Last month we took a look at Captain America #179, in which Steve Rogers’ former Avengers teammate Hawkeye — after spending most of the issue disguised as the presumably villainous Golden Archer — managed to convince him that just because he no longer wanted to wear the colors and bear the name of his country, that was no reason he couldn’t still live the life of a costumed hero. Via the final page’s “next issue” blurb, we even got the name of Steve’s new secret identity-to-be: Nomad!
Now, thanks to issue #180’s cover (pencilled by Gil Kane, and inked by Mike Esposito and/or Frank Giacoia), we get our first glimpse of Nomad in costume — albeit in the form of a quasi-symbolic image that allows the artists to provide a shot of Steve in his more familiar red-white-and-blue togs as well.
Once we turn past the cover to the book’s opening splash page, however, we see that our regular creative team of writer Steve Englehart, penciller Sal Buscema, and inker Vince Colletta don’t have our hero ready to suit up quite yet…
Who was this Martha (Duke) Dukeshire, who receives a “special thanks” for having named the Nomad? In his 2016 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Captain America Vol. 9, Steve Englehart confides that although he came up with the idea of Steve Rogers doing what he’d always done, only as somebody other than Captain America, all on his own, he didn’t immediately have a name for this new identity:
…but my girlfriend of the time, Martha Dukeshire, did. And since she was my girlfriend, she got credit for it. It’s all about who ya know.
Steve became the Nomad, designed, obviously, to be a real “alter ego,” and never expected to become a separate character. But comics is a crazy business, and by now there have been four separate Nomads. Pretty good name, Duke.
No, not acid — but a gas which drives the car’s inhabitants out into the open, where the three federal marshals are summarily shot down…
Madame Hydra? But… but hadn’t she been, not just “forcibly retired from the leadership of Hydra“, but actually blowed up real good in the climax of Stan Lee and Jim Steranko’s classic Captain America #113 back in 1969? It certainly had looked that way at the time; but in his script for Avengers #107 some three years later, Steve Englehart had revealed that the Space Phantom had taken Madame Hydra’s place before that explosion occurred; he’d survived, but the fate of the Hydra leader herself in the aftermath hadn’t been addressed… until now, that is…
Art by Paul Renaud.
Welp, it looks like it’s time to bid farewell to our favorite “Mad man” gone bad, Jordan Stryke, aka Jordan Dixon, aka the original Viper… oh, excuse me, I’ve just been handed a memo… Hmm, it seems that he was brought back in the pages of Captain America: Sam Wilson #4 (Feb., 2016), with no explanation offered for his survival, either in that issue or in later appearances. Huh. We’ll have to chalk it up to the Marvel multiverse being rebooted at the end of Secret Wars (2015), I guess…
As for Madame Hydra’s the new Viper’s fervent espousal of the philosophy of nihilism — that seems to be original with Englehart, although it’s clearly not all that far a reach from the sort of worldview you would imagine to be driving the terrorist activities she’d been getting up to with Hydra in her previous appearances.*
Like the footnote indicates, Princess Python had last shown her face in a solo outing in Iron Man #50 (Sep., 1972), but was better known at this juncture for her longtime association with the Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime. Clearly, she’s comfortable with being a team player, and the Serpent Squad’s as logical a fit for a villainous snake charmer as a crooked circus, I’d say. (Not to mention that a python is at least an actual serpent, unlike, for example, an eel… just putting that out there.)
Our narrative now moves ahead to the next day, where we find the more-or-less homeless Steve Rogers hanging out at the apartment of his girlfriend, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter. We see Steve place a call to the NY police commissioner to formally tender his resignation from the police force, thereby tying off a loose plot thread that’s been hanging out there since issue #139 (Jul., 1971), back when Stan Lee was still writing the book. And once that’s out of the way…
Maybe it’s because of the fact that by now, in 2024, we’ve had many years’ worth of stories in which Steve and Sharon have managed to make their relationship work just fine while also holding down their respective, very demanding full-time careers, that virtually all the relationship drama we watched them go through in the 1960s and the 1970s, when one of them always seemed to be badgering the other one to quit their job, seems now to have been not only contrived, but downright silly. Or maybe that’s just me?
