WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE: A SECRET HISTORY-Lethal Luthors-A Deceptive Brilliance: William Luthor

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">The Lethal Luthors:
A Deceptive Brilliance

PART TWO: THE SECRET FOUR

William Luthor 1903-1967

William Luthor should be the hardest brother of the Luthor quadruplets to research because he lived so much of his life in the shadows, leaving little concrete evidence about his career. However there are extensive dossiers about his various guises such as The Scorpion and Baron von Strucker in the records of the intelligence agencies of the United States, England Germany, Japan and China. Once it is established that William Luthor was both the Scorpion and Baron Von Strucker a diligent researcher can compile a fairly complete biographical sketch of his life and legacy.

Like his brothers, Alexander, David and Lawrence he was born on September 18, 1903, to Paul Luthor and Sally Finn. Like his brothers he was born with a genetic predisposition for total scalp baldness. Also like them he was brilliant. Yet he differed from them in many important ways. He was quiet and studious. He was the only brother to remain at home and help his mother through their father's many long absences. He was the only brother to take an interest in helping to raise their sister, Lena. William was also the only brother to have received a formal education. He graduated high school with honors and won a full scholarship to Stanford University at the age of sixteen. After graduating from Stanford in three years he wrangled an appointment to West Point, believing that he had the genius to become one of the foremost military strategists in the history of the world. During his stay at West Point he secretly married Lorelei Brown from Virginia. They had a daughter named Irene Luthor, who was called Serina or Rina.[1]

Lorelei Brown was the daughter of a wealthy banker who had accumulated his wealth during what was then called the Great War but what is now known as World War One. Once William was his son-in-law, Brown revealed certain things to him. He had had William investigated and knew that he had the capability to rise through the ranks of the military given his intelligence and talent. Brown believed that William could be very useful to Brown and his associates. Brown belonged to a group of wealthy men who gained their wealth by manipulating politics and arranging conflicts between nations or nationalistic groups. This was not as cold blooded or as mercenary as it seemed. These men believed that man was a predator and conflict was his natural state. Modern civilization arose because of conflict, as did most of the modern technology. They believed that they were helping mankind reach its fullest potential—while becoming wealthy.

William Luthor was still idealistic enough to reject his father-in-law’s offer, but not naïve enough to reject it outright. While the philosophy did appeal to him on a certain level, he considered himself enlightened enough not be a racialist. He told Brown that he would think about it and if he rose to a position where he thought he could contribute to the organization, he would contact him about joining.[2]

He received his officer’s commission and was sent to the Philippines. Knowing he might be stationed there for some time, he brought his wife and daughter along. William was brash and ambitious but also soon discovered a dark side to his personality. Sent to pacify a group of Moros who had started an insurrection on one of the southern islands, William Luthor and his patrol were captured by a tribe of Ifuago, the notorious headhunters. Luthor and his men were tortured. When one of his men was beheaded in a ceremonial dance, he found his views on race and civilization taking an abrupt reversal. Truly, white men were the only civilized race, he believed. Although he must have previously seen brutality inflicted upon the native Philippines during his stay on the islands by the United States territorial forces, he chose to deem as a necessary measure to tame the savages.

Luthor escaped from the Ifuago and drew the warriors away from the village. He circled back and freed his men. Although outnumbered, in a strategic battle he defeated the warriors of the village. He and his men then made an example of the village by torching it and killing all of the inhabitants. Word of this reached Douglas MacArthur, who was appalled at this behavior. He used his influence to have William Luthor reduced in rank to a private. Luthor was part of an infantry unit assigned as support on a naval vessel hunting pirates in the Luzon.

During the course of this mission he heard tales of a secret society of pirates. Although piracy remained their economic and social mainstay these pirates had made some moves to diversify into various other criminal enterprises, such as smuggling, drugs, and arms dealing.[3] Most authorities believed this secret society of pirates to be either members of the Triads or to be entirely fictitious. William Luthor, however, was convinced that there was such a society and that it was somehow connected to the cult of the Scorpion that seemed out of place in these South Seas islands. As it happened his naval patrol stumbled upon a pirate stronghold on one of the smaller islands in the southern part of the Philippine chain.

The naval vessel and their infantry support drove the attackers into their stone fortress and began to bombard it with their artillery. The captain of the gunboat asked for a volunteer to parley with the pirates and accept their surrender. William Luthor volunteered, believing that this would be one way to work his way back to an officer’s rank.

William Luthor was escorted into the stone fortress and from there into a palatial mansion inside the fortress. He remembered drinking a tasty exotic tea. The next thing he knew he was standing over the dead bodies of the officers of the gunboat with a smoking gun in his hand. Pirates poured over the side of the gunboat, slaughtering all of the United States servicemen, all but William Luthor. He realized that he had been drugged somehow and induced to kill the officers of the gunboat. Realizing that his career with the United States Army probably would not recover from such an incident even if he could spin a tale of deceit and treacher, William Luthor threw himself in with the pirates. After six months he had gotten a good idea of their power structure and learned of their alliances and their connection to a larger group.[4]

The pirate organization was named Scorpia. This an organization had begun in the 1500s as an organization of pirates [5]. Scorpia was believed to have been destroyed in 1612 by the mysterious man known as the Phantom. The Phantom killed Scorpia's leader Brunel de Gottschalk in mortal combat. The Phantom then destroyed Scorpia's castle by blowing up its gunpowder room and so destroyed the stronghold from which they had carried out their campaigns of terror. However Scorpia survived in secret and it established strongholds in East Africa in the early 1800s, a stronghold in the Suez in 1818, and one in China circa 1898.[6] Shortly after the Great War, Scorpia was incorporated into a group of other organizations by a mysterious man named Kathulos. Kathulos had made the current leader of the Scorpia, Baron Sojin, into his loyal follower in much the same way William Luthor had been induced to join Scorpia, through the use of the Black Lotus extract. However, after 1923 Kathulos had disappeared and Sojin had seized control of the Pacific interests of Kathulos organization. He had continued a working relationship with the Triads and other eastern organizations.[7]

William Luthor worked his way through the ranks of Scorpia using his military genius for the benefit of the pirate organization. His outstanding achievements brought him to the attention of Baron Sojin, who made him one of his advisors. Sojin found Luthor’s genius also extended to financial and speculative advice as well. Luthor studied Sojin closely, for Sojin resembled him to some extent. They had the same build and Sojin shaved his head to display his scars. When William Luthor was certain that he could impersonate Sojin, he murdered him and assumed his identity. Once William Luthor assumed the identity of Sojin, he claimed that the dead body was that of William Luthor who had tried to lead a coup against him and so had been killed. Luthor then carried out a purge in which all of Sojin’s closest associates were killed, using the excuse that they had been working in concert with Luthor. “Sojin” then took further vengeance against the Luthor family by claiming possession of Luthor’s family to be his concubine and slave. Luthor used this excuse to have his wife and daughter transported from the Philippines to take up residence in the Baron’s mansion.

Assuming total command of the Scorpia organization, William Luthor decided to modernize it and move its primary occupation away from piracy and towards war profiteering. They manufactured and smuggled munitions and began wars to have a market for their products. He reorganized the loose alliance of groups into a monolithic organization under the name of Scorpia. As part of this move towards a diversified means of income, Luthor made contact with the organization to which his father-in-law belonged. Through William Luthor’s efforts, The Controllers made a tentative alliance with Scorpia.

As the supreme leader of Scorpia William Luthor called himself the Scorpion rather than maintaining a constant impersonation of Baron Sojin. So far as the Scorpia organization was concerned, Baron Sojin was now subordinate to the Scorpion and would not be seen that often by the membership of Scorpia since he would the Scorpion’s personal representative. In this way Luthor arranged so that he would only have to impersonate Baron Sojin when absolutely needed.

A disgruntled member of Scorpia who did not like the “demotion” of Baron Sojin tried to assassinate the new leader of Scorpia by releasing an experimental gas in the mansion. Luthor was not in the mansion at the time and so escaped from any of the ill effects. Lorelei was killed outright by the gas and Serina was permanently affected by the gas; it paralyzed her facial muscles, making her face slack and expressionless. She took to wearing a mask to hide her features.

As William Luthor went through Sojin’s papers, he discovered that Sojin was a code name, given to him through his association with Japan’s Kokuryukai, the Amur River Society, also known more notoriously as the Black Dragon Society. This association had come about through Scorpia’s alliance with some Triad groups and had been strengthened by Kathulos. Baron Sojin’s true name had been Baron Wolfgang von Strucker from Bavaria, Germany. Strucker was the last known member of a long line of Prussian noblemen, which was good for Luthor’s purposes since it meant that Strucker did not have any relatives to uncover his impersonation.

William Luthor studied the political landscape of the late twenties with the eye of a military strategist. He established many bases worldwide and used the assets of Scorpia to invest in manufacturing concerns with an eye to manufacturing arms and also to improving existing arms. These he would sell to the highest bidder. Yet he needed customers, so he used the volatile atmosphere of the world in the wake of the Great War to create customers. Strictly apolitical, Scorpia gave financial support to those political organizations he thought would best promote conflict. He gave financial aid to the Bolsheviks in Russia, the fascists of Italy and Germany, various nationalists groups in the Balkans, the militarists in Japan, various revolutionary groups in Latin America, and various factions in Spain, hoping to incite a conflagration. William Luthor used Scorpia’s connection to the Black Dragon River society to promote militarism in Japan.

In Germany, William Luthor used the Wolfgang von Strucker identity to become an early supporter of Adolf Hitler, believing that if Hitler came to power he would try to re-establish Germany’s “greatness” and strength. Hitler’s efforts to re-establish the German Reich would bring about conflict with Germany’s neighbors.

In the early thirties William Luthor’s long-range plans seemed to be moving ahead on schedule. There was however one fly in the ointment. One of the officers whom William Luthor had been induced to kill when he had been inducted into Scorpia had been a friend of a Lieutenant Don Winslow.[8] Winslow was a friend of Admiral Colby. Attached to Naval Intelligence, Winslow was given the special assignment of tracking down the band of pirates that had killed the crew of the gunboat. Winslow’s diligent investigation uncovered the existence of Scorpia and its leader the Scorpion. William Luthor made certain that despite Winslow’s continual interference Winslow never learned the true identity of the Scorpion. To dissuade Winslow from his investigation of Scorpia, the Scorpion had Winslow’s friend, mentor, and unofficial superior in Naval Intelligence, Michael Splendor captured and tortured. However even after Splendor was left paralyzed from the waist down, Winslow continued his campaign against the Scorpion, perhaps with even more gusto.

