Nomad (vol. 2) #15
Hidden in View Conclusion: Love, Hate & Everything in Between
Nomad and Bucky are being pursued by someone who is dressed in Jack’s old Nomad costume.[1] Trying to make his way across the Sabine River on the border between Texas and Louisiana, Jack is downed by one of his own trademark stun discs and falls into the water. With Bucky submerged under water, Jack quickly crawls out of the river and makes sure she is ok. However, his concern only allows his impostor to catch up.
Beating on Jack, the faux Nomad demands to know why Jack has given up his previous ideals, becoming a “commie pinko liberal punk” who hates America.[2] He beats Jack into unconsciousness and is annoyed that Monroe’s has replaced his previous righteousness with despair. He wonders why that it when he finally notices Bucky and wonders if she might have something to do with it.[3] Deciding to find out, the fake Nomad carries Bucky away intending to find out what the real Jack Monroe sees in her.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Senator Hugh Greider meets with his colleague Bart Ingrid to discuss the passage of a spending bill on a new super-soldier gun that they want to push through. Hugh has a file that Ingrid will be interested in as it will help force Cyberoptics, the developer of the weapon, to say the gun is ready for mass production. Looking over the file, Ingrid is impressed and asks what Greider wants in exchange for this information. All Hugh wants is the name he has on a slip of paper to become the first target once the first weapon goes online.[4]
While in Clutier, Iowa, Giscard Epurer — the favor broker — is paying a visit to a woman named Jill Coltrain. He knows that she is facing foreclosure on her late husband’s farm and he is offering to help her pay off the bank once and for all. All Jill has to do is tell him everything she knows about her long lost brother, Jack Monroe.[5]
By this time, the fake Nomad has taken Bucky back to his hideout where the child beings to cry. Becoming frustrated the fake Nomad loses his temper and drops his disguise — revealing himself to be the Hate-Monger. He is about to strike the infant but soon gets himself back under control. He doesn’t want to give into hate because he wants to learn about other emotions that are foreign to him. He decides the best way to learn more is to travel into Bucky’s mind and view her memories. The Hate-Monger finds Bucky’s memories visceral and primitive due to the baby’s inability to deeply contextualize her surroundings. First he sees Bucky in the womb where he feels the pang of hunger as the child is not getting the needed nutrients from her mother. Next is an image of that mother, angry and hitting her all the time. Then there are images of Jack who makes Bucky feel safe and happy. He then sees someone different who briefly held Bucky, and she felt safe with this man too, but he was different.[6] He also sees images of the Undergrounders who Bucky also feels safe around. However, the images always go back to Nomad.
That’s when Bucky manages to push the Hate-Monger out of her mind, causing him a great deal of pain. He relishes it because he just figured out how to bring out Jack’s hate by using his love against him.
This entire time Jack Monroe has been laying face down in the mud. Unconscious, he dreams about his troubled past when he was the Bucky to the Captain America of the 1950s. In this dream he attacks a Jewish man in an alley, accusing him of being a communist spy. Once he has finished throttling the man he suddenly changes into the Falcon. Bucky is then joined by his era’s Captain America and they both make fun of the fact that the fallen hero is Black.[7] The present day Jack Monroe has been watching this all and renounces the way he used to be.[8] Bucky turns around and asks Jack if he wants to fight about it. Instead, Monroe collapses to the ground because he can’t keep on fighting like this anymore. That’s when he wakes up and realizes that it was all a dream.
He is then confronted by the Hate-Monger who has taken on the form of Captain America to mock Jack with everything he can never be. He goads Nomad into a fight and as the two brawl the Hate-Monger takes on the forms of Jack’s past foes including Madcap, Doctor Faustus, the Taskmaster, Umberto Safilios, Giscard Epurer, Deadpool, Bushwacker, the Gambit doppelganger, Red Wolf, and lastly Horserose.[9] This last form is shocking enough to Jack that he stops pummeling his opponent. Seeing her face causes Jack to fill doubt and confusion. The Hate-Monger seizes on this to beat on Nomad some more. Jack is exhausted by this point and doesn’t know if he can keep on fighting. That’s when Bucky reaches out to him and calls him “da-da”, this causes Jack to break down in tears and he hugs Bucky close to him.
This causes the hate that was welling up inside Jack to dissipate, foiling the Hate-Monger’s plans. When the says the fight is over, the Hate-Monger concedes for now but promises he’ll be back, saying that hatred is everywhere and in everybody and it will never go away.