And now we know. The Avengers storyline involving the Space Phantom, which ran in issues #106-108 back in 1972, had been one of Steve Englehart’s first multi-part storylines for Marvel, undertaken at roughly the same time he was wrapping up his first Captain America serial. Designed at least in part to blow off existing Marvel inventory — or, more precisely, to make use of several pages that had been drawn of a direct sequel to the original Madame Hydra arc in CA that was never fully completed and published — Englehart had used its events not only to clear up some confusion about the status of Cap’s secret identity (as we previously noted in last month’s CA #179 post), but also to create an “escape hatch” of sorts for Madame H. herself — a nice little bonus that the writer was finally able to make pay off here, almost two years later.
The new Viper tosses a venom-tipped dart at the Cobra, paralyzing him, and the latter’s short-lived rebellion is over; he lies on the floor and listens obediently as his new boss announces to him and his colleagues that it’s time to get ready for their first mission as a group.
The story now turns back to Steve Rogers, though the locale is no longer New York City; Steve has headed south to the Virginia mansion that’s home to Sharon’s wealthy family, there to work on his “big project” in comfortable seclusion…
Later stories would make much more of Steve’s artistic inclinations, eventually having him begin a whole new civilian career as a professional comic-book artist (!); but, if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time we readers had ever seen him draw anything.
I know that virtually no one reading this needs me to explain our hero’s “bat” crack, but I can’t bear not to at least mention it. And since I have, I might as well go ahead and note that at the time this story was published, Steve Englehart already had one “Batman” script for Detective Comics behind him, though his destined-to-be-classic run on the character (also in Detective) still lay more than two years ahead.
Yeah, the cover has kind of spoiled this costume reveal (though if you scroll back up to the top to take another look at that illustration, you’ll see that Marvel’s staff got some of the colors wrong there). Even so, Buscema and Colletta have given us a nice “model sheet”-style shot of Steve Rogers’ new look with this splash — albeit one that, as a model sheet, will be made at least partially obsolete before the end of this issue.
As a reminder, we’ve already seen two previous would-be “replacement Caps” — baseball player Bob Russo, and biker “Scar” Turpin — attempt to assume the role, and fail spectacularly, in scenes played mostly for laughs (though they also allowed for the famous red-white-and-blue costume of Captain America to have some on-panel time in the comic book that bears his name). Given that Roscoe has already been introduced as a new member of the series’ supporting cast prior to his expressing an ambition to be the new Cap, it seems fair to assume that Englehart will be going for something a bit more substantial and dramatic with this particular plot thread — though the tone in this first meeting between Roscoe and the Falcon remains pretty light-hearted, overall.
Obviously, Washington would be closer to the Carter family’s Virginia home than New York City is, and Steve’s clearly raring to get started; even so, it’s an interesting storytelling choice to have the Nomad make his debut in the nation’s capital, rather than in Captain America’s usual home base of the Big Apple. Especially since the criminal escapade he’s just oh-so-conveniently stumbled upon seems to be one that Englehart and company could have staged in N.Y.C. as easily as in D.C….
It’s a clever move on Englehart’s part to frame the Nomad’s first fight against a backdrop of Cap fighting on film; not only does it tick the same box of showing Cap in costume for at least a few panels as did the last couple of issues’ replacement-CA scenes, but it also provides the writer the opportunity for some ironic counterpoint, as he juxtaposes the dialogue of the present-day combatants against the movie’s voiceover narration…
I love how Steve is just dying to tell the Cobra who he really is, here; our hero may not want to be Captain America anymore, but he sure still seems to want to be recognized as the guy who used to be Captain America.