Through out the Thirties Winslow derailed many of the Scorpion’s operations; time and time again the Scorpion was forced to destroy prototypes of weapons or research on weapons rather than let it fall into the hands of the United States government. The Scorpion did not care if they eventually acquired the technology, but he was not about to let it go for free. Winslow ferreted out and arrested associates and underlings of the Scorpion, or else he forced to them flee imprisonment or cause their deaths. In many cases, however, Winslow seemed only to suspect a connection between various threats to America and Scorpia. Among the associates and underlings stopped by Winslow were the "sinister fakir" the Spider; the Hawk, a magician and warlord; the Crocodile;[9] the mad scientist (and inventor of the "paralysis ray...the weirdest weapon in the world") Dr. Centaur; Dr. Q, who tried to destroy the Panama Canal; and the criminal mastermind the Dwarf, and his main agents and assassins, the Duchess and Dr. Thor [10].

In 1933, Scorpia agents stationed in New York City coshed and captured a man that they believed to be Don Winslow. To the Scorpion’s amazement, the individual who had been captured, although almost physically identical to Don Winslow, was not Don Winslow. Rather he was a European nobleman named Count Borg. The brain injury of Count Borg gave him partial amnesia. It also caused a personality change, although no one knew this at the time. The Scorpion took advantage of the Count’s amnesia and also used the black lotus drug to make Borg into a loyal member of Scorpia. The Scorpion was amused that someone who so closely resembled Don Winslow worked for Scorpia. The Scorpion found Count Borg invaluable as advisor and a strategist, and so used him accordingly; although he eventually planned to use Borg to discredit Winslow.[11]

Baron von Strucker’s early support of Hitler paid off when he was given a special status as part of the new German Intelligence service under Himmler. Luthor used the von Strucker guise to persuade the Reich to begin a super soldier program, to push for new technologies in armaments, and to award certain companies lucrative government contracts. Luthor used Hitler and Himmler’s fascination with the occult to lay the foundations for connections to various criminal organizations in the Middle East and East Asia with a nominal religious and occult façade.

It was also in 1933 that Luthor, as Baron von Strucker, was given a simple mission with dire consequences. Strucker was accompanying Hitler and the head of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels, to a luncheon meeting at a hotel in Berlin. Diels was not as committed to the Nazi cause as Hitler would have wished. Hitler noted a frail, non-descript bellboy and claimed he could make this bellboy into a better Nazi than Diels.[12] Hitler, being too busy for such a project, fobbed it off on Baron von Strucker. von Strucker was also rather busy but thought that the boy might be an interesting experiment for some psychological manipulation studies.

He shared responsibilities for the indoctrination and training of Johann Schmidt with the leading Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Luthor had an idea, which he was able to sell Rosenberg, that they could mold Johann Schmidt into a symbol of terror, an icon that would cause the forces of Democracy and Communism to shake with fear. Inspired by the powerful symbol of the skull that Kathulos had used to create a following, Luthor had Schmidt adopt a skull motif. Since the Communists had adopted red as their color, they also chose red as the color for their symbol of terror to act as an antithesis of Soviet Red. This also resonated with the Poe story “The Masque of the Red Death” in which Death personally spread a plague called the Red Death. The Red Skull would be the death of the Communists. For reasons unknown to himself, “Johann Schmidt” was also drawn to the skull motif.

Although it may have not made that much difference to either Luthor or Rosenberg, their subject for the psychological conditioning was a psychopathic killer. The man known as “Johann Schmidt” was born in a southern German village, the son of an illiterate, drunken peasant named Hermann and his long-suffering wife Martha. Martha died in childbirth, and Hermann tried to drown the newborn “Johann”, blaming him for the death of his mother. Other villagers and the Priest stopped Hermann from killing the infant. In shame and despair Hermann committed suicide the next morning.[13] The infant was rescued by a local doctor, who delivered the infant to an orphanage. “Schmidt” ran away at age seven, and grew up on the streets. During his childhood and adolescence he was in and out of prison for petty crimes ranging from vagrancy to theft. In prison and on the streets Schmidt was constantly beaten and victimized by other thugs. He was eventually taken in by a Jewish shopkeeper, whose daughter was the only person to show Johann kindness. Smitten with her he mistook her kindness for love and he tried to force himself upon her. When she refused, he became enraged and killed her. Terrified, he fled—but after the initial shock had passed he discovered that he actually was exhilarated by the act of killing.

In Berlin in 1929, when he was 19 years old, Johann Schmidt embarked on a short but deadly career as a child killer. A massive hunt by the police and the criminal underworld eventually captured him. He was sentenced to the Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Yet fortune smiled upon him. He switched identities with an inmate who killed himself. Berlin breathed easier knowing that the child killer was dead. Using the identity of the man who had killed himself the man was released from the Insane Asylum in a year. He adopted an assumed name. In a bit of uncharacteristic humor, he merely rendered into German an alias common among American criminals, John Smith, and so became Johann Schmidt. He was amused when a film based on his career as child killer depicted the killer as looking like the man with whom he had switched places.[14]

The Red Skull harbored a deep hatred for all mankind, especially Jews. It was his influence on Hitler, Himmler, and Rosenberg over the next few years that pushed the idea that the Final Solution for the Jewish problem could not mean mere containment or exile but necessitated extermination, however it would be years before Hitler and his top advisors would actually implement the policy.[15] During the war, the Red Skull undertook many different special operations for Hitler, slowly gaining more power within the Third Reich until even Hitler was terrified of his own creation; the Allied forces' Captain America identity was originally created to act as a counter to the Red Skull’s successes.

With effectively unlimited authority in Nazi Germany, Schmidt began to build secret bases around the world, and create untraceable fiscal reserves. He built a "wolf-pack" of Nazi u-boats whose raids were used to fill Schmidt's personal coffers. Making contingency plans in case of the defeat of Nazi Germany, he established a secret headquarters on a small island (called "Exile Island"), and populated it with several top Nazi leaders, soldiers, and their families.[16]

In 1934-1935 “Baron von Strucker” was not in Germany very often as William Luthor spent much of the time in the Far East, encouraging Japan’s imperial ambition and militarism. He also did his part to destabilize China, realizing that it would be fertile ground for conflict between Japan and Russia. To this end he supported various conflicting Chinese warlords while aiding Japanese conquests of Chinese territories. He found ways to profit from the chaos. One of his more famous exploits in China was when he supplied the ambitious Shiwan Khan with munitions in return for oil concessions. His main purpose was to supply Khan so that he would fight against other Chinese warlords and the Japanese, the oil money was gravy.

Rather than have Scorpia directly involved in such deals, William Luthor used another alias- one that gave him amusement, for it was the alias of his brother David. His brother David Luthor had adopted the name D. D. Warburton. David’s history had been adapted into a comic strip with his name altered to Daddy Warbucks because of David’s munitions interests, although they were, so far as William could ascertain wholly legitimate. Since D.D. Warburton was a known arms dealer and since, being identical brothers, William was a dead ringer for D.D. Warburton, William often adopted this guise when carrying out some publicly known but shady deals. This deal however went sour as Shiwan Khan’s imperial ambitions were thwarted by the mystery man known as The Shadow. Believing that Warburton had sold him out, Khan tried to kill William Luthor. Luthor was shielded by a member of Scorpia, one of the Thuggees who served as his bodyguard. This Thuggee bore a resemblance to David Warburton’s bodyguard “Punjab”, which is why he was picked for this duty. That William Luthor and his bodyguard were seen together reinforced the idea that this was Warburton and Punjab.[17]

In 1937 the secret of Scorpia’s existence as an organization currently operating in the modern world rather than a forgotten secret society was publicly exposed by a college student named Diana Palmer. Palmer had been an Olympic gold diver in the Games of 1936 and had been romantically linked with millionaire Christopher Walker. During an interview with a local newspaper in Westchester, New York, Miss Palmer revealed that she had uncovered the existence of a secret criminal organization named Scorpia. She intended to write a paper on the history of this organization and also uncover the current activities of this organization.

William assigned one of his best men, Karabi, a man who had the same general build and appearance as William Luthor and so who often posed as Baron Sojin for him, to take care of the threat to Scorpia. Miss Palmer did not respond to intimidation. So the next step was to silence her. However Karabi was entranced by her beauty and so kidnapped her instead of arranging for her to die in an accident. Unfortunately for Scorpia, Diana Palmer was also loved by the man known as The Phantom, The Ghost Who Walks, whose ancestor had also fought against Scorpia.[18] The Phantom defeated Karabi in single combat. The island fortress was invaded by the United States Marines. Karabi and several of the Scorpia agents were sent to prison; fortunately for Scorpia, Karabi had destroyed all documentation prior to the invasion.[19]

While in the United States William Luthor used his own checkered past of being an Army deserter to make contact with a criminal organization run by a man who called himself the Ultra-Humanite. William Luthor had a plan to arm criminals with weaponry. This, he reasoned, could spur various states to increase their National Guard membership and also order more and heavier armaments to deal with the criminal menace. At the insistence of the Ultra-Humanite, William Luthor had a personal meeting with The Ultra-Humanite and his second in command. Although he did not at first recognize The Ultra-Humanite, William did recognize the Ultra-Humanite’s lieutenant as his brother Alexander Luthor. He learned that the Ultra-Humanite was his brother Lawrence, aged dramatically by a failed experiment. The family reunion between three of the quadruplet brothers consisted of cursory hand shakes before they turned to their business at hand, promoting chaos for their own particular goals and profit. William Luthor kept knowledge of his connection to Scorpia from his brothers, lest in their ambition they try to wrest the organization away from him. They knew him only as an international arms dealer who sometimes dealt in foreign affairs for profit. This association was fairly lucrative for both parties. The Ultra-Humanite and Alexi obtained enough money to further their grandiose megalomaniacal plans for conquering the world, or at least the United States.

