into the bathroom the other night and injected him with a needle and infected him with the virus. Luckily, Nomad was outside and he is able to disarm the man. Once the shooter has been incapacitated he mumbles something about how the woman who infected him claimed she had the needle because she was diabetic. That’s when Jack remembers that Horserose went into the club to use the bathroom. He finds her safe and gets them out of there before the cops show up.

This whole situation has Jack suspicious and a few days later he convinces Horserose to take Bucky out shopping. While she is gone, he goes through her purse and finds some strange vials. He takes one of them to Doctor Soto to be examined. She confirms that it is not insulin but a solution that has been tainted with the virus, confirming Jack’s worst fear: That Horserose is the Needle. He then races to the store where Horserose has been shopping and confronts her. Realizing that Jack now knows the truth, Horserose breaks down and explains that she had no choice but to do what she is doing. Attacking Nomad, she reminds him that she was a nurse who was fired from her job and now explains why. She tells him that it happened because she accidentally injected someone with a needle that wasn’t properly sterilized and gave them the virus and that person was a 3-year-old girl. Her rationale behind infecting the men she lured was because they deserved to get infected, not the little girl. With no other options left and Jack able to fight her off, Horserose grabs a tainted needle from her purse and injects herself so that she too might die if given enough time.

Soon, the police arrive on the scene to take Horserose in and Jack leaves the scene with Bucky. On his way out, a man asks him for a light and then asks what went down. Jack tells him that it was fear, guilt and hate winning over hope, innocence and love. After Jack walks away, the man’s eyes begin to glow and he muses that it was just what he likes, a story with a happy ending.

Recurring Characters

Nomad, Bucky, Horserose, Hate-Monger, Giscard Epurer, Bucky’s mother, Bart Ingrid, Hugh Greider

Continuity Notes

1. We saw that someone was injecting men with the virus on a newspaper headline at the end of last issue.

2. This mystery man is revealed to be the Hate-Monger in Nomad (vol. 2) #15.

3. Nomad took Bucky away from her mother in Nomad #3. At the time she was a drug addicted sex worker whom he thought was unfit to raise a child. Giscard has been helping her kick her habit and train her to kill Jack since Nomad (vol. 2) #9. She is unnamed here. As of this writing in October, 2022, her name has yet to be revealed.

4. The secret regarding Hugh Greider’s son is exposed next issue.

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.

• Jack states that he has been In Dallas for five weeks. Due to the Sliding Timescale this should be reduced to about a week and a bit.

Supplement Material

• This issue features a pin-up of Nomad, Daredevil, and the Punisher. It is an unused piece for the Dead Man’s Hand storyline that took place in Daredevil #307-309, Punisher War Journal #45-47, and Nomad (vol. 2) #4-6.

How to Frame This Story in a Modern Context

Like last issue, this story deals with the issue of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the time. I’ve gone into greater detail about the issue in my summary of last issue, so I won’t repeat a whole lot here. I will repeat that due to advancements in medicine since this story was published, the virus is more manageable and people infected are living longer. The disease also has less spread thanks to prevention measures and education campaigns. We’re not out of the woods yet, but getting the illness is not the death sentence it once was. Treatment is also getting better with time as science continues to find way to manage the virus while also still trying to find a cure.

That said, to apply this story to the Marvel Universe’s Sliding Timescale and still maintain the deathly serious repercussions of infection references to AIDS/HIV should be considered topical. Modern readers should interpret this as an autoimmune disease, just not AIDS/HIV specifically.

This story also posits the idea that Horserose was keeping samples of HIV in vials containing a water solvent and sucrose mix. While this sort of solution is used to store vaccines, refrigeration is required in order to keep the vaccine viable. I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but I’d think that this would also be required in order to keep an actual virus sample viable as well. AIDS/HIV is not very viable once outside the body so the idea of carrying a sample of the virus on your person for the intent of infecting people with it would be pretty hard to pull off, especially if you’re hitchhiking in one of the hottest places in America. I’m not saying its impossible. I’m saying it’d be pretty hard to pull off without someone (ie, Nomad) noticing.

This less has to do with the circumstances being topical but the fact that its scientifically improbably that Horserose was keeping samples of the virus and infecting people with it. It would have made more sense if she was already infected and was intentionally infecting people through tainted blood or unprotected sex. Since this was still the era of the Comics Code Authority, I think it is safe to assume that the whole “carrying samples of the virus” was the only way this story could have gotten cleared.

That said, if we’re topical referencing the historical context then we could also interpret this less defined fictional illness as one that can survive in vials without needing to be refrigerated. It is fiction after all.