Your humble blogger believes that while there have probably been many similar “positive proof that capes are impractical” bits done in comics and ancillary media over the past half century — with the best known examples likely being those featured in the 2004 animated film The Incredibles — the above sequence might just be the first such, at least if we’re not including purely parodic takes from the likes of Mad and Not Brand Echh. I stand fully prepared to be corrected on this point, however.
The panel above contains the very first mention of “Roxxon” in a Marvel comic. Immediately recognizable as a legally non-actionable stand-in for Exxon Corporation, the company would go on to have a much greater role on the Marvel Universe than I suspect anyone could have imagined in 1974, Steve Englehart included.
The writer’s invention of Roxxon was almost certainly prompted by one of his fictional kidnapping’s likely two real-world inspirations: the Dec. 6, 1973 abduction in Argentina of an Exxon refinery manager, Victor Samuelson, by the People’s Revolutionary Army (for the record, Samuelson was freed unharmed on April 29, following the payment of a $14.2 million ransom). The second (and much better remembered) inspiration was of course the February 4, 1974 Berkeley, CA kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst by members of a American far-left terrorist organization calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army — a shocking event that had become even more of a public sensation in April, when Hearst joined the SLA for a bank robbery, but whose ultimate resolution still lay a full year in the future at the time Captain America #180 came out.
“As their emblem, the sign of the new order, they [the Symbionese Liberation Army] chose the writhing seven-headed cobra, the naga, hoary symbol of the serpent god of occult myth.” (From “Homegrown Terrorists” at PBS.org.)
I had decided to gamble on the real America again, and in the real America at this time, there was a group of revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army. Their activities were pretty limited until they kidnapped Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst newspaper fortune, and then got her to join them in a bank robbery. This wasn’t the impeachment of the President, but it had sex and violence so people were paying attention to it, and I thought, hey, the SLA’s logo was a seven-headed serpent, and Marvel has a Serpent Squad…
Woah, Warlord Krang? Now him, my younger self never saw coming. That may be mostly due to the fact that Krang hadn’t been seen in a Marvel comic since Sub-Mariner #33, which had come out in late 1970 — and which I hadn’t bought, anyway. But even if I’d been more familiar with the guy than I was (I’d seen him in a couple of reprinted Tales to Astonish yarns, but that was about it), he didn’t have anything obviously serpentine about him — well, beyond the ways in which any supervillain might be said to be a “snake”.
Of course, he makes his entrance here carrying an accessory that fits right into his new allies’ ophidian motif — the Serpent Crown of Lost Lemuria! I’m pretty sure I only knew this very unique piece of headgear by reputation in the fall of ’74 — and even if I had read any of the comics in which it had previously appeared, I’m sure I wouldn’t have recognized the resemblance between it and the Symbionese Liberation Army’s graphic symbol. (For that matter, I’m not sure I recognized the resemblance between the Serpent Squad and the SLA, period, at the time.) But, thanks to Steve Englehart, I was going to be seeing a lot of the Crown in the next year or so — and not only within the pages of Captain America. Though, naturally, the following month’s issue of Captain America would be the very next place I and other fans of the era would be reading about the sinister Serpent Crown — so if you’d like to read about it next month, too, be sure and come back in October for our discussion of CA #182.
*For whatever reason, nihilism was having a moment of sorts at Marvel in 1974, as Englehart’s fellow Steve, Gerber, had recently introduced a “Legion of Nihilists” into the Son of Satan feature in Marvel Spotlight; in my view, Englehart’s take, as expressed by the Viper, was rather more convincing than what Gerber gave us over the course of several issues, with folks in ancient Roman military drag seemingly a whole lot more concerned about the evils of Satanism than adherents to a belief system holding that morality is baseless, existence is meaningless, etc., would logically be.