After Alexi and Lawrence had a falling out in 1938, William kept close contacts with both of them. Alexi expressed an interest in joining forces with William on a permanent basis. William gave him the assignment to destabilize the Balkans, setting the various ethnic/nationalist groups at one another throats with the express purpose of supplying the region with arms. Despite a promising beginning, Alexi ultimately failed at this task as the man known as Superman took an interest in thwarting Alexi and stopping the civil war Alexi had created in Lutha from turning into a wider conflict. After Alexi was forced to destroy some very expensive prototypes, William fired him. Alexi went on to have a criminal career that was based on using super science for the purposes of extortion for financial gain. Yet to William’s viewpoint, Alexander’s career seemed designed to bring him into constant contact with Superman with the ultimate goal of humiliating, defeating and destroying the so called “man of steel.” [20]

By 1938 William Luthor’s long-range plans to plunge the world into a great conflict were reaching crescendo. Italy and Germany were building their military forces with the express purpose of acquiring “lost” territories. Japan was building its military forces to further their imperial ambition which they believed would be beneficial for all of Asia under the Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Unfortunately during this period Scorpia came under attack on several fronts. Because of the exposure of the Scorpia name and organization by Diana Palmer, William Luthor resurrected an organization that had been an offshoot of Scorpia. Ironically it had been shut down by a man also known as the Phantom in the 1850’s.[21] Although the Phantom was supposed to be immortal, Luthor rather doubted this, believing that the Phantoms were several people, probably part of an organization of similarly costumed men that gave credence to an idea of an immortal defender of justice. His realization of this fact gave him inspiration for his new organization, instead of one irreplaceable man, there would be many replaceable men. His daughter Serina had become one the key personnel in his organization. She would travel around the world being a liaison between the various organizations of Scorpia.

Luthor wondered if the remnants of the organization shattered by the Phantom in the 1850s had become part of the organization to which his father-in-law belonged. The organization had been called Hydra. Its origin dated back to the Black Death of 1347 when a few roving bands of criminals traveled Europe looting the decimated cities and townships grew into a ruthless, structured secret society.

He took the original structure of Hydra and altered each section’s function, assigning a totemic animal to represent each section. A Chameleon for information gathering, espionage, and identity subterfuge; a Serpent for assassination, strike force teams, and sabotage, Scorpion for enforcement, armed action, and invasion forces; Octopus for commercial criminal activities such as drugs, prostitution, and illegal arms sales; and Vulture for organized savaging such as looting, piracy, hijacking, and black market dealings. The man chosen to be the head of the Octopus branch was named Chase, he was a banking magnate whose reputation was above reproach. The rest of the section heads remained unknown. Only the upper-echelon leaders of Hydra were also members of Scorpia. It remains an unsubstantiated rumor that Serina Luthor was the head of the Serpent faction of Hydra.[22]

Shortly after the reformed Hydra began operations, a moment of carelessness by members of the Vulture section based in San Francisco led to the Phantom discovering that Hydra had been reborn. As he had with Scorpia, the Phantom took an interest in destroying Hydra. The Phantom’s efforts crippled the nascent Vulture section by disrupting its operations and exposing its members, causing them to commit suicide or become captured by the police; even the section head of Vulture was captured by the police. The section head or current “Vulture” had to be silenced in prison. The Phantom also hurt the Scorpia organization as a whole by this campaign against Hydra since Luthor was depending on the funds that Vulture would have provided. After this section was destroyed, Luthor altered the organization’s pledge from "You cannot defy us and live. We are all powerful. Destroy one branch, two will take its place"[23] to “Immortal HYDRA! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one limb and two more shall take its place!”[24]

Luthor had set up Hydra to run independently of Scorpia, as one of the major sources of intelligence and financial resources for Scorpia. The separate sections of Hydra thrived autonomously from Scorpia. Scorpia’s main organization, however, was beleaguered.

One of the most persistent and damaging campaigns against Scorpia was Don Winslow’s obsessive efforts to destroy the organization.

In 1939 Winslow dealt Scorpio a major blow by removing two of the Scorpion’s top lieutenants. First of all Winslow captured the Scorpion’s main advisor Count Borg. Count Borg was a dead ringer for Winslow. William Luthor, the Scorpion had always intended, when Borg’s usefulness as an advisor had ended, to use the Count to discredit Winslow. However a blow to the head during his capture undid most of Count Borg’s pro-Scorpia conditioning. Borg and Winslow turned the tables on the Scorpion, and Winslow impersonated Count Borg in order to infiltrate Scorpia. Cho-San, the head of Scorpia‘s Asian operations, which was based in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was forced to abandon his headquarters due to it being raided by San Francicso law enforcement forces and Naval Intelligence operatives. Winslow was abetted in this operation against the San Francisco headquarters by Count Borg and Lotus. Lotus was the “ward” of Cho-San, an orphaned Eurasian girl originally raised to be a friend and companion to Selena Luthor. When she had blossomed into young womanhood, Cho-San had convinced The Scorpion to allow Cho-San to train her to become a valuable member of Scorpia. In reality he planned to make her his wife, but Lotus did not love Cho-San, she instead loved Count Borg. Despite her upbringing Lotus had never believed in the goals of Scorpia and when Count Borg recovered his lost morality, she planned to leave Scorpia with him.

William Luthor happened to be at Cho-San’s headquarters when it was raided, he barely escaped capture. However he took Lotus with him as a captive and possible hostage.[25] As it was, with Cho-san’s operation dismantled Luthor had to lay low in America for a few months. Meanwhile, without von Strucker’s advice, Hitler was acting precipitously nad begun his campaign of conquest before Germany was actually completely ready.

With Don Winslow hot on his trail, William Luthor fled America, taking passage on an ocean liner named the Transconia. Luthor and his “ward” Lotus posed as a German paleontologist named von Hollenbeck and his daughter.[26] The mastery of disguise that Luthor had inherited from his father, John Clay, served him well in this instance; his impersonation of von Hollenbeck was perfect but for the exception of the ever-suspicious Don Winslow.[27] It is interesting to note that von Hollenbeck was a red-headed man with a full beard, as William Luthor could have been had he not been cursed with the same baldness as his brothers. As Winslow and his aide Red Pennington searched von Hollenbeck’s room, Luthor and Lotus disembarked from the ship onto Hawaii. The bodies of the real Dr. Hollenbeck and his daughter were discovered in a trunk in their stateroom.

Winslow and the Scorpion had a confrontation in Hawaii in which Don Winslow rescued Lotus but failed to capture the Scorpion. The Scorpion was aided by a woman whom Martinek called his top female operative, Tasmia.[28] The Scorpion fled Hawaii. Lotus gave Winslow the information that the Scorpion would undoubtedly travel to the Philippines because the one of the Scorpions main sources of wealth was in the Philippines. Don Winslow and Red Pennington followed the Scorpion’s trail.

In Manila Luthor used the alias Señor Rufo and once again confronted Winslow but avoided capture. However the trip to the Philippines was costly. Due to Winslow’s interference, the Scorpion was forced to divest himself of a lucrative gold mining venture, and Osterman, a.k.a. The Falcon, one of the Scorpion’s lieutenants, was forced to flee to avoid capture.[29]

During 1939-40 William Luthor spent much of his time traveling back and forth between Germany, Japan, and the United States. His mission in the third nation was two-fold, to maintain the United States’ isolationist stance so that the United States would not interfere in the coming European and Asian war. Luthor knew that if the United States mobilized for a war effort, it would only be a matter of time before the war ended. Luthor wanted the war to continue for a few years so that he could profit from it. Also he believed that the new Fascist states in Europe and Asia would provide years of steady income as Scorpia aided various rebel groups inside the totalitarian nations states.

William Luthor discovered, to his dismay, that his daughter was infatuated with the Red Skull. Serina had adopted the name the Mask of Death because of her disfigurement also used it as a compliment to the Red Skull’s Masque of the Red Death borrowing. Luthor kept her far away from that psychopath by placing her in charge of the Scorpia operation based in the United States. She established a hideout near Hollywood.[30]

However her efforts to have Scorpia steal a formula for an extremely potent poisonous gas went awry and she was captured by Don Winslow. Although she begged him not do so, Don Winslow removed her mask, earning her eternal enmity for exposing her paralyzed face.[31]

Luthor was doing a balancing act in the Pacific, acting as Baron von Strucker, Hitler’s liaison with the Aryans of the East, the Japanese, and also donning his role as the Scorpion to encourage Japanese militarism and imperial ambition. In the latter role he organized a joint venture between Scorpia and the Japanese based on a Pacific Island midway between Japan and the Hawaiian Islands. Scorpia and the Japanese Navy sabotaged and attacked American vessels traveling between Philippines and Hawaii. Scorpia had contacts with the natives of this island who were part of the cult of the Feathered Octopus.[32] Members of Scorpia’s propaganda branch were able to convince the natives of a mystical connection between the Scorpion and the Octopus, both creatures having eight limbs.

Once again Don Winslow was dispatched to interfere in Scorpia’s plans. However this island base had served its purpose by then but the Japanese were unwilling to let go of their “conquered” territory so in fact by removing the Japanese influence Winslow was doing the Scorpion a favor.[33]

In 1941 William Luthor kept shuttling back between Japan and Germany as Baron von Strucker and as the Scorpion. His main failure was in influencing Japan’s wartime policy was delaying the attack on the United States, especially without a prior declaration of war. He knew that this would impel the United States into an immediate declaration of war and a following immediate mobilization. After failing to convince the Japanese to delay their attack on the United States, he also failed to convince them that they needed to follow this up with an immediate attack on the West Coast of the United States, especially in California, Alaska, and Washington to cripple the naval yards. He also wished to seal the Panama Canal and slow down trans-oceanic travel. However the Japanese military was divided on the question of the fortitude of the Americans and on their industrial capability. They were convinced that the attack on Pearl Harbor would both cripple and demoralize the Americans.[34]

William Luthor convinced some of his Black Dragon allies that a direct attack on the West Coast of the United States could cripple America for years. This operation was thwarted, once again by Don Winslow.[35] The failure of this operation made Baron von Strucker unwelcome for a time in Japan. He realized that the war was about to get hot and the best place for him to be was either in the United States or Germany. Since he was actively being sought by some very determined people in the United States, he opted for Germany, realizing he would be stuck there for the duration of the war. He assumed from the outset that the war would drag on for years and end with a stalemate between the United States, Russia, and Germany. He did not believe that Japan would be conquered but thought that it would lose all of its acquired territories. Since his daughter was out of harm’s way in a jail in the United States, William Luthor opted to travel to Germany, believing he could avoid being personally involved in the actual conflict for some time.

