Fifty miles north of Seattle, a man clad in dark blue with a baby strapped on his back enters a convenience store in McMurray, Washington. At that same moment, two drunken men also enter, brandishing shotguns and ordering the clerk to empty the cash register. The clerk fires a hidden shotgun of his own, but before a rain of additional bullets can fill the air, the man dressed in dark blue goes on the attack. Using the pack of disposable diapers he was about to purchase as a distraction, he lunges at the two men and swiftly subdues them. He then picks up a new pack of Huggies and a large bottle of Mountain Dew, pays the clerk and exits.
The man’s name is Jack Monroe, also known as Nomad, the same moniker briefly used by Steve Rogers in the 1970s. In many ways it is fitting, as Monroe was once given a derivative of the same super soldier serum that transformed Rogers into Captain America during World War II. After the injection, Monroe became the third Bucky Barnes – sidekick to the fourth Captain America – during the 1950s. The version of the super soldier serum taken by Monroe, however, rendered him mentally unstable, and he was subsequently placed in a cryogenic sleep as a precaution.
By the early 1990s, Jack Monroe was dethawed and back in action, although still unstable. After declaring war on a group of drug dealers, Monroe kidnapped a baby girl from her drug addict mother, both naming and dressing the infant as his old Bucky persona. Now on the run from the U.S. government – which does not take kindly to Nomad’s vigilante actions – Jack Monroe wanders the highways and byways of America, trying to make sense of what has become a failed life.
In the first issue of the 1992 comic book series Nomad – entitled “The Favor Banker” – Jack Monroe finds himself in Seattle, with baby Bucky strapped to his back and very little money in his pocket. After renting a cheap motel room, Monroe uses the rest of his cash to place a personal ad promoting himself as a “handyman” willing to take on jobs “with no questions asked.” Afterwards he reflects on how far he has fallen, from superhero to vigilante to man-for-hire. With a baby to now feed, he likewise knows that he has few options.
Jack Monroe is not the only person who has made their way to the state of Washington. Giscard Epurer is also a man-for-hire but of the illicit variety, and collects “favors” as opposed to cash payments for his services. In Seattle, he calls a young woman named Gloria Justin on the phone and tells her it is time for payback. Justin is both afraid of Epurer and unwilling to do his bidding, and thus answers Jack Monroe’s personal ad and pleads for his help.
Jack Monroe and Gloria Justin meet at the top of the Seattle Space Needle, where Justin pays Monroe half in advance and explains that Epurer is blackmailing her into stealing information from where she works. Monroe agrees to assist and – without asking any questions as advertised – breaks into Giscard Epurer’s top floor hotel room with baby Bucky still strapped to his back. Epurer is present, however, and the two men briefly fight. “You are stronger, I am more skilled,” he says to Monroe during a break in the action. “We could dance all night. Why not settle this in a civilized fashion?”
Jack Monroe tells Epurer that he is there to stop Gloria Justin from being blackmailed, to which Giscard Epurer merely scoffs. Years earlier, Justin fell in love with the daughter of a rich millionaire running for public office. The local media discovered the relationship and was about to reveal it, but Epurer was hired to intervene. Having kept his end of the arrangement, he now wants Gloria Justin to acquire shipping documents from the Seattle Port Authority in return.
Since Giscard Epurer is unwilling to forgive the debt that Gloria Justin owes him, Jack Monroe agrees to steal the information instead. Epurer consents, but only if Monroe leaves baby Bucky behind. Monroe doesn’t like the idea of Bucky being used as a hostage, but Epurer replies, “I have four daughters – she will be safer with me than you.”
Unable to argue with that point, Jack Monroe infiltrates the Seattle Port Authority and makes copies of the information Giscard Epurer is after – which includes shipping routes across the entire West Coast and not just Seattle – via a microfilm feature hidden in his sunglasses. Two guards become aware of his presence, however, and Monroe is forced to subdue them, although he tries his best to “be gentle.”
Once the information has been handed off to Giscard Epurer, it is revealed that Jack Monroe was duped. Since Gloria Justin was unwilling to jeopardize her job by stealing the documents herself, she and Epurer decided to use Jack Monroe instead. Justin pays him the remaining money she owes him, but Monroe makes it clear to both her and Epurer that their paths will cross again.
Epurer replies that he knows all about Jack Monroe and his vigilante antics, as well as the fact that the U.S. government is after him. Epurer agrees to keep that information secret, but in return Monroe now owes him a “favor” that he someday will be forced to repay. Monroe merely walks away at that point, not just from the hotel room of Giscard Epurer but the entire state of Washington as well. “I don’t know if I like Seattle much,” he tells himself. “Too pseudo-nouveau, post-NASA, Republican-yuppie for my tastes. But who am I to complain?”
And with that, the first issue of the 1992 Nomad comic book series comes to an end – as well as Jack Monroe’s brief visit to Seattle.
Anthony Letizia