Wow, informative overview, Alan! First time I’d heard of the People’s Liberation Army and of the kidnapping of Victor Samuelson. Of course, the story of Patty Hearst’s kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army made a much bigger splash in U.S. news such that my 12 year old self was very aware of them in 1974, although I really can’t recall if I connected this variant of the Serpent Squad with them, although in re-reading Madame Hydra’s entrance in this tale, the SLA came instantly to my mind now. Of course, a few months ago, I had read an article reflecting on the activities of the SLA upon the 50th anniversary of Hearst’s kidnapping, as well as the later horrific shootout in Los Angeles wherein several members of the SLA were slain — and in an upcoming issue, Englehart and new CA&TF artist Frank Robbins would set up a re-enactment of that event too, although not quite matching the horror of the real event. At any rate, I wouldn’t read that issue until many years later as to my great frustration I never saw CA&TF issues 181-183 on the racks of my sources of comics in the latter months of 1974 and in the next issue I did get, Steve Rogers was back in his Cap costume.
Back to the issue at hand, there was some humor in seeing Rogers’ go through the process of trying to come up with a name for his new alter ego, and the scene of Nomad nearly knocking himself out after stepping on his own cape was simply classic. I have no idea if anyone had done any scene similar to that before but on reflection it is obvious that any such long cape would be very problematic for any action hero in real life. Superman gets away with it because, well, he’s Superman! Batman’s cape comes off as far more likely to be a problem since he’s not supposed to have any real superpowers but is still a creature of pure fantasy. Englehart and Sal B poked some fun at that bit of fantasy here and could do so because Cap never had a cape, but Englehart couldn’t do any such scene in any of his Batman stories. Reality be damned, the cape’s just much a part of the Batman mythos to poke at or hint that while it may be made to look great, it wouldn’t be all that practical when brawling with baddies or even running after them. The fantasy has to be upheld!
Also, this story was actually the first time I’d seen any version of the Serpent Squad or any of its members in action. I’d seen cameos of the original Viper in the Secret Empire story but missed his earlier appearances and had never seen the Cobra or the Eel previously either. I’d seen the cameos of Madame Hydra in that Avengers story but wouldn’t read those classic Steranko stories until many years later. Her disposal of the first Viper and the federal agents was pretty brutal. Outright scenes of murder were pretty rare in superhero comics of the 1970s, although I know a few writers were pushing the boundaries of that, as with O’Neil & Adams “Joker’s Five Way Revenge” story in Batman, and a few other examples, including Englehart’s upcoming Red Skull story in CA&TF. Still, there was something about the Viper’s cold, calculating manner that stood out, and then her brazen lie to the Eel about how his brother died. That she was drawn as quite lovely just seemed to make her all the more horrifying for her ruthless behavior. But then, that was another aspect of real events in the late ’60s and early ’70s, with not just the SLA but also the Manson Family, one of whom would make the news for an assassination attempt on Gerald Ford in 1975. On re-reading Nomad’s battle with the new Serpent Squad in this story, that he called out the new Viper by her previous alter ego stood out to me. It was very naturalistic to have him do so, but it also made me think that should have made this Viper suss that they had encountered one another before and it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to have her figure out that this seemingly “new hero” was actually her former foe in a new costume and name. Especially after he mentioned having previously fought the Cobra. Of course, in reality, anyone who knew Sam Wilson and happened to encounter him in his Falcon costume should have instantly recognized him as the mask didn’t really hid much of his face and certainly couldn’t hide his voice. It’s like the silliness of being expected to believe that a domino mask would really make an effective disguise for anyone. But us fans just go along with the fantasy anyhow!
There’s a whole lot of interesting elements to mull over and discuss in just this one chapter of this latest epic in the chronicles of Steve Rogers and his brief foray in a new guise.
I wonder if Steve Englehart is a believer in the horseshoe theory of politics, i.e. “the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other.” He had Madame Hydra moving effortlessly from the far-right criminal neo-Nazi ideologies of Hydra to the far-left radical militancy of the Serpent Squad.