William Luthor discovered that when he returned to Germany that the Red Skull had gained a great deal of power and influence in the Third Reich—he was more feared than the Gestapo in some quarters. According to rumors that Luthor’s Scorpia agents in Germany had gathered, the Red Skull had gained his influence by terrorizing and blackmailing various Reich officials. Luthor had known that the Red Skull was a bit of a psychopath but had not known the extent of his madness. Using his influence with Hitler, the Red Skull had persuaded the often hesitant Hitler that the only solution to the Jewish Question was absolute elimination.

Although William Luthor realized that hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people were killed during the wars he engineered, he considered this an unavoidable price to pay for man’s natural state of conflict. He believed that conflict was a form of natural selection that made mankind stronger by weeding out the weaker people. Conflict also spurred mankind’s technological advance. However the Final Solution as promulgated by Schmidt was something that even William Luthor regarded with horror. Collateral damage as the consequence of war was one thing, but the methodical execution of millions of people was something else entirely, so far as Luthor was concerned. Von Strucker’s tacit disapproval of the policy of the Final Solution was used by the Red Skull to erode Baron von Strucker’s influence with Hitler. The Red Skull had ambitions to succeed Hitler and to rule the world under a National Socialist government. Although he harbored some gratitude for Baron von Strucker for having rescued him from his non-existence as a bellboy, he also regarded Strucker as a rival and a potential threat to his eventual domination of the Third Reich.

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, before the United States had even mobilized towards their Europe First policy, a group of Allied commandos were causing havoc in the Greater Reich. Stationed in England, they were airdropped behind the lines to carry out sabotage missions. There were three such squadrons, all under the command of a Captain Sawyer. The group that irritated Hitler the most was known officially as the 1st Attack Squadron. The 1^stAttack Squadron was under the command of Sgt. Nicholas Fury. This squadron was unofficially dubbed The Howling Commandos.

Although The Howling Commandos were actually insignificant threats so far as the war efforts of the Reich was concerned for some reason Hitler became obsessed with them. He felt that the true damage that they did was to make the Reich look ridiculous. The Red Skull agreed that they should be removed; however having them exterminated by expending a great deal of manpower to hunt them down would not serve the greater good of the Reich. The Red Skull convinced Hitler that it would be best to humiliate the Howling Commandos and their leader before the world before they were killed. He suggested that Baron von Strucker be given the assignment to destroy Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos. In this way the Red Skull was able to give the Baron an assignment that could end in failure and so bring about his disgrace, it would also put him in harm‘s way, so there was a chance that that the Baron could become a casualty of the war and so be removed in this fashion.

Unable to decline this assignment, William Luthor issue a challenge to Nicholas Fury to meet with him on the island of Norsehaven in the English Channel. Fury accepted once he had been goaded into it although he defied orders to attend this meeting. Before their fight they drank a toast. Luthor had Fury’s cup filled with a narcotic to dull Fury’s senses. Luthor was able to defeat Nick Fury handily. Pictures were taken of the defeated Fury. Because of the location of the fight Luthor was unable to capture Fury for the Reich. Luthor barely escaped with his life as the Howling Commandos tracked down their leader. However films of the fight and still photos were circulated throughout Germany, giving Luthor as Von Strucker a boost in popularity and giving the Reich a propaganda boon.

William Luthor hoped that the humiliation of Fury coupled with Fury’s disobedience of direct orders would cause the United States military to remove Fury from duty and disband the Attack Squadrons. However his commander granted Fury the chance to redeem himself by challenging von Strucker to a rematch. Although Luthor had no desire to do so, Hitler was insistent, as he believed that it would be a great show for the Baron to defeat the upstart American twice in a row.

The rematch was held in France and Fury refused to drink a toast, realizing that the wine had been drugged. He easily beat Luthor in hand-to-hand combat. Luthor had planned for this contingency, and a squadron of SS descended on the scene of the fight. However Fury and his men escaped capture and published their photos of the Baron’s defeat in various newspapers.[36]

Infuriated with Baron von Strucker, Hitler gave him the task of capturing Fury and his Commandos alive so that they could be made examples of before the world.

Fury and his crew were given an audacious assignment: to capture Adolph Hitler. Through Scorpia agents in England, Luthor learned of this and planned accordingly. One of Hitler’s doubles was assigned to be a decoy. Fury and the Howling Commando’s took the bait. Luthor managed to capture Fury and his squad member Izzy Cohen. The other members of the Howling Commando’s captured the decoy Hitler. Fury and Cohen managed to escape, once again humiliating von Strucker in Hitler eyes. William Luthor really began hating Fury, even more than he hated Don Winslow. The Howling Commandos also discovered Luthor’s contingency plan; the decoy Hitler had been equipped with a time bomb to detonate in England. The decoy was disarmed but killed himself with cyanide.[37]

Luthor formed his own specially trained operatives to capture Fury and the Howling Commandos. They were selected from the SS and also from the ranks of German Scorpia agents. They were known as Baron von Strucker’s Blitzkrieg Squadron.

As the Blitzkrieg Squadron was training, Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos succeeded in proving that they were more than just nuisances, they were a true threat to the war effort. In a joint operation with the American costumed hero Captain America, Fury and the Howling Commandos stopped a major Nazi operation. There were plans for a tunnel from France to England under the Channel; this operation was completely destroyed by Captain American and the Howling Commandos. [38]

Once the Blitzkrieg Squadron had been trained, Luthor plotted Fury’s capture. He constructed a false V-2 Rocket installation on the French coast, giving out that it was equipped with a new bombsight that would allow the German Army to land rockets in England with pinpoint accuracy. As Luthor had expected, Fury and his Commando’s were sent to destroy the base. The Blitzkrieg Squadron nearly captured Fury and his Commandos, but the Americans’ luck held true and they avoided capture and destroyed the false V2 base. It never occurred to Luthor that Fury, a man of little education, could out strategize him.[39]

Since this failure further eroded Strucker’s standing with Hitler, he offered to have his Blitzkrieg Squadron prove their worth to the Reich. They went into Scotland to free captured Luftwaffe pilots. Fury and his Commandos showed up to stop this jailbreak, but Luthor managed to free twenty-three of the prisoners and get away without being captured. [40]

Von Strucker and the Blitzkrieg Squadron next encountered Fury and the Howling Commandos when the Commandos were sent to France to deal a severe blow to Nazi gun emplacements on the beaches of Normandy. The Commandos were not alone on this mission but had been jointed by another of the Strike Squadrons, nicknamed McGiveney’s Marauders. The Blitzkrieg Squadron managed to separate the Fury and McGiveney from their squads but failed to capture them. They did, however, prevent the American commandos from doing serious damage to the gun emplacements.[41]

Because of his constant failure to capture Nick Fury, Hitler doubted von Strucker’s commitment to the National Socialist cause and began to doubt that von Strucker had the will to do what was necessary to achieve victory over the enemies of the Reich. He ordered von Strucker to go to Cherbeaux in occupied France and, if the Resistance agents there refused to give themselves up, to execute every citizen of the town. Fury confronted Strucker and made a deal with him: Fury would fight in personal combat with Strucker once more if Strucker evacuated Cherbeaux before Hitler had it destroyed. Strucker did so, but his battle with Fury ended in stalemate, and the two became separated. When Hitler learned that Strucker had evacuated the citizens of Cherbeaux, he ordered the Gestapo to find and execute von Strucker.[42]

William Luthor had to flee Germany and turned to the most unlikely of allies. Luthor contacted the Red Skull and informed him that he was well aware of the Skull’s plans to rule a post-Hitler German Reich and offered to aid him in this. Luthor informed the Skull that he had very solid contacts with a Japanese organization that would shortly control all of Japan. Luthor could convince them to support the Skull when he made his move to become the Führer. The Skull would then be able to quickly consolidate his power base.

Schmidt, the Red Skull, agreed to help Strucker since he had a residual feeling of gratitude for him and because Schmidt believed that Strucker could eventually prove useful to the Red Skull’s postwar plans.

Freed of his confinement in Germany, William Luthor once again took control of the Scorpia organization. Although he still believed that conflict was man’s natural state, he had come to believe that war was too precious a commodity to be left in the hand of maniacs. Maniacs such as Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin misused their military might and carried out crimes against humanity, in effect squandering the benefits that conflict brought to humanity.

Luthor had come to realize that in order for conflict to be used most effectively, it needed to be managed by sane, rational people. It is to this end he decided to guide Scorpia to become the organization that would control conflict in the world. To ensure that ultimate control would rest in the hands of Scorpia, he knew he needed the ultimate weapon. He was determined to create an atomic bomb before the United States or Germany. To this end he transformed one of the more modern of the Scorpia island fortresses into a scientific complex. He recruited scientists from around the world by telling them what they wanted to hear, to pacifistic scientists he claimed he was working to end the war, to others he said he was working to crush forces of fascism, communism or democracy.

Luthor created a special think tank for scientists with innovative ideas called Advanced Idea Mechanics. He believed that this could be a way to create super weapons, giving Scorpia the upper hand in the coming arms race and so being able to dictate to nation states such as the United States, post war Europe or Russia.

The complex was shielded from aerial sightings by camouflage but to maintain the secrecy of Scorpia Island, some of the more zealous members of Scorpia’s security forces sank any vessel coming near the island and prevent any possibly landings. The sunken vessels were from the United States and also from Japan, despite of Scorpia’s close association with the Yakuza sponsored secret societies in Japan. Both Japan and the United States sent squadrons to investigate what was sinking their vessels, believing that their particular enemy had established a beachhead on this island.

The United States sent Captain Simon Savage and his group of commandos nicknamed the Leatherneck Raiders. Japan sent a special squadron called the Samurai Squadron. Both groups made it to Scorpia Island unscathed.

