Buried Treasures

This story is continued from Captain America #421…

Nomad had been brainwashed by Doctor Faustus to become his loyal soldier. His first mission was to go with the Wanderers — Flintlock, Billy, Outback, and Chisel — to eliminate drug lord Ulysses Lugman, aka the Slug.[1] His mind freed by Captain America, Jack Monroe orders the other Wanderers to stop attacking his old friend. He shoot’s Cap’s shield out of Chisel’s hand so that he can recover his trademark weapon. Monroe then tells Cap to keep the Wanderers busy and prevent them from assassinating the Slug while he goes after Doctor Faustus. Captain America thinks Jack is going to cross the line in doing so and orders him to wait. However, the Wanderers renew their attack, preventing him from pursing his friend.

Jack drives a truck back to the mental health facility that Faustus is operating under. Since nobody is aware that Jack has broken his brainwashing, he uses the codeword to get in through the front gate and gets inside without any opposition. However, as Monroe walks the halls of the facility looking for Faustus he is struggling to keep a flood of long lost memories at bay. Jack is still reeling from the revelation that his father was an abusive Nazi sympathized who used violence toward his children to keep them quiet about the family’s dirty secret. This causes Jack to collapse to the ground as the memories become too intense to handle.

By the time he gets himself back together, Doctor Faustus has arrived with an army of guards. Faustus tells Nomad that there doesn’t have any bloodshed and that he can actually help Jack process through his repressed memories and make him whole once again.

Meanwhile, at a farmhouse in Clutier, Iowa, Jill Coltrain — Jack’s long lost sister — is visited by their old childhood friend, Senator Bart Ingrid. Jill tells him that things aren’t going great as her late husband’s farm is about to be foreclosed. Worse, a man named Giscard Epurer has come by and has been trying to get her to tell him everything about Bart, his organization, and brought news that her brother Jack is still alive.[2] That’s when Bart reveals that he has known Jack has been alive all this time and chose not to tell her. He reminds her that while her brother hasn’t come looking for them yet he will and that’s why Bart wants to make Jack pay for what he did to them.

Back at the Slug’s mansion, Captain America quickly incapacitates the Wanderers. With his opponents defeated he steals an electronic key card to Faustus’ facility from Billy and heads off to stop Jack before it is too late.

By this time, Jack has agreed to allow Doctor Faustus to erase his memories from the past. However, in order to do so, Faustus needs to unearth them all. Probing Jack’s mind, it is learned that it was Jack who exposed the fact that his father was a Nazi sympathizer leading to the FBI arresting Ed Monroe. However, Jack doesn’t remember what happened next but Faustus assures him that he will soon enough.

Meanwhile, Captain America has changed out of his costume and slips into the facility unseen. Once away from prying eyes he changes back into costume and begins searching the facility. He finds the room where they are treating Jack just as Monroe’s memories are fully unlocked. Thrown into a fit of rage, Jack breaks out of his holding cell and begins attacking everyone. He is lashing out in rage now that he remembers how his parents were branded traitors by the government and the media, how he and his sister was hounded and harassed, and how his parents died in the electric chair.[3] Jack manages to get a gun from one of the guards and when Faustus tries to tell Jack to calm down so they can begin the erasure procedure, Monroe turns on him instead. Putting the barrel of the gun into Faustus’ mouth, Jack threatens to kill him.

That’s when Captain America leaps down from the skylight and tells Nomad to stop. Cap reminds Jack that he’s not a cold blooded killer, pointing out that the massacre in Alaska was an act of self defense.[4] He pulls the gun away from Jack, telling him that Faustus will go to prison for his crimes. Monroe doesn’t think this is entirely fair, Faustus will go to a cushy minimum security prison for a few years while Jack will have to live with these memories in his head for the rest of his life. Still, he relents and walks out, leaving Cap to deal with Faustus.