First of all, that’s a great cover. Kane really did himself proud with that one, carrying a whole lot of story and subtext in one clever, dynamic illustration. One of my favorites. I also would have been happier if the boots and gloves in the actual story had been the same black they’d been on the cover. I know the original idea of super-hero costumes comes from circus performers, but bright canary yellow gloves and booties seems at cross-purposes with the darker new identity Steve was trying to create. That said, I really liked the fact that Steve added the cape on a whim and immediately regretted it the first time in action. Of course Nomad’s cape was, like Superman’s, only calf-length, which makes it a bit more practical than Batman’s all-consuming cloak, but the gag was still a funny one. I immediately thought of Dollar Bill getting his cape caught in a door in Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic and, as you reminded us Alan, of that poor hero whose cape got sucked into a rocket engine in The Incredibles.
As to the story itself, I enjoyed this one. As you say, Alan, the conflict between Sharon and Steve over Steve’s extra-curricular activities is selfish and in complete contradiction to the success of their long-standing relationship. As I recall, part of the cultural debate at the time was in whether women could enter the workforce and still effectively be mothers and wives. This is a question that’s been mostly answered in the fifty years since, but I guess Englehart was trying to speak to the national conversation taking place in homes across America. I did wonder two things about Madame Hydra’s conversion to the Viper; one, how did she have time to get Viper’s original costume re-tailored so that it fit her (and look at those curves-it REALLY fit her) in time to meet her new gang and two, how did it go from a one-note kelly green at the beginning to a two-tone olive and kelly green by the end? Presenting the magic of funny books, folks! Ta-da!
Englehart was certainly letting the fact that he was writing for both Marvel and DC bleed into his work, wasn’t he? Aside from the very funny joke about Batman’s origin, Englehart later references Roxxon in an issue of the excellent run on Detective Comics he shared with Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin several years later. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t have the life at DC that it wound up having at Marvel, but it’s there.
I’m sure, even at seventeen, I made no connection between the new Serpent Squad and the SLA, but the crown of Lemuria looked cool and Marvel certainly got some mileage out of it over the years. My original thought on the arrive of Krang was firstly, “Who?” and then, once I realized he was an Atlantean, followed that up with, “Why?” I don’t remember the part Krang ultimately plays in this story, but his surprise reveal at the end here, certainly doesn’t seem to fit. I guess we’ll have to see what Englehart does with it next month. Thanks, Alan!
I absolutely never knew about the Symbionese Liberation Army having chosen a seven-headed cobra as its emblem. I can see how Steve Englehart connected in his mind having the SLA-inspired reforming of the Serpent Squad seeking out the Serpent Crown, which was introduced by Roy Thomas & Marie Severin in the pages of Sub-Mariner #9 in late 1968. I wonder if Thomas & Severin had also been influenced by the seven-headed nāga when coming up with the Crown. It seems likely. Thomas has always been well-versed in mythology, which has featured frequently in his work.
Almost certainly, since Thomas used Naga as the name of the emperor of Lemuria back in Sub-Mariner 12.
I might be back to comment again but I had to comment on the Viper’s resurrection. Probably because deaths were so bloodless back then, I never thought Viper I was fatally wounded but left to die. A case could be made for first responders saving him and on recovery his getting placed in hiding (after his testimony) to be safe from his would be assassin.
That’s… actually pretty damn plausible, Steve! 🙂
Gotta add it was one of the regular and in retrospect goofy as hell aspects of superhero comics in up through the latter Bronze Age at least that most costumed baddies weren’t required to take off their costumes while in prison or while on trial or even being transported by the authorities. Of course, I understand why — for instant identification for the sake of the readers, even if like me they had never seen them before. Realistically, upon his arrest, the Viper would had to remove his costume upon arrival at prison, and likely it would have become part of the evidence of the case against him and would have been maintained as evidence while he had to wear standard prison garb. He should not have been wearing his costume while being transported. And even as a kid, I thought the notion of Madame Hydra putting on the old Viper’s costume was both macabre and bizarre. For one thing, Jordan Dixon (or Jordan Stryke) was shown as a rather tall, husky man — a costume that fit him rather snugly was going to be very baggy on Madame Hydra, aka Ophelia Sarkissian. It would have made more sense for her to have had her own, tailor-made costume all along rather than pretend she actually put on Dixon’s costume and that it just somehow magically fit her just as snugly.