On the island, each group were set upon by and slowed by traps set up to discourage visitors. Eventually the main bodies of both groups fell into pitfalls that ended up in a series of tunnels which would eventually lead to a Scorpia imprisonment center. The leaders of the two groups Captain Simon Savage and Sgt. Joe Morita were separated from their men as they remained free of the pitfalls and avoided other traps. Each made their solitary way towards the Scorpia complex. Within the underground passages, the two groups of soldiers eventually met up and fought each other, with the Raiders gaining the advantage, but eventually they were both captured and imprisoned by the forces of Scorpia.[43]

On the surface, Savage and Morita squared off. Though an even match, Savage managed to knock Morita down long enough to convince him that without their squadrons, they would need to team up against the common enemy.

After another brief scuffle between the two squad leaders, Strucker forced them both to run a gauntlet to decide whether they could be worthy additions to Scorpia (after some brainwashing, of course). Despite several disagreements, Morita and Savage were forced to work together to survive the series of attacks. Meanwhile, the members of the Samurai Squadron and the Leatherneck Raiders joined forces to break free from their prisons, though tensions remained high. The two groups managed to confront Strucker himself, but not before he could send a squadron of Scorpia agents to attack their exhausted leaders.

Savage and Morita managed to regain their wits and fight off their attackers, but Strucker managed to trap the two groups, summon reinforcements, and line them up in front of a firing squad. Before Strucker could give the order, however, Savage and Morita broke in and freed their soldiers. Rather than let his research be captured by the Allies or the Japanese William Luthor set up the self-destruct sequence on the island and escaped in his own private submarine. The Raiders and Samurai Squadron managed to make it to another submarine and escape as well, though not without some fighting over who was in command of the vessel.

Ultimately, the two groups parted in peace, as the Americans brought the Samurai Squadron back to their rendezvous ship. Savage and Morita shook hands, hoping that they'd one day meet again as friends and allies.

Following the destruction of Scorpia Island, William Luthor was in a state of depression for a while and let various factions inside of Scorpia fragment and splinter off into new groups. One of these was led by Baron Zemo, who took control of Advance Idea Mechanics. Scorpia’s war-time profits had peaked as mobilization in the various countries involved in WWII also peaked. Scorpia’s traditional commerce—piracy—was also rather lean since merchant vessels now tended to be escorted by heavily armed naval vessels.

William Luthor realized that this war had reached the zenith of its usefulness, there was little more profit to be made from it and little more technological achievement that would be wrought since Germany was on the defensive. He made a decision to end the war as rapidly as he could. To this end he negotiated with Hitler through the Red Skull to return to Germany. Luthor believed that if he were in Germany he could give Hitler military advice that would bring about an even quicker Allied victory.

However, Hitler was still obsessed with Nick Fury and insisted that Baron von Strucker take care of this unfinished business. Luthor located Nick Fury and put in place a plan to destroy Nick Fury by subjecting him to a special hallucinogenic drug. Strucker captured Fury in Africa and subjected him to the drug, but he was rescued by the Howling Commandos and recovered.[44]

Hitler sent von Strucker to investigate weird lights in the village of Gruenstadt. Hitler believed that the weird lights were part of a treacherous plan to signal the Allies. Hitler had Arnim Zola, one of the Red Skull’s trusted men accompany von Strucker. What they discovered astounded them. A small group of aliens had crash-landed outside the village. The aliens were parasitic in nature and had infected a good portion of the village. They were also predators and had devoured those people that they were unable to infect. Strucker’s Blitzkrieg Squadron and the contingent that Arnim Zola had brought with him fought against the parasitic aliens. Despite the aliens’ superior technology, Strucker’s and Zola’s men won out because of superior numbers, although they took great losses. [45]

As they were moping up the operation, Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos showed up. Hitler was correct about one thing, Gruenstadt had indeed been signaling the Allies. Fury believed that von Strucker had exterminated the town because of their treachery to the Third Reich. The Howling Commandos attacked. Baron von Strucker and Arnim Zola barely escaped with their lives. Professor Wilhelm Schmidt, one of the scientists who had accompanied the Germans was left behind. He became infected with the last remaining parasitic creature.[46]

Luthor arranged for Fury and his men to be lured into attacking a hard water plant in France. Fury was separated from his men and hunted by the Blitzkrieg Squadron. Fury was chased into a mine field. A mine exploded, severely injuring him. Luthor was certain he was dead but did not want to risk any of his men retrieving the body.[47]

Once Luthor had convinced Hitler that Fury had been killed, he was also able to convince the Fuehrer that the war was all but lost. He began urging him to carry out a limited scorched earth policy of destroying arms and fortifications so that the enemy could not turn them against the Reich. He convinced Hitler that the war was nearly over by revealing the plans of the Red Skull, Arnim Zola, Baron Zemo, and others to flee Germany in its final hours.[48] He also began playing up the fact that the other nations such as the United States and England would not understand the need for the Final Solution. They would treat the Fuehrer and his high command like common criminals. Luthor was, in essence, persuading Hitler to destroy his own military infrastructure which would allow the Allies to win easier. He also was persuading Hitler to take his own life rather than be captured by the Allies. A living Hitler could have become a symbol to rally the unrepentant Germans and so continue the war.

William Luthor may not have known of Hitler’s various plans to avoid death, such as transferring his consciousness to a mechanical brain, having embryos created from his cells to be implanted in women, and planting his own successor in the United States.[49]

William Luthor escaped from Germany as it fell and took up residence in the United States. Re-connecting with the American and South American branches of Scorpia, he spent the next few years re-building Scorpia into a world-wide organization. As part of the restructuring of Scorpia, Luthor took over the organization of the Controllers, which was now in the hands of his brother-in-law Arnold Brown. Arnold Brown and many of his generation of the Controllers were racists and had made alliances with white supremacy groups in the United States and Africa. Luthor let his brother-in-law become the titular head of Scorpia. Arnold Brown molded the public face of Scorpia into an organization with some resemblance to a Ku Klux Klan with advanced technology. Luthor was, however, able to bend Brown’s inclination to use the advance weaponry on the uppity minorities towards the greater goal of the advancement of humanity through conflict. With the Fascist European states defeated, Luthor realized that the conflict between Soviet totalitarianism and Western democracy would the ideological basis for the next major conflict. He devoted Scorpia to the goal of creating the Cold War, believing that an actual conflict between the two superpowers would be of short and deadly duration. The extended undeclared war would be more profitable for Scorpia in the long run, especially if the two superpowers could be convinced to fight proxy battles using other nations as their chess pieces.

Luthor used the resources of the Fraternite Internationale de la Resistance Contre l’Oppression as one means to track down Scorpio agents who had gone underground with the fall of the Fascist states in Europe. FIRCO was run by Ernst Stravo Blofeld, one of Scorpia’s former agents who had splintered away during the war. FIRCO was a front for a criminal organization that Blofeld had formed named the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. SPECTRE was formed along the lines of Scorpia. Luthor intended to watch this organization closely with an eye towards annexing it into Scorpia when the time became right. To set up the take over, he dispatched his daughter Serina to infiltrate FIRCO. William Luthor failed to realize the resentment that his daughter held for him because he had allowed her to spend the war years in prison. He also failed to realize that she was very lonely and longed to have a relationship with a man. Using the name Irma Bunt, she joined FIRCO and became entranced by Ernst Stravo Blofeld. Although she did not betray her origins to Blofeld, mainly out of self preservation, she also resisted her father’s intrigues.

She became romantically involved with Ernst Stravo Blofeld and bore him a daughter named Nena in 1950.[50] Blofeld and Irma Bunt hired a former prostitute named Angelique Calvert to be the girl’s nanny.

In the first few years directly after the Second World War, military production geared down and Scorpia needed an infusion of capital. Luthor had heard of several caches of gold hidden away by the Nazi high command and spent a few years looking for some of them. He heard that the location one such cache was locked away in the memory of a concentration camp victim, one Gabrielle Haller. Although she had not been a conventionally pretty girl she had been used as a prostitute by the officers of the camp. Her sexual exploitation shattered her mind, and a protégé of Dr. Mengele took advantage of her ruined but receptive state to hypnotically implant her mind with the location of the Nazi gold. She retreated from the trauma of the hypnosis into a defensive catatonia. The officers and the doctor who had been entrusted with the location of the gold had been killed when the camp was liberated.[51]

The catatonic Gabrielle Haller had been transported to Palestine after the war. No doubt some humanitarian group felt that she would be safe in the British-held territory. While she was at the sanitarium, a brilliant young doctor named Charles Javier, who had just completed a psychiatric internship, was allowed to use a new form of hypnosis to bring her out of her catatonic state. Charles Javier had recently met a European refugee named Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, who was an orderly at the psychiatric hospital. Dr. Javier’s treatment proved most effective and Gabrielle Haller came out of her catatonic state. She became fast friends with Javier and Lehnsherr.

Although it was not known to the general public, Charles Javier was the nephew of a man reported to be deceased. His uncle’s name was John Wainwright, a biographical novel about his short life by Olaf Stapledon was called Odd John.[52]

Odd John was a sport, a random mutation of humanity. His mutation was a recessive mutation derived from an ancient people in Central Asia; the mutation showed up in infinitesimal numbers throughout the whole of humanity. Odd John had searched desperately for others of his kind in his youth but had only managed to find forty or fifty throughout the entire world.

These mutants, known as Oddian mutants,[53] share many physical characteristics, despite diverse ethnic origins. The shared physical traits include long, lithe limbs; large heads, overly large eyes with odd pupils; protruding brows; sharp, broad noses; large mouths; and long sinewy hands. These traits render them physically repugnant to most of humanity. Additionally they are long lived; many live to be two hundred to four hundred years old, and they have high intelligence and a powerful sexual pheromone that makes them extremely sexually attractive despite their physical appearance. They suffer from various physical deformities and disabilities and are prone to mental disorders yet they also possessed great mental powers.

The repulsive physical traits tend to moderate as an Oddian mutant ages because the traits result from the mutant’s long-gestation period and even longer childhood and adolescence. The physical traits give them a juvenile appearance and so they are taken for children long into the normal period of adulthood.

Gabrielle was also an Oddian mutant, and it was because of her often unconscious sexual charms that she had been forced to become a prostitute for the officers and soldiers of the concentration camp in which she had been imprisoned. Charles Javier had heard of her and from her physical appearance had deduced she was akin to his Uncle. Using his finely honed telepathic skills, he consoled her ego and guided it through the layers of psychic trauma until she rose from her catatonic state. Javier’s delicate telepathic healing was guided by his Uncle John Wainwright. John had learned from Charles about Haller. Odd John had traveled to Israel to see if he could cure her.