Jack takes Bucky back to his hotel room where a letter is waiting for him from Doctor Felisa Soto. Jack has been waiting for this as they are the test results to see if he and Bucky might have an autoimmune illness that has been epidemic in the country recently. After looking at the results briefly, Jack then tosses the letter out the window and says that life goes on.[10]
Recurring Characters
Nomad, Hate-Monger, Bucky, Giscard Epurer, Jill Coltrain, Bart Ingrid, Hugh Greider
Continuity Notes
The Hate-Monger is appearing here in Jack’s original Nomad costume which he wore from Captain America #282. He eventually abandons this look in Captain America #325.
Jack completely stripped himself of his superhero accoutrement and became a roaming vigilante following the events of Marvel Comics Presents #14 and Captain America Annual #9, after seeing the dark underbelly of the criminal underworld and its power demoralized his previous patriotic belief system.
Jack took Bucky away from her mother, a drug addicted prostitute as he thought she was unfit to raise the girl. See Nomad #3.
The “super-soldier gun” mentioned here was in development until Nomad interfered with its production, as seen in Nomad #1-4. Last issue, Jack uncovered that Greider was trying to blackmail the CEO of Cyberoptics into saying the weapon was ready for production when it actually isn’t.
It is revealed in Nomad #2 that Jack was put into an orphanage at a young age. We’ll later learn in issues #18, and 23-24 that Jack’s parents were Nazi sympathizers during World War II. When Jack inadvertedly told the feds about his father’s Nazi paraphernalia, the family was torn apart with Jack and his sister being put in foster care. The woman here is identified as Jack’s sister, there are some issues with this due to the Sliding Timescale, see below.
This mystery man is symbolized by a skull, the trademark logo of the Punisher. Frank Castle rescued Bucky from some Neo-Nazi bikers and cared for her briefly before giving the girl back to Nomad. See Nomad (vol. 2) #5.
William Burnside and Jack Monroe became the Captain America and Bucky of the 1950s when William uncovered the lost secret of the Super Soldier Formula. Unfortunately, their version of the serum was incomplete and it caused them to go mad and attack people they thought were communists, usually visible minorities. The government shut them down by placing the pair in suspended animation. They were thawed out in the modern age and although the pair did fight the Falcon, they were ultimately defeated by Steve Rogers, the original Captain America. See Captain America #153-156.
As explained in Nomad #2, after his defeat at the hands of Steve Rogers, Jack was reconditioned to cure him of his paranoia and make him a functional member of society. He deemed to be cured and released into the public in Captain America #281.
This is a veritable who’s who of villains that Jack fought maybe once and added to his rogues gallery because reasons? Anyway they are:
Madcap: When going solo for the first time, Nomad fought Madcap on two separate occasions in Captain America #307 and 309 respectively. Here, Jack states that he fought Madcap about two years prior. Measuring this up to the Sliding Timescale matches and as such this reference should be considered factual.
Doctor Faustus: After the 50’s Cap and Bucky were defeated by Steve Rogers in Captain America #156, they were turned over to a psychiatric facility run by Faustus. Faustus used his brainwashing techniques to transform William Burnside into the Neo-Nazi known as the Grand Director. In order to break his will, Faustus tricked Burnside into thinking he had killed Jack. See Captain America #231-236.
Taskmaster: Jack fought Taskmaster alongside Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #146.
Umberto Safilios: Was a drug lord that Jack clashed with on a few occasions after he went all dark and gritty. See Marvel Comics Presents #14, Captain America Annual #9, and Nomad #1 and 4.
Giscard Epurer: Nomad fought him once in Nomad (vol. 2) #1.
Deadpool and Bushwacker: Jack clashed with both of these mercs when he, Daredevil, and the Punisher investigated an meeting of organized crime in Las Vegas. See Daredevil #307-309, Punisher War Journal #45-47, and Nomad (vol. 2) #4-6.
The Gambit Doppelganger: One of the many twisted versions of heroes created by the Magus in Infinity War #1. Nomad fought him in Nomad (vol. 2) #7.
Red Wolf: The pair fought in Nomad (vol. 2) #10.
Horserose: Was a member of the Undergrounders whom Jack met in Nomad (vol. 2) #12. He discovered in the following issue that she was injecting people with an autoimmune virus.
Jack went to get himself and Bucky tested for this autoimmune illness in Nomad (vol. 2) #13. This story identifies the illness as HIV/AIDS, this could be considered a topical reference. This story doesn’t tell readers who, if anyone, was infected with the illness here. This was an editorial decision, see below for more.
