Beetlemania!

Many Years Ago

Janice Lincoln is attending a birthday party of one of her classmates. Mallory is excited about all of the presents she has gotten so far. When she opens Janice’s present all there is inside is a hand written note telling her to look outside. She then sees a dog and becomes even more excited. Mallory, her mother, and all of the other kids rush outside to see the dog. This all turns out to be a distraction for Janice to steal all the presents and load them up into her father’s car. Janice Lincoln, as it turns out, is the daughter of Tombstone a notorious mobster. When Mallory sees what happened, Janice thanks the suckers for the cake and then whistles. This prompts the dog to come running to the car. With all the gifts stolen, Janice and her father take off.

Twenty Years Later

Janice Lincoln has just graduated from law school at Columbia University. As valedictorian she gives a rousing speech. Afterwards she offers her condolences to Patricia, a classmate who would have been valedictorian had she not gotten into a serious accident earlier. Janice pauses for a moment when talking about the accident causing Patricia to wonder what caused her pause like that. Janice ignores her because she just spotted her father in the crowd and rushes to hug him.

Tombstone is proud of his daughter and shows her her graduation present, a vintage pink sports car with a vanity license plate. While Janice is grateful for the present it’s not what she was hoping for. She reminds her father that what she really wants is to become a super-villain.

Tombstone takes his daughter out to get something to eat. There he tells her that he had bigger aspirations for her than becoming a super-villain. He paid her way through law school so she could work for a large lawfirm downtown, saying she could steal more money being a lawyer than he ever could working for the mob. He doesn’t want her to be running around in a costume getting beaten up all the time. However, Janice has no intention of being hired muscle and instead wants to be the head of a mob. This makes Tombstone laugh, saying that a female mob boss has never worked out so great in the past. Janice insists that she is going to change things, insisting that she is going to be the biggest female boss in crime.

Janice’s insistence reminds Tombstone of her mother, who was a “Dominican pit bull” and admits that he spent most of his prison time while Janice grew up to get some peace and quiet. He decides that if Janice insists on becoming a super-villain she’s going to have to do it on her own and finance itself and in order to do that, she’s going to have to get a job.

Five Years Later

Janice has now become one of the top lawyers of her firm. One day she is called into her boss’s office and he asks her to handle one of the firm’s longest running clients, cautioning her that the legal matter regarding a financial matter of a politically sensitive nature. She is shocked to see that the client in question is none other than Baron Zemo. She is surprised that her firm represents a Nazi, but her boss insists that the Nazi’s were a “long time ago”, as if that would justify having Zemo as a client.

Accepting the case, she calls her assistant and asks him to add a 7 am meeting to her schedule and to find two boxes of files for it. He questions if she can fit this in her schedule. Janice takes at her schedule and sees that after work she is going to exercise before gossip then volunteering at a soup kitchen then going on a date. After a pre-planned exit strategy, she plans on stopping at the best noodle house in the city before going home to bed around midnight. She is convinced this is doable.

On her way out, Janice takes a call from her father. Tombstone has called because today is the anniversary of his daughter’s first job. Janice can’t believe that today is the day and tells her father that Mallory Aimes is now in rehab. Tombstone tells his daughter how proud he is of her and says he is proud that she is a lawyer instead of a super-villain, saying that it is a job for low-lives that have nowhere to go. This praise brings a tear to Janice’s eye. Tombstone then tells her that he doesn’t want to see her hurt, but she assures him that nothing will happen to her.

Janice then goes to her meeting with Baron Zemo. He is in an argument with his teammate the Fixer. The two bicker back and forth about their work together making Janice think of them like a bickering couple, or two infants fighting.[1] Janice cuts through this bickering and asks the pair to focus on the primary dispute. The Fixer explains that during a trip to Counter-Earth, Baron Zemo was about to die and in order to save his life transferred his mind into the body of his Counter-Earth counterpart. He says that since he did this Zemo owes him not only compensation but a percentage of all of his schemes from now on.[2] He also points out that Zemo owns a countless number of his inventions that could net him billions of dollars. Fixit then suggests that Zemo has fallen off the wagon after his previous attempts to bring about a utopian society, and suggests it is because he discovered that Bucky Barnes is the new Captain America.[3]

This leads to Janice being told Baron Zemo’s plans to infect the new Captain America with a nanotech virus, however they need a new super-villain to act as the delivery person. This is the crux of the problem because it requires the Fixter to create a whole new identity. This all interests Janice and after she gets the pair to agree to arbitration to create a profit-sharing agreement she then suggests she can help them with their other problem.