Odd John was also pleased to make the acquaintance of Erik Lehnsherr because although Lehnsherr was an entirely different form of mutant from himself, his existence and the existence of other like him proved to Odd John that his kind, homo superior, would eventually hold sway over the planet and become the dominant race of mankind. However their numbers were tiny compared to the majority of mankind and so they needed a long term strategy to gain political and military power in such a manner so as not to arouse fear, hatred, or mistrust. Lehnsherr’s latent hatred towards regular humanity could be useful; Wainwright saw that Lehnsherr could become pawn, patsy, and public face of persecuted mutant kind.

Gabrielle was kidnapped from the hospital. Javier, Lehnsherr and Odd John tracked her kidnappers. Gabrielle had been kidnapped by Baron von Strucker, or at least this was the identity Luthor was then using. Agents of Scorpia in Israel, fomenting Israeli nationalism and also Arab hostility against Palestine had learned of Gabrielle Haller’s miraculous recovery. Knowing that the secret of the gold cache was locked in her mind, William Luthor kidnapped her to make her reveal the location.

Odd John knew that Baron Strucker was really William Luthor. He experienced an odd frission when he saw a face from his memories in the memories of William Luthor. Odd John had been raised by the Wainwrights as their son and until he began reading minds he had believed that he was their flesh and blood. However a stray thought by his mother had led him to investigate further. Odd John was the son of a Thomas Wainwright but not the Thomas Wainwright who raised him. His mother had retained a memory of what the Thomas Wainwright who had fathered John had looked like.

Odd John had searched for records of his birth parents only to discover that they had been killed shortly after his birth. Yet William Luthor had memories of Thomas Wainwright under the name of Paul Luthor.[54] Odd John and the erstwhile Baron von Stucker were half-brothers.

With their combined powers, Odd John and Lehnsherr defeated William Luthor and his Scorpia agents. William Luthor had not allowed his men to violate the helpless Haller so Odd John made them forget about the location of the gold but otherwise let the men go. Lehnsherr had a form of psychokinesis that allowed him to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum. For some reason Lehnsherr thought that his powers were limited to magnetism, although he would occasionally, apparently without knowing it, manipulate another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Odd John was content to leave Lehnsherr ignorant of his own potential.

Odd John took a portion of the gold but left the rest of it with Lehnsherr. Odd John planted the suggestion in Lehnsherr’s mind that he should use his portion of the gold to keep mutant kind safe from humanity in any way necessary. Lehnsherr would become an infamous terrorist under the name of Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. Most people, however, doubted the stories of Lehnsherr being a special kind of human being and thought that his feats of magnetism were either due to some technological device or some type of trickery.

During the 1950’s William Luthor concentrated on expanding the power and influence of Scorpia while heightening tensions between East and West in the Cold War. Russia expanded its influence in Eastern Europe through the Warsaw Pact and in Asia by aiding China. Proxy wars between communism and democracy were fought in Eastern Europe starting with Berlin, in Korea, and Viet Nam. Smaller proxy wars, often instigated as anti-colonial independence movements, sprung up through Africa and the South Pacific. Proxy wars were fought in Latin America under the guise of class struggle.

You will recall that one of William Luthor’s main lieutenants Karabi had been had been disgraced by being captured by the Phantom while posing as Baron Sonjin. However Karabi showed his loyalty by not exposing any of the secrets of Scorpia despite his arrest and imprisonment. His reward when he was released from prison was to be allowed to rejoin Scorpia as part of the Serpent section of its underling organization, Hydra. Ambitious, Karabi soon came to Luthor with a plan to create another semi-autonomous organization that would be indirectly tied to the Scorpia organization. This organization would be created out of the Serpent section of Hydra by taking over an existing organization. This was a small but highly influential Asian organization in the late 1930’s that had formed when the followers of the late Sen Gat [55] had joined up with a small cult of Naga worshipers.

The Nagas were beings associated with Hindu and Buddhist mythology, usually represented as gigantic cobras with several hoods or with a human head and serpent body. In addition to representing fertility, they also symbolized eternity and destruction. The King of the Nagas, Adisesha, was believed to have a thousand heads. Generally Adisesha was worshipped as a Manifestation of Vishhu who spews a venomous fire that destroys all creation at the end of each kalpa. This particular Naga cult, however, associated Adisesha with Siva the Destroyer rather than Vishnu the Infinite. The cult also practiced a form of Thuggism, strangling victims for Kali-Durga who they depicted as being in the form of a King Cobra. They possessed strangling cords made of braided snakeskin and also poisoned victims from afar by means of a blow dart treated with cobra venom. Prior to Karabi’s plan to annex them this cult had been occasionally contracted by were Scorpia to carry out assassinations and terrorist acts.

The cult was already grooming a child that they believed was the incarnation of Siva. The child, Jeffrey Burr had been part of pair of conjoined twins that had been successfully separated. The conjoined twins were the sons of a member of the United States consulate staff stationed in India, Jerome Erskine Burr II. The Kali Yuga cult had stolen Jeffrey from Jermome and Mootama Burr and hidden the child successfully. Karabi determined that the child could not safely be returned to its parents without compromising the organization. Nor could the child be eliminated without raising the ire of the cultists. Karabi therefore continued the child’s indoctrination as the cultists wished.[56]

As Karabi was reorganizing the Kali Yuga cult, William Luthor expanded the activities of Scorpia into South America and the Middle East, establishing identities specific to those regions, in South America he was known as Don Caballero and in the Middle East as Emir Ali Bey.

Arnold Brown ran the American branch of Scorpia under the Hydra label. In the fifties and early sixties Brown acquired adherents due to the racist attitudes that permeated this American branch of Hydra-Scorpia. This was the time when the Civil Rights struggle was at its peak. Brown was also a fascist at heart and so molded the American branch of Hydra-Scorpia to be an odd blend of Klu Klux Klan and Nazi costuming and rituals. It was Brown who added the stiff-arm salute and “Hail Hydra” to the organization’s chant. Brown had also raised his daughter Laura to be a racist and a loyal member of Hydra-Scorpia, and she became a leading member in early 1960.William Luthor did not care about Brown’s politics or methods so long as his organization achieved the goals that Luthor outlined.

In 1959 William Luthor’s son-in-law, Ernst Blofeld made an enemy of the premier British Secret Service agent, James Bond, during the Thunderball incident. Bond kept an eye out for any sign of Blofeld and when Blofeld surfaced in 1961 using the cover of a health spa, Bond infiltrated Blofeld’s operation. Blofeld had planned to use the health spa to turn the patients into sleeper agents of SPECTRE using a powerful method of hypnotism. William Luthor had funneled money into SPECTRE after its virtual destruction in the aftermath of the Thunderball Incident and aided Blofeld in this operation by giving him a serum derived from the Black Lotus.

The first phase of the operation that SPECTRE planned would destroy the poultry and cattle production of Britain.[57] The second phase would be to eliminate various crops and livestock on an international scale. SPECTRE then could manipulate the international commodities markets and also use extortion on a global scale to prevent further incidents of agricultural terrorism. The first test cases in England showed promise and so the second phase of the operation went forward. Although James Bond’s impersonation of Sir Hilary Bray, an expert on heraldry was discovered Bond successfully escaped from Blofeld’s facility and thwarted the fulfillment of the plan in England. Despite this setback Blofeld decided to go forward with the international phase of the plan. To prevent Bond’s interference his fiancée kidnapped by SPECTRE operatives. Bond’s government also commanded him not to interfere with Blofeld’s operation, for fear of reprisal on English agriculture. This is at least was the stated cause, however it seems that Blofeld had struck a deal with certain influential members of the English Parliament to target various rival agricultural nations in return for a free hand. Bond however took a leave of absence from the Secret Service and returned to Blofeld’s sanitarium with an army of men from the Unione Corse, a Corsican crime syndicate of which Bond’s prospective father-in-law was the leader. Blofeld and Irma Bunt escaped but their operation was shattered.

Blofeld took vengeance against Bond by killing Bond’s bride but allowing Bond to live. However this plan of vengeance backfired. Instead of paralyzing Bond with grief the killing of his bride caused Bond to become obsessed with destroying Blofeld and SPECTRE. Because of Bond and the British Secret Service’s crusade against SPECTRE, Blofeld could not re-establish his power base.

In 1960, for a price, William Luthor aided his son-in-law and daughter. William Luthor used his connections with the Yakuza to help establish Blofeld, under the guise of Dr. Shatterhand, on the Japanese island of Kyushu. They established a garden stocked with many varieties of poisonous plants and animals. Blofeld offered his garden as a place for those Japanese who wished to commit suicide in peaceful and comfortable surroundings. To make this more lucrative and still seem legitimate, his agents used a combination of Black Lotus drugs and nihilistic propaganda to deepen the depression or disaffection felt by many people in Japan in this post-war era.[58] The stunning defeat of the Second World War was still fresh in the minds of the Japanese people, many of whom felt betrayed by their loss, by the predominance of Western culture, and by the loss of traditional Japanese culture and values. When a great many people began traveling to Kyushu to commit suicide, the Japanese intelligence service took an interest.

Unable to find Blofeld and depressed over the loss of his wife, James Bond transferred to the diplomatic service. He became acquainted with Tiger Tanaka, the head of Japanese Intelligence. Britain wanted a secret ciphering method that the Japanese had devised called Magic 44. The Japanese agreed to give Britain the ciphering method if James Bond would assassinate Dr. Shatterhand who they felt was a grave danger to Japanese society. Bond and his superiors agreed to the exchange. When Bond learned that Dr. Shatterhand was actually his enemy Blofeld, his mission transformed into an act of vengeance.

In 1961, Bond killed Blofeld and rigged his castle to explode.[59]

Bond left Irma Bunt behind to perish in the blast. She escaped, however, only to be arrested by the Japanese authorities. However despite the Japanese and British authorities trumping up charges against her, she had not really committed any serious crimes in Japan. She was released after two years.

