American Dreamers Part 3: 88

Learning that Senator Bill Ingrid — who grew up with Jack Monroe, aka Nomad, when they were kids — is secretly operating a Neo-Nazi organization in the their hometown of Clutier, Iowa, Nomad has returned to shut it down. He starts by reuniting with his long-lost sister Jill Coltrain. Jill takes Jack to see their mother, who is still alive after all these years, but is on life support down at the local retirement home.[1] Mary Ellen has been like this for the past two years after suffering a stroke.

Jack breaks down and cries, apologizing to his sister that everything that happened because it was his part. Jill tells Jack it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know that when he brought on of their father’s Nazi arm bands for show-and-tell at school that the his teacher would call the authorities. Jack was only 8 years old and in awe when some men from the FBI came to question him and he openly told them the town’s biggest secret: That many of the families that lived there were Nazi sympathizers. Jill tells Jack that being split up and put into foster care was the best life for them. That’s because when she grew up she came back to Clutier and discovered that it was still rotten to the core and that the hate has been festering and growing all these decades. She says that Jack’s actions back on that day in 1948 saved countless lives. However, her own silence over the years since going back may cost many, many more.

At that same moment, a woman sent by Giscard Epurer to infiltrate Bart Ingram’s Neo-Nazi camp has been found out by the camp’s leader, a genetically bred Nazi powerhouse who calls himself 88. He has been beating the woman and demanding that she reveal the identity of her employer. The woman refuses, saying that the man who sent her has her daughter.[2] This doesn’t phase 88 in the slightest and he tells her that her child has just lost their mother.

At that same moment, Giscard Epurer plays with Bucky, the girl whose mother he sent to death. As he plays with the little girl he not only thinks about what is at stake, but also the fact that he became the “favor broker” to make penance for a past wrong. He wonders to himself how long he’ll have to endure before he finally repays that debt.

Meanwhile, FBI agent Vernon Hatchway has just learned that he has been chosen to be the trigger man on the kill order placed on Nomad. Having come to respect the vigilante over their few encounters, Hatchway refuses to take his life.[3] In order to find a way around this, Vernon travels down to an abandoned facility in Langley, Virginia. Breaking in the building he finds exactly what he came looking for, the cryogenic chambers that were once used to place the Captain America and Bucky of the 1950s in suspended animation.[4] Vernon has decided that rather than killing Jack, he’s going to put him back on ice again.

By this time, Jack and Jill have returned to a diner where Jack tells his sister how his life became what it was. He recounts how he attended the Lee School where he discovered that one of his teachers was as big a fan of Captain America as he was and how this led to them becoming the Captain America and Bucky of the 1950s.[5] Jill finds it ironic that the Jack’s version of Bucky, seen as a poster child of McCarthy’s America, was the same child whose parents were exposed as Nazi sympathizers only a few years back. This gets Jack upset agian and his sister reminds him that he was too young to realize what he was doing. Jill then talks about her life: How she attended school in California, got married, and settled back down in Clutier, discovering its racist roots were still alive and thriving. Although she sat back and did nothing, she believes in her heart that their desire to trigger a race war is wrong and needs to be stopped. This is why she writes down the address to Ingrid’s compound so Jack can get to work and shut it down. Jack takes the directions and both know that once he walks out the door, they’ll never see each other again.

Later that evening, Nomad attacks the Neo-Nazi camp, taking out many of the guards before ducking into their warehouse. There he is shocked to discover that they discovered Bucky’s mother was a spy and murdered her. That’s when Jack is ambushed by 88 who is armed with the latest model of a cybernetic gun that is mentally controlled. Having encountered the previous model of this weapon, Nomad lures 88 back outside where his stray bullets will take out the other Neo-Nazis arriving to join the fight. In the ensuing clash, Jack manages to climb onto 88’s back and install a program that will crash the super-soldier gun’s operating system, rendering it useless.[6] However, is a moot point now that Jack is surrounded by an army of soldiers who all have their guns trained on him.

Meanwhile, at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, Andrea Sterman and Jack Norris are still pouring over files to figure out the massive conspiracy connecting Jack Monroe to Senator Bart Ingram. Its here that Andrea finds more documents that reveal that, apparently, the McCarthy Commission and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI intentionally groomed Jack Monroe to be the Bucky of the 1950s and that they even knew that the Super-Soldier Serum given to him would drive him insane.[7] This was all under the auspices of creating operatives to destroy threats to the integrity of the United States of America. They conclude that the kill order on Jack Monroe is an effort to cover all this up.

Recurring Characters

Nomad, 88, Bucky, Bucky’s mother, Giscard Epurer, Andrea Sterman, Jack Norris, Vernon Hatchway, Bart Ingrid, Jill Coltrain

Continuity Notes

1. What’s unexplained in this story is how Jill Coltrain, Mary Ellen Monroe, and Bart Ingrid — who grew up with Jack in the 1940s — could only appear to be middle aged in this story. This is due to the Sliding Timescale that widens the gulf of time between the 1940s and the Modern Age of the Marvel Universe. As time progresses it becomes increasingly impossible to explain their longevity without some kind means of extending their natural life span. As of this writing (in October, 2022) Marvel has yet to provide an explanation. I posit a theory on how this might be possible in my summary for Nomad (vol. 2) #15.

2. Giscard recruited Bucky’s mother into his scheme in Nomad (vol. 2) #20. She succeeded in infiltrating Ingrid’s organization in issue #22. This woman is never identified by name and as of this writing (October, 2022) she has yet to be identified.

3. Vernon Hatchway learned to respect Nomad after their two past encounters in Nomad (vol. 2) #7 and 10. He discovered that he is the triggerman tapped to kill Jack last issue.

4. As a teen, Monroe befriended William Burnside a man who rediscovered the Super Soldier Formula and aspired to become the Captain America of the 1950s. Injecting themselves with the formula, both William and Jack (as Cap and Bucky respectively) fought crime for a while. However, the formula was imperfect and it caused them to become paranoids and increasingly violent to the point where the government put them suspended animation until they were thawed out in the present day as seen in Captain America #155.

5. Jack’s teacher isn’t mentioned by name here. At the time of this story the man was only known by “Steve Rogers” as he legally changed his name when he became the 1950’s Captain America. Captain America #602 will reveal his birth name to be William Burnside.

6. Jack encountered the original version of the SICCAEL gun in Nomad #1-4. This is where he got the program to shut the thing down.

7. This revelation does fit with what was already revealed in Captain America #155: Burnside went to the government first with his idea to become the next Captain America, but they turned him down after America pulled out of the Korean War. Burnside still went on to make himself look and sound like Steve Rogers before getting his job at the Lee School, which is where he first met Jack Monroe. It’s entirely possible that the government knew that Burnside would go ahead with his plans anyway and maneuvered Monroe to become the next Bucky.

Topical References

• The device that Jack uses to shut down the SICCAEL gun is depicted as a 3.5” floppy disc, which was the most common format for data storage at the time this comic was published. This should be considered topical as this is now an obsolete technology.

• When the look on 88’s face when he is using the SICCAEL gun, Jack says it is similar to the one he had on his face when he used a similar weapon “a year ago”. Per the Sliding Timescale this matches the flow of time and should be considered a factual reference.

• Andrea Sterman is depicted smoking a cigarette inside the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. This should be considered a topical reference as indoor smoking has been banned in all federal buildings since 1997.