Soon, Janice is at the Fixer’s lab to get outfitted with the super-villain equipment he has created, agreeing to be their operative. Fixit thinks he recognizes Janice from somewhere but can’t place where. Janice remember she first met the Fixer back when she was a kid and he visited her father and decides not to let him in on this. After detailing Zemo’s plans for the new Captain America, the Fixer then finds the costume he is looking for.[4] He outfits her with a suit of smart armor as well as mini-repulsors. When he gives her a tiny gun, Janice scoffs at it, and insists that she takes a large cannon that the Fixer has come to call Bertha. He resignes to allow her to take the weapon and this is how the new Beetle was born.

Recurring Characters

Beetle, Tombstone, Fixer, Baron Zemo

Continuity Notes

1. The Fixter and Baron Zemo mention their past associations:

   • The Fixer mentions how he was always loyal to Baron Zemo, even when his scheme to use the Thunderbolts to take over the world backfired on him. Zemo formed the Thunderbolts by reinventing members of the Masters of Evil as heroes during a period where the Avengers and Fantastic Four were believed dead. This was all part of a scheme to try and take over the world. However, when Zemo finally initiated his master plan, most of the Thunderbolts had decided to actually reform and become heroes. The Fixer was one of the few who remained loyal to Zemo until the very end. See Onslaught: Marvel Universe #1 and Thunderbolts #1-12.

   • It is mentioned that, prior to his affiliation with the Thunderbolts, the Fixer regularly worked with Mentallo. The pair first worked together in Strange Tales #141-142.

2. This whole Counter-Earth thin is all very complicated let’s suss this out:

   • Counter-Earth was a duplicate of Earth that was created by Franklin Richards. In existed in a pocket dimension and it was where he transported the Fantastic Four and the Avengers in order to save their lives when they attempted to sacrifice themselves to stop Onslaught. See Onslaught: Marvel Universe #1.

   • Ultimately, the Avengers and Fantastic Four were all returned home and Counter-Earth was pulled out of the pocket dimension and shares an opposite position from the real Earth in the solar system. See Heroes Reborn: The Return #1-4, Heroes Reborn: Doom #1.

   • Baron Zemo was seemingly killed by Scourge when he was beheaded in Thunderbolts #39. Zemo’s mind lived on thanks to the Fixer’s technology and ultimately his consciousness was transferred into the dead body of his Counter-Earth counterpart in Thunderbolts #62.

3. At the time of this story, Steve Rogers was killed by an assassin in Captain America (vol. 5) #25. He was later replaced by James Barnes as the new Captain America in Captain America (vol. 5) #34. Zemo is furious because Barnes was previously a Russian operative known as the Winter Soldier, as we learned in Captain America (vol. 5) #1-14. For more on Zemo’s plot against James Barnes, see Captain America #608-610.

4. The Fixer states that Baron Zemo wants to strap James Barnes to a rocket to finish off what his father started. This is a reference to Heinrich Zemo, Helmut’s father and the predecessor to the Baron Zemo title. During the final days of World War II, Heinrich attempted to launch a drone plane that was destroyed by Captain America (Rogers) and his partner Bucky (Barnes) as seen in Avengers #4. However, the resulting explosion sent Rogers into suspended animation until the modern age when he was found by the Avengers and cost Barnes his arm and freedom as he was recovered by the Russians who brainwashed him into becoming the Winter Soldier.

Topical References

• Janice states that she is going to be the Hillary Clinton of drug lords. At the time of this story, Hillary Clinton had just finished a stint as Secretary of State and was gearing up to run for President of the United States in the 2016 election. She lost and we ended up in a nightmare world where Donald Trump was president for 4 years. But anyway, in optimistic days of 2014, it appeared that Hillary Clinton was unstoppable. It was a simpler time.

• When Janice is asked to take on a case for one of her firm’s more sensitive cases. She asks if it is for political reasons like “Carlos Danger”: This is a reference to Anthony Weiner, the former member of the US House of Representative for New York. The appropriately named Weiner disgraced himself by sending dick pics to women not once, but twice in 2011 (leading to his resignation from the Hose of Reps) and again in 2013 (ruining his run for mayor of New York City). The moral of the story here kids is this: Don’t send dick pics to women, especially if you’re a married politician.

• Dated pop-culture references: Homeland