Topical References
When Jack tells Hate-Monger that the fight is over, the villain says “Ex-squeeze me?” The phrase is a bastardization of the phrase “excuse me”. It was popularized by Wayne Campbell, played by comedian Mike Myers, from the Wayne’s World sketches on Saturday Night Live. Wayne’s World proved so popular that it was adapted into two films. There was a period in the early 90s where everyone used Wayne’s World slang. It was one of the worst periods of my life because they were exceptionally stupid. Anyway, this should be considered a topical reference because nobody uses this stupid slang anymore.
References to HIV/AIDS in this story were made in the context in the era in which this story was first written. Treatment for the illness in the early 90s was woefully inadequate and the mortality rate from the disease was very high. Since 1996 there has been advancements in treatment of HIV/AIDS that the illness can be treated and people can expect to live longer lives. With further advancements in medical science references to HIV/AIDS will become topical. Modern readers should interpret this to be an autoimmune illness and not specifically HIV/AIDS.
The Issue With Jill Coltrain
Throughout the rest of the run of Nomad (vol. 2), Jill Coltrain is identified as the older sister of Jack Monroe. She is always depicted as a middle aged woman in her early 50s. While this would have been possible when this comic book was published in 1992, the Sliding Timescale makes it increasingly impossible for Jack’s sister to be this young or even possibly still alive. For example, I’m writing this summary in October, 2022, when people who were born in the early 1940s (like Jack and his sister were) are in their late 70s and early 80s.
Whereas Jack himself has maintained relative youth after he was put in suspended animation in the 1950s and revived in the Modern Age, the narrative of these stories presents Jack’s sister Jill as living through the years in between. When reviewing the profile for Nomad in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #8, there is very little said about Jack’s sister. No mention is made of her appearances in the present day, even when she and Jack are reunited in Nomad (vol. 2) #23-24 (which also features an appearance of Jack’s elderly mother in that same story).
Marvel has yet to provide an official explanation and given the fact that the Nomad character was killed off in Captain America (vol. 5) #3 (nearly 20 years ago as I write this), it seems unlikely that we’ll get an explanation any time soon.
Usually a character whose birth is locked into the 20th century who survives into the Modern Age of the Marvel Universe does so thanks to some means of slowing or stopping of the aging process.
Under normal circumstances it would seem unlikely that Mary Ellen Monroe or Jill Coltrain to have access to that kind of technology. However, an explanation can possibly be inferred due to their association with Bart Ingrid, another person from Jack’s childhood who is still somehow alive in the Modern Age. As we’ll learn in Nomad (vol. 2) #22-25, Ingrid was the secret leader of a Neo-Nazi organization that was hiding out in his old home town. They were working on eugenics there given that they were able to breed the warrior known as 88, so it’s entirely possible that they had access to Nazi science, making the possibility that they also had access to something that could have slowed Ingrid’s aging process. Since Jill and Mary Ellen were still close to Ingrid, it is entirely possible that he used technology of this time to expand extend their natural lives as well.
It’s a stretch for such minor characters in the grand schemes of the Marvel Universe, but it would be the only method that would work if you wanted to keep the familial relations between Jack, Jill, and Mary Ellen.
The other alternative is saying that the Jill and Mary Ellen seen in these later stories are descendants of Jack’s family. However, as the Sliding Timescale pushes things forward you’d be stuck revising their relationship with Jack. After a number of generations removed, it would seem unlikely that any descendants would have any kind of connection with Jack, let alone know anything about him personally.
Nomad and Bucky’s HIV Diagnosis
This story ends with a very ambiguous ending where the HIV diagnosis of Nomad and Bucky are not stated, leaving it open to reader interpretation. In Sean Howe’s Marvel: The Untold Story, it was revealed that writer Fabian Nicieza wanted to make Nomad HIV positive. However, Marvel editorial quashed the idea not wanting to deal with any negative publicity. Remember that this was during a period of time where there was a lot of stigma and misinformation about HIV/AIDS. Marvel editorial was likely trying to avoid any kind of controversy. That said, other than a scene where Jack buy’s medication next issue, any kind of mention of the HIV/AIDS test is forgotten for the rest of the run or any of Nomad’s later appearances. Jack’s profile in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #8 also does not mention anything about this. Since Nomad has been dead in the water for nearly 20 years now, I highly doubt this plot point will ever be brought up again, but I could be wrong.
Judging from the handbook entry, it seems like editorial would still like the plotline to be forgotten. That said, you could argue that Nomad tested positive as being such wouldn’t have affected any of his subsequent stories before the character was killed off.