Although in the aftermath of Blofeld’s death Scorpia absorbed most of the remaining SPECTRE organization, one of Blofeld’s lieutenants, a Dr. Amal, seized control of part of SPECTRE and used it as the basis of his own organization. Rather than crush it, William Luthor let it continue, he reasoned that Dr. Amal’s SPECTRE organization could be used to take the blame for some of his Scorpia and SPECTRE operations. Besides there was a slight sentimental reason, Dr. Amal resembled William Luthor so much that he wondered if Dr. Amal was his offspring, especially since Dr. Amal claimed that his mother was a Belgian prostitute.[60]

Shortly after Blofeld was killed and Irma Blunt (Serina Luthor) was imprisoned, one of the first joint Scorpia-SPECTRE operations was thwarted by the costumed vigilante Batman.[61] Luthor’s lieutenant Karabi was in charge of the operation, which was a test run of an operation set up to gauge various governments’ reactions to nuclear blackmail. However the Batman stopped Karabi from setting up the missile launch center and so prevented Karabi from getting to the point where the organization could blackmail any government. Karabi was once again captured but Luthor could not, for the good of the organization, tolerate failure twice and so Karabi was killed before he could go to trial. William Luthor placed an interim person in charge of Karabi’s organization but knew that eventually the child who had been groomed by the cultists would eventually take over this operation.

The astute comic book writers at DC Comics associated the Naga cult with Hydra despite little evidence for such a conclusion and without knowing how closely they had struck. Rather than use the thousand-headed Naga, which the writers believed would obscure to Western readers, they associated the organization with the more well-known serpent, the many headed Hydra from Greek mythology. It is unknown if, when Stan Lee used the name of Hydra for the evil organization fought by Nick Fury, that he was aware of the close connection between this organization fought by Batman and the organization fought by Nick Fury, and the fact that he had stumbled upon the organization’s true name.[62]

Since Marvel Comics had “borrowed” the name of the organization from DC comics, the next time that DC Comics needed to depict the Naga cult they called it Kobra. The members of what Marvel Comics dubbed “The Serpent Society” were also actually members of what DC Comics had called Kobra. The Naga cult’s real name was something like Bringers of the Kali Yuga but for our purposes we will call them Kobra.[63]

William Luthor achieved his goal of obfuscating the real controlling organization of “Kobra” behind layers of organization and secrecy. In much the same way his nephew Alexis Luther would shield his own criminal activities through layers of dummy corporations.

In 1964 Brown’s organization, Hydra-Scorpia, assassinated the Director of CIALD, a government intelligence agency associated with but not under direct control of the CIA or NSA.[64]

As fate or Murphy’s law would have it, the person tapped to become the new head of CIALD was William Luthor’s old World War Two nemesis, Nicholas Fury.[65] Although Brown had his Scorpia agents attempt to assassinate Fury, they failed at every turn. Brown launched an attack on the known headquarters of CIALD but his men were repelled and several Scorpia agents were taken into custody. [66]

Despite not being able to eliminate Fury, Arnold Brown went ahead with plans to launch a betatron bomb. This caught William Luthor off guard since Brown had carried out this part of the operation without Luthor’s permission. Luthor felt that it was too premature to launch the betatron weapon because it could not be duplicated. A different scientific team had created each section and Brown had eliminated each team once the completed weapon was constructed. The betatron was one of several superweapons that Luthor had conceived to check the arms race; this weapon would be so powerful and so unique that it would put an immediate end to the arms race and would make Scorpia the superpower of the world. The Scorpia council would then be able to steer the social evolution and technological progress of mankind through the judicious use of directed conflict.

William Luthor realized after Arnold Brown had launched the Betatron bomb that Brown was truly insane. He intended to unleash the weapon and fill the atmosphere with deadly radiation. Brown believed that those with superior racial stock would survive and perhaps even thrive from the radiation. When CIALD instigated measures to stop the Betatron bomb and bring down Brown and his Hydra organization, William Luthor prevented the main bulk of Scorpia from interfering with the destruction of Brown’s organization.

In the version of this incident that Marvel Comics produced [67], SHIELD joined forces with Stark International to create a counter weapon to the Betatron called the Brainosaur. Hydra agents broke into Tony Stark’s laboratory and captured Nick Fury. The Supreme Hydra attempted to interrogate Fury to learn how to stop the Brainosaur. The Supreme Hydra’s daughter released Fury to stop her father’s mad scheme. Fury and the Supreme Hydra‘s daughter took out the Hydra base.

As Fury and Madame Hydra carried out their attack on the Hydra base, the Brainosaur was launched. It destroyed the Betatron bomb. The Supreme Hydra disrobed in an attempt to escape. Because Brown was a short, scrawny man who used an amplified voice box, padded suit and shoe lifts, other members of Hydra did not believe that he was the Supreme Hydra and killed him.

There are elements of truth in the comic-book version.

The agents of Brown’s Hydra-Scorpia captured Nick Fury, Brown’s daughter aided Fury, the Betatron bomb was destroyed, and Arnold Brown was killed.

CIALD worked in concert with the military to end this crisis. The military had obtained a proto-type satellite killer from Hughes International. This is where the “Tony Stark” connection comes in because “Tony Stark” was Howard Hughes.

Fury was captured or rather allowed himself to be captured; he set himself up as bait hoping to be taken to the Hydra’s headquarters to try to prevent them from releasing the radiation from the Betatron before the satellite killer could be launched and deployed.

Laura Brown, the daughter of Hydra-Scorpia’s leader did release Fury from his imprisonment; she like many others in the Hydra-Scorpia organization was not in favor of actually using the Betatron bomb. Laura Brown also claimed that she had joined the organization in order to sway her father from his chosen criminal career. Fury believed her sincerity. Fury and Laura Brown managed to keep Scorpia occupied until the satellite killer had been deployed and the Betatron bomb was destroyed. A CIALD force then attacked the Hydra-Scorpia headquarters in force. In the ensuing melee, Arnold Brown was shot by two main-branch Scorpia agents. This was not an ironic mistake as depicted in the Marvel version. William Luthor had sent these Scorpia agents with the express purpose of executing Brown for having disobeyed his directives and for imperiling the world. It should be understood despite his many depictions William Luthor’s purpose was not to destroy the world or to enslave mankind but rather to help mankind and civilization to reach their fullest potential, his goals were altruistic even if his methods were ruthless.

Nick Fury allowed Laura Brown to escape. This was to see if she was sincere about leaving Scorpia and if not, to use her as a bird dog to lead CIALD to further Scorpia cells.

With the death of Arnold Brown, William Luthor was forced to come forward and assume the title of Supreme Hydra as well as being the Scorpion of Scorpia. To simplify matters among his followers, he told his people in Scorpia that they had taken over the Hydra organization and they would be using that name from now on. Most of the people in Scorpia became members of Hydra, but Luthor kept a portion of key Scorpia personnel as a separate organization so he would have resources uninfluenced by Hydra personnel.

As William Luthor made preparations to deploy the next super weapon developed by Advanced Idea Mechanics, Nicholas Fury and CIALD became aware of the existence of AIM under Baron Zemo. One of Luthor’s lieutenants in AIM dispatched a Scorpia assault team to kill Nick Fury and Captain America at one of CIALD’s command posts where a captured AIM device as being examined. Fury and Captain America repelled the attack, but Captain America rejected Fury’s offer to place him in the command structure of CIALD.[68]

The Kobra group, under a regent, made a deal with the government of North Viet Nam to provide it with a captured nuclear weapon. North Viet Nam wished to use the nuclear threat to make the South and their American sponsors capitulate. The United States government could not take any sort of official action, including sending in a covert CIALD team. However any civilians who wished to visit North Viet Nam the United States could plausibly deny any connection, so Nick Fury and his two former commando squad members Gabe Jones and Dum Dum Dugan, who were also CIALD operatives, took a leave of absence from CIALD. They assembled their old commando squad and went into North Viet Nam to destroy the nuclear weapon. William Luthor monitored this mission with interest, noting the way in which the United States government handled this crisis by circumventing diplomatic protocol.[69]

As fate would have it an event of mixed blessings for Hydra occurred, one that would further foment chaos and keep CIALD occupied but would also cause Luthor many problems in the long run. Luthor’s protégé and sometime ally, The Red Skull was found alive.

The revived Red Skull was perhaps even more of a menace than he had been during World War II. His hatred for most of humanity had intensified as had his dedication to the principles of racial purity and perfection of the human form. This latter was a reaction to his own self-loathing at the hideous creature he had become.

In the waning days of World War II, the Red Skull arranged for top-level government officials, scientists, and military men and their families to leave the Third Reich and set up residence in a place called Exile Island. The location of Exile Island was unknown except to the Red Skull and the crew of the submarine that transported the exiles. The Red Skull knew that Hitler’s Third Reich was doomed and planned to set up a Fourth Reich after he had manipulated the victorious Western powers into war with Russia.

However as the Red Skull was planning on departing, Captain America discovered his secret Bunker outside of Berlin. They fought each other in hand-to-hand combat. Although the Red Skull was a superlative fighter with enhanced strength, in the end he was not a match for Captain America. He triggered his failsafe devices, which were remote controlled gas canisters containing a combination of mustard gas and red death dust. As the chamber filled with gas, a barrage of Allied bombs fell on the bunker, burying the Red Skull and the chamber with the deadly gas.[70]

The Red Skull choked and finally passed out from lack of oxygen. He did not die, but went into hibernation. He believed that the gas had preserved him; he further believed that the combination of the gas and death dust had affected him. Although he had made himself immune to the effects of the death dust, he believed that in combination with the gas that the dust had partially affected him. Although it had not killed him, it had caused his head to take on the aspect of a skull. The gas was probably not responsible for either of these occurrences, but rather “Johann Schmidt’s” heritage. He had probably inherited these traits from his father, Erik the Phantom, as latent traits. His near-death state had triggered his longevity trait, which in turn had also triggered the less desirable trait of the death’s-head appearance.

A team of Advance Idea Mechanics scientists who were excavating the recently discovered bunker, believing that it might contain some of the Red Skull’s advanced weapons found and revived the Red Skull. Having found the Red Skull in a hibernating state, AIM received orders from William Luthor to offer the Red Skull a position in the organization. Luthor was careful to make certain that the Skull did not learn that “Baron Strucker” was still alive and in charge of Scorpia and ultimately in charge of AIM.

Luthor did make certain that the Skull knew that his great nemesis Captain America was still alive. Luthor hoped that the Skull would keep Captain America occupied so that he could not aid Fury in his vendetta against Hydra.