There’s also the question as to why she opted to take on Dixon’s alter ego for herself at all rather than assume some other serpentine identity — maybe Green Mamba or Death Adder, and keep him alive and on the team. But then, I think the point of that scene was to impress upon readers Ophelia’s cold viciousness, her capacity and willingness to commit murder as she assumed her victim’s identity. Dixon’s Viper had a comedic aspect to him with his ad man blather, but the Sarkissian Viper was deadly serious, although she expressed amusement at seeing Nomad trip over his own cape. In a more “realistic” story, she may have used that moment to deliver a lethal blow to him but immunity for the title hero meant she had to use the time to make a getaway instead.
Yes, rereading the old stories the routine NYPD policy of letting supervillains where their suits is jarring, though as you say it makes sense for the storytelling.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t make the connection with the SLA as a teen (although I’d seen “Tanya” posing in front of the seven-headed serpent image) but Viper certainly fits the “burn it all down” style of terrorist from the era.
The annoying thing about the Steve/Sharon scene is that it reduces her to the stereotypical whiny comics girlfriend. During the Lee/Kirby run she was as likely to ditch Steve for a vital SHIELD mission as vice-versa so complaining about how his job ruins the relationship feels very wrong. She was easily the least stereotypical woman Lee wrote in that era. Englehart did not seem that into her — given one of the supporting cast later falls for her, I suspect he’d have written her out eventually.
More thoughts … the scene in which Steve Rogers is lost in thought and nearly gets hit by a car and then joyously does a flip and starts bouncing off of cars reminded very much of the scene in Avengers #15 wherein Rogers is out in public out of costume and happens to see the Enchantress & the Executioner in a car and rather than risk losing them in the time it would take him to change into costume, he gives chase, again bouncing off of car roofs and grabbing onto the line holding up a traffic light, at which point the Enchantress lets loose a hex which snaps the line, causing him to fall. Also, the bystander who thinks, “that’s gotta be — Robert Redford!” caused me to smile. I hadn’t thought about it back in 1974, but although Robert Redford was one of the most famous actors ever by 1974, I don’t believe he ever played any sort of action hero in any of his films. On the other hand, at some point in the mid-60s, nearly all the blond male super-heroes at Marvel tended to look a lot like Robert Redford in their civilian alter egos, including Steve Rogers. Maybe it was pure coincidence, although certainly other superheroes were certainly modeled after particular actors or other celebrities, such as the Fawcett Captain Marvel after Fred MacMurray, Tony Stark after young Howard Hughes and Stephen Strange after Vincent Price.
Sorry I’m late chipping in, but while I’d certainly agree that the character of Tony Stark was very much based on Howard Hughes (and I think Stan Lee has always said so), I think original artist Don Heck drew more visual inspiration from actor Errol Flynn. I think Hughes’ success with women was more about money, power and coercive control, and he was never as physically attractive as Flynn, or as Don Heck drew Tony Stark. If you look at Heck’s other two most well-known creations, Hawkeye and the Swordsman, they are avatars of the roguish Robin Hood type and the swashbuckling swordsman characters Flynn was so well known for. I think I’ve heard it said that Heck was a fan of old movies, so it doesn’t seem unlikely that he drew inspiration from Flynn as an early action-hero. Possibly Stan Lee only saw the millionaire inventor with smart suits and small moustache and saw Howard Hughes despite what Heck was drawing. I could well be wrong, but that’s what I’ve always thought.
That image of Hawkeye having just removed his “Golden Archer” mask, to reveal his Hawkeye mask underneath, will always make me LOL. It looks even funnier in this flashback than it did in the original!
I had not known before that “Symbionese” refers to “symbiosis” not to some obscure place with a failed insurgency.
The SLA were all to characteristic “Soldiers of Misfortune.”
Guns are tools to put food on your table, or crows away from your corn or apples, not means of selgf expression.