A few weeks later, Doctor Faustus has landed exactly where Jack predicted he would go. After a meal, Faustus decides to go for a walk on the property. It’s here that he is confronted by Jack who has come to finish him off. Faustus doesn’t understand why Jack is so upset over having his lost memories restored. Monroe points out that Faustus revealed that Jack was responsible for the death of his parents and that after showing him that he already had blood on his hands, one more death won’t make a difference. With that, Jack shoots Faustus in the head and walks away.[5]

Recurring Characters

Nomad, Captain America, Doctor Faustus, Wanderers (Flintlock, Billy, Outback, Chisel), Jill Coltrain, Bart Ingrid, (in flashback) Ed Monroe

Continuity Notes

1. For more on this see Captain America #420-421 and Nomad (vol. 2) #18.

2. The family dynamics and history of the Monroe family is quite complicated and requires some explanation. The details:

   • The Monroes and Ingrid families were secret Nazi sympathizers during World War II. Although they took precautions to keep this a secret Jack once bragged about it to the feds, leading to all the families involved getting arrested and their children placed in foster homes. This is all detailed in Nomad (vol. 2) #23-24.

   • Per Nomad #2, Jack was placed into foster care where, in the 1950s, he ended up meeting William Burnside who had just rediscovered the Super Soldier Formula and wanted to become the next Captain America. Jack became the next Bucky, but the formula they took was incomplete and made them increasingly violent and paranoid. The government then stepped in and put the two in suspended animation until they were revived in the present day, as explained in Captain America #155.

   • Jill learned that her brother was still alive in Nomad (vol. 2) #15 when she was visited by Giscard Epurer. While Jack has had artificial means of reducing his aging process, there is no outward explanation as to how Jill and Bart Ingram could still appear to be in their middle age at the time of this story. This is because the Sliding Timescale continually pushes the Modern Age forward in time making it more difficult to explain their continued vitality. I posit a theory on how this could be in my summary for issue #15.

3. Jack’s recollection is not entirely correct. Neither of his parents got executed and his mother (somehow) still alive as we saw in Nomad (vol. 2) #17. As will be explained in Nomad (vol. 2) #24, Ed Monroe died of cancer 1963 while still in jail. Mary Ellen Monroe would later get release in 1975. Jack was probably aware of their sentence but at this point he is unaware of their actually fates so his assertion that they are both dead is an assumption on his part.

4. Captain America is referring to the events of Nomad #4 when Jack used a cybernetic gun to mow down a bunch of enemies. After that Jack vowed to never kill unless he absolutely had to.

5. Despite being shot right between the eyes here, Doctor Faustus turns up alive again in Captain America (vol. 5) #22. How he survived is never clearly explained (not even in his most recent handbook profile in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #3, his most recent profile time of this writing in October, 2022). See below for more on that.

Supplement Material

• This issue also features a pin-up of Nomad vs Captain America. It is an unused alternate cover for this issue.

Theory: How Could Doctor Faustus Survive Getting Shot in the Head?

This story ends with Doctor Faustus getting shot right between the eyes. As an ordinary man with no super human powers, something like this would be impossible to survive. As mentioned above, Faustus will turn up alive again in Captain America (vol. 5) #22 with no explanation, at least not as of this writing in October, 2022. Faustus would go on to play a huge role in that volume of Captain America.

So how did Faustus survive getting shot? My theory is that he never got shot to begin with. Before Faustus went to prison he spent a long time trying to brainwash and mentally condition Jack. I think the simplest explanation is that Faustus anticipated Jack might break his conditioning and try to get revenge so Faustus planted a post-hypnotic suggestion to make Monroe believe he had killed Faustus. This is not so outlandish when you consider that he pulled a similar trick on William Burnside, the 1950s Captain America. As seen in Captain America #236, he broke Burnside and turned him into the Grand Director by making him think that he shot and killed Jack, we later learned that Jack didn’t actually die in Captain America #281. I think that he pulled the same trick here.