Distant Rumblings

Years Ago[1]

Baron Heinrich Zemo has summoned his son Helmut to his hideout in the Amazon Jungle. Soaking themselves in vitality restoring solution of Compound X, Zemo regales his son with stories from the second World War.[2] He talks about an encounter with the wartime hero known as Citizen V. Hearing all of this is a lot of Helmut to take in since he has been living his adult life as an unassuming engineer working for a minor firm.[3] Zemo tells his son that he will leave this old life behind and inherit his birthright.

That’s when Erik Josten, one of Zemo’s soldiers, comes and tells the boss that the local slaves are revolting.[4] Zemo quickly suits up and joins his solders in quelling the uprising. Helmut watches from the sidelines with Josten and is impressed by the military precision his father is using to shut down the riot. He asks Josten why he shows his father such wavering loyalty. Erik explains that he had made a mess of his life. After being dismissed from the military he did a number of mercenary-for-hire jobs for an aimless period until he was hired by Zemo. The Baron gave him purpose and structure to an otherwise directionless life and for that Josten is grateful and admits that he’d be willing to take a bullet for the Baron. This gives Helmut a lot to think about. He knew all about his father’s life during the war but put it all behind him when he became an adult and took on an unassuming job. Seeing the power that his father commands, Helmut suddenly realizes that he craves this level of power for himself.

In Chicago, psychologist Karla Sofen is attending a lecture being put on by Leonard Samson. As he tells the audience about the power and responsibility they have over their patients and how important it is to maintain their trust. There, Karla bumps into an old colleague named Joanne and the two agree to go out for lunch together to catch up. After the lecture Karla is telling Joanne about a patient named Angela who suffers from low self-esteem and lives in fear of the possibility that her husband might be cheating on her. She finds it very rewarding that she is able to help her patient process through these fears and come out on the other side. After she finishes saying all this she asks Joanne to wait a moment as she makes a quick phone call from a pay phone. Karla is actually calling the home of her patient and takes on a seducive voice and asks if Angela’s husband is home. He’s not and she tells Angela that she has no message and hangs up. Overhearing this, Joanne asks Karla what that was about. Sofen smiles and says that her practice isn’t big enough yet and she can’t afford to have Angela cured just yet.

While outside an elementary school in Shoshoni, Wisconsin, young Melissa Gold is being teased by her classmates because her mother is a thief who ran off with a criminal named Skeets Jenner. Melissa doesn’t believe what they are saying and runs home in years. There she finds her father drinking alone in his arm chair. When she asks her father to tell her the real reason her mother left, he strikes the girl and tells her not never mention his mother’s name again. Realizing what he has done, Melissa’s father collapses in the chair lamenting over the loss of his wife, Mimi. Going to her room, Melissa decides to write a letter to her mother to tell her how awful things are at home and how much she misses her. Once she is finished writing, Melissa decides she isn’t going to live like this. Ripping up the letter, the young girl packs a bag and sneaks out of the house and begins thumbing a ride. When a man pulls over to pick her up and asks Melissa for her name, she tells him her name is Mimi.[5]

While a the Precision Aircrafts Parts plant in Queens, New York, Abner Jenkins is heading to see the boss with his latest engineering ideas. This gets jeers from his co-workers who know that Abner is going to have all his ideas rejected by management as usual. Jenkins, who has been trying to climb the corporate ladder, has been stuck in the position of master mechanic for some time. When he shows his new ideas to the boss he is once again rejected and warned that if he doesn’t focus on his actual job he might get fired. When he comes out of the office, Jenkins takes out his frustrations by ordering everyone back to work, since he can do that at least. Abner is still fuming when he gets home and decides that if he can’t move forward in his career then he’ll just use his ideas to make himself rich. That night he begins working on the designs for his first Beetle armor.

In Manhattan’s upper east side, Robert and Jane Takahama have moved into their new penthouse apartment. Jane is delighted with their new home and figures it will be an ideal place to raise their daughter Hallie. As the family of three look out the window a streak of lightning crashes in the night sky.

While in Union Square, Norbert Ebersol is trying to convince his date to come upstairs to his apartment. She turns him down because she has an early day. Annoyed by this he tells her to get lost since he has other concerns. Going back up to his apartment he checks on some sophisticated computer equipment and is pleased that he was able to crack encrypted radio channels and databases of an organization he is trying to join.

At that moment in the Bowery, a group of Hydra agents are trying to subdue a homeless man that has super-human strength. Norbert arrives on the scene in his new Fixer gear and tries to convince the Hydra agents that he will be more of an asset to the secret organization than this mystery man.[6] To hurry along their decision he had tipped off the police and as sirens fill the air the Hydra agents agree to hear the Fixer out. Before they leave, the Fixer blasts the homeless man through a wall. Recovering from the attack, the homeless man briefly remembers something about his past before losing it again and wanders off in frustration.[7]

Back in the Amazon, Baron Zemo and his army have quelled the revolt and rounded up their leaders responsible. Zemo decides to finish his story about his encounter with Citizen V. Heinrich tells his son that once he defeated the hero, Zemo choked Citizen V to death with his bare hands and made his fellow resistance fighters watch to demoralize them.[8] Zemo then does the same thing with his current slaves by executing the ones responsible for the revolt. Seeing that his son is unnerved by all of this, Heinrich tells Helmet that this is a weakness taught to him by his mother and he’ll work past that. Helmet has had a taste of the unchecked power his father commands and realizes that it’s not a taste he’d soon forget!

Recurring Characters

Baron Zemo (Helmut and Heinrich Zemo), Erik Jaustin, Karla Sofen, Leonard Samson, Melissa Gold, Abner Jenkins, Helen Yakahama, Fixer, Hydra, Sub-Mariner, (in flashback) Citizen V

Continuity Notes

1. This flashback tale takes place just before the start of the Modern Age. The exact period this takes place is unspecified but probably takes place a year or two before Fantastic Four #1. Thunderbolts #19 states that Jolt is 15 years old around the time of the Modern Age stories published around this period. In the flashback story she can’t be older than 5 years old. As such, it’s my position that this story takes place a year before the start of the Modern Age.

2. This is the first time it is explained how the Zemos could still be young and vital in the Modern Age. Compound X was used to restore their vitality over the years.

3. For more on Helmut Zemo’s old life before becoming a supervillain see Captain America #168.

4. Josten was first revealed to be a soldier in the original Baron Zemo’s private army back in Avengers #21-22.

5. For more on Songbird’s troubled childhood and what happened after she ran away from home, see Thunderbolts #21.

6. The Fixer refers to Hydra as an underground organization whose identity is a secret to the general public. However, as we’ll learn in Wolverine: Origins #17-20, Hydra has existed as an organization as far back as 1941. However, the organization had gone underground prior to the Modern Age and won’t make their public reappearance until Strange Tales #135.

7. This mystery man is the Namor the Sub-Mariner who, per Sub-Mariner #1, had been stripped of his memories in the 1950s. He will wander the streets of the Bowery for decades until his memory is restored by the Human Torch in Fantastic Four #4.

8. As of this writing (in November, 2022) the original Citizen V has remained among the dead. His legacy would live on in the 1950s as his lover Paulette Brazee would become the next Citizen V and later her first son John Watkins Jr. per Citizen V and the V-Battallion: Everlasting #1. The identity is then usurped by Helmut Zemo in Thunderbolts #1.