Captain America begins his story
by describing a villain creating a giant mechanical wolf, scaling the outside
of an office tower, seeking revenge against an enemy. Cap rode his motorcycle
on the opposite side, crashed through a window, rode across the floor, then
smashed into the mechanical monster….
Steve Rogers meets his building
manager about some repairs and is told that the building’s owners have decided
that the place is not profitable to maintain and will be demolished after all
the residents have been evicted. Steve calls Tony Stark for a loan, calling it
is an investment in real estate. He buys the building and announces renovations….
A chat with a neighbor leads Steve
to remember his mother, who took him to visit his father’s grave until she died
when Steve was 14. He remembers being evicted for non-payment of rent soon
after….
Invisible Woman shows up at the
apartment to asks for Cap’s help so the Fantastic Four can defeat Psycho-Man in
the Microverse. He joins them, is supplied with a jet pack that he wishes he
could keep, defeat the villain, and returns, exhausted, to his home. And then
the police chase some robbers down the street and Cap once again swings into
action. As he takes down one crook, he doesn’t see the other one aiming a gun
at his back. A passer-by, Seung Kim, calls out a warning and Cap is able to
dodge the bullet and hurl his shield, knocking the other crook out….
After losing the apartment, young
Steve slept in a condemned building and worked any job he could, hauling
refuse, washing cars, bagging groceries, walking dogs, and hawking papers.
Once, a driver deliberately ran through a puddle, splashing Steve and soaking
his newspapers. His pal Arnie Roth offered to buy the ruined papers but Steve
refused. Arnie noted that the Daily Bugle’s headline announcing peace in
Europe with the Munich Agreement is wrong as Hitler can’t be trusted. Anyway,
Arnie has found Steve a place to live for only ten dollars a month but the
landlord wants three months in advance. So Steve works even harder….
Steve approaches Seung Kim to
thank him for his help and discovers he’s
an out-of-work builder who is now living in a van with his family. Steve offers
him a job, doing renovations on his building….
So we jump back two years: arms
dealer, blackmailer, and all-around nogoodnik Travis Lane is tramping through a
South American jungle, escorted by a guide named Castillo. He is seeking
immortality and has heard that Asmoday, one of the demonic Lords of Chaos has a
temple in the jungle. Lane is willing to give anything to be immortal. Castillo
explains that Asmoday moves through the world by inhabiting human bodies and
Lane has been summoned. Castillo then reveals they are in the temple—and that he
is Asmoday’s latest host before moving into Lane’s body to stop an upcoming nexus….
A month later, the possessed Lane
met with Arianna Walters, fugitive A.I.M. scientist, in Bangkok and persuaded
her to work for him (the exact offer is deliberately omitted here) in locating
more former A.I.M. personnel….
Young Steve is hungry but he needs
only 55 more cents to make the thirty dollars. A passer-by tells him that a
group in the park is giving out free sandwiches and Steve goes over to find it’s
true. He grabs some grub and discovers that the sponsoring group, preaching a
glorious future for the USA is the German American Bund, in short, Nazis….