The Skull kept Captain America occupied for a short time, but then he succumbed to time lag or future-shock psychosis or a toxic shock due to a delayed chemical reaction to the gas/dust combination. The Skull began hallucinating, believing that he had possession of something he called the Cosmic Cube that gave him unlimited power. This is clearly a wish-fulfillment fantasy of his megalomania. For security purposes AIM was forced to put the Skull into a secure facility until he recovered from his episode of madness.[71]

Fortunately the scientists at AIM had another weapon to keep Nick Fury, Captain America, and CIALD off balance. Scientists at CIALD had gotten possession of some of the extraterrestrial plants that had landed in Santa Mira, California, in 1952. The plants produced large pods inside of which germinated humanoid beings. The humanoid beings were exact duplicates of the persons closest in proximity to the flowering plant. The duplicates felt a biological imperative to destroy the people that they replicated. Although the various “body snatcher” novel and films that were based on this incident explained the process as the duplicate or pod person somehow draining the life from the original, it appears that the pod caused the original to fall into a comatose state while the doppelganger grew and somehow absorbed the memories and personality of the original.

What the government did not want the general public to know, feeling that the idea of plant-produced duplicates would be horrific enough, was that the plants possessed a three-stage growth process. They spread by a two-step sporing process. The first spore sent out seeds that would take root in opportune soil and grow into a plant resembling a bean plant. The second stage sent out what could be called scouting spores. These spores were pollen sized and spread by floating on the air until they found a suitable host. Once one of the scouting spores had found a suitable host it would begin to grow. It grew on the host body absorbing cellular information from DNA and RNA; at the same time it produced a poison that caused lethargy in its host. The scouting spore began to broadcast its gathered cellular information through pheromone discharges that the chemical receptors on the parent plant began to collect. Once the parent plant had the complete cellular make up of the human host it would begin to grow a pod. The scouting spore that was attached to the human host continued to produce the poison, eventually causing the death of the human host. Once the parent plant had produced a pod, it then sent out seed spores, starting the process over again. The process of how the plants duplicated human beings absorbing their information to create a duplicate is akin to how the Changlings/Founders also absorb information to effect their changes.[72]

The scientists at CIALD had learned how to block the effects of the poison [73] and to make a parent plant create more than one duplicate from its pods. They also learned to control certain growth portions of the duplicates, limiting the size of the brains. They called these duplicates life model decoys. The life model decoys were physically identical to the people who had provided the original model, and the duplicates were used as decoys and targets of opportunity. CIALD and the government felt no remorse at destroying potentially sentient beings since they were after all only plants.

A double agent at CIALD provided AIM with a sample of the extraterrestrial pod plants. The scientists at AIM were able to examine in greater detail the genetic make up of the plant and discovered that it was a strange sort of hybrid between a green bean plant and some unknown protoplasmic organism. By examining several strains of green bean plant, they were able to trace this particular strain to Southern California. AIM teams combed the California countryside and through more luck than skill found a charred remnant of a piece of tissue bearing a cellular structure similar to the pod plant. Carefully examining the charred piece of tissue they discovered a few still viable cells trapped in a prison of charcoal.

There had been rumors that Superman had destroyed an odd creature that could absorb his powers back in the early fifties.[74]

After much experimentation they produced an organism. The organism grew into a humanoid. Despite its base shape, the organism was protoplasmic to a great extent and could duplicate almost any organism to which it had been exposed; AIM scientists called it an “adaptoid.” Tiny electrodes had been embedded into the only cells that did not shift when it changed form. The AIM scientists believed these were it’s brain. Through pain management they caused it to retain a humanoid shape and also enabled them to control it. They sent it after CIALD. It first duplicated Captain America but was nearly defeated by an ex-circus performer who tried to use his strongman skills and his juggling skills to become a costumed vigilante [75].

Its cover blown, the creature became a being compromising a mélange of skills and body parts derived from the various members of CIALD it had touched. Although it had the knowledge of the skills and the musculature to use them, it did not have the training or experience to do so effectively and was defeated by members of CIALD. In a single combat with Captain America it threw Captain America off a building under construction. Captain America used his great agility to turn his uncontrolled fall into a dive into New York harbor. Although he was stunned, he recovered quickly. The adaptoid realized that AIM no longer controlled it that it had somehow broken free of their control. Rather than continue to battle against Captain America, the shape-shifting creature took itself far from AIM’s area of influence so it could live as a free being.[76]

CIALD kept up the pressure on Hydra by having Nick Fury lead the campaign against the main body of Hydra and Captain America to lead the campaign against AIM, although William Luthor as the Baron von Strucker conceded that it was possible that CIALD was unaware that Hydra and AIM were two sections of the same organization.

One of Scorpia’s affiliated organizations had a higher rate of success in carrying out its missions and projects than AIM or Hydra, yet it too was under constant attack by the United States and its allies. William Luthor had learned shortly after the end of World War Two that the Red Skull had created a place named Exile Island where various Nazi leaders and scientists had been sequestered at the end of the war, ostensibly to rescue them but in reality to place them in a single location under the Red Skull’s command so he could direct the creation of the Fourth Reich. William Luthor learned the location of Exile Island from one of the members of the submarine crew who had joined Scorpia. Since the Red Skull had apparently died in the war, Scorpia, in the person of Baron von Strucker, made overtures to the people on Exile Island. Although many remained loyal to the Skull, others left the island and joined Scorpia, forming an organization that they believed would bring about the destruction of the Western powers and the rebirth of the German Reich. Although based somewhat on the lines of Odessa, they also recruited non-Germans who shared their racial and political goals.

The organization was called in German Krieg Anlage-Ober Streik, which translates in English to War Plan-Super Strike. Most national governments referred to the terrorist organization by its initials KAOS. Despite its grandiose name, KAOS was almost entirely a tool of Scorpia. KAOS did much of the scut work for Scorpia: courier services, mundane research through low-level infiltration of various facilities in the United States and the world, testing some of the more bizarre plans of Luthor and his strategists, testing and training new agents; it also served as the dumping ground for agents who were still useful but whose covers had been compromised or who were past their prime. The public Director of KAOS was a dwarf named Macklin Loveless, who claimed to be descended from two of the most brilliant and diabolical arch criminals ever to have lived, John Macklin and Miguelito Loveless, yet there are many indications he was simply the illegitimate offspring of Cadwiller Olden.[77] To compensate for his stature, Macklin Loveless called himself Mr. Big. His second in command was a former Nazi named Ludwig von Siegfried who made the odd claim to be the grandson of Professor James Moriarty.[78]

Because KAOS was seen primarily as a lower level criminal/terrorist organization, the United States government assigned one of its smaller agencies to target KAOS. This organization had originally been formed as a joint operation between the OSS and FBI to see if there were any connections between crime and communist activity. The Combined Operation Network: Trafficking, Racketeering, Organized Labor (CONTROL) was also a place where effective but not superlative agents were placed.[79]

One of CIALD’s top operatives infiltrated AIM. But this operation was compromised because the operative in question was Captain America’s love interest, Agent 13 [80]. When she failed to make her forty-eight-hour check in, Captain America disobeyed Nick Fury and went after her. Although Rogers rescued the girl, who was merely laying low in order not to compromise her cover, and gathered some important intelligence as well as destroying the AIM facility, he set back the operation several months to a year.[81]

Chagrined at this, Steve Rogers resigned his commission with CIALD and publicly retired from the role of Captain America. Once he retired, however, Steve Rogers was considered fair game by his enemies. Hydra took a contract with one of its affiliated criminal organizations known as the Syndicate. The Syndicate organization is perhaps best known from its frequent confrontations with the CIALD branch known as the Impossible Missions Force.

Rogers was nearly assassinated; the Syndicate assassins took out a LMD of Rogers instead.[82]

After a few weeks of this Fury asked Captain America to reconsider his decision to retire. Captain America went after the Syndicate, only to discover that someone claiming to be Baron Zemo was running this section of the Syndicate.[83]

Baron Zemo had been one of Hitler’s top military advisors. Zemo had been involved in the V-2 rocket program and had been about to launch a V-2 rocket targeting Washington DC rocket at the end of the war. Captain America and his boy partner Bucky had tried to stop the launch of the rocket, leaving Barnes severely wounded.[84] Captain America stopped the rocket from reaching America but in doing so landed in the Arctic where he was frozen in a glacier for nearly twenty years.[85]

William Luthor learned that Laura Brown had informed CIALD about the next super weapon developed by AIM, the sonic detonator.[86] This device was developed to trigger nuclear weapon stockpiles utilizing a sonic frequency that would artificially start a chain reaction in the plutonium or uranium warheads. William Luthor learned that CIALD research laboratories were testing a version of the sonic detonator so that they could come up with effective counter measures. He felt that it was vital to discover how much CIALD knew so he decided to bring Fury to him. He could then also eliminate one of his greatest enemies.

Using his Don Caballero guise, an international millionaire and jet setter from Latin America, William Luthor invited the newly appointed Director of CIALD to a party in Egypt, to be held in the Egyptian ruins of Karnopolis. Luthor understood that there was a high likelihood that CIALD knew that the Don Caballero identity was a Hydra agent but also knew that Fury probably could not resist the opportunity to try to beat Hydra at its own game.

Fury parachuted into the site where the party was supposed to be held. Upon landing Fury was immediately attacked by Hydra agents in exoskeletons. Although he put up a tremendous fight and managed to disable two of the Hydra agents using CIALD gadgets, he soon succumbed to a topical paralytic applied to his skin via a liquid spray.

Still in his Don Caballero disguise, William Luthor interrogated Fury about the sonic detonator. He also questioned him about the various gadgets built into his clothing. Don Caballero explained to Fury that Hydra intended to use the sonic detonator to ignite all the nuclear stockpiles on the Earth. When the fall out had cleared, Hydra would emerge from its shelters to take command of all mankind.

William Luthor had Fury stripped of his clothing and tied to a firing post to be executed. Fury broke free of the firing post, fought his way through the Hydra army to the Imperial Hydra’s plane, which stood ready to take off. Despite a heavy offense, the Hydra forces were unable to capture Fury. He stole the Imperial Hydra’s plane and escaped.

Fury’s valiant escape was a ruse on Hydra’s part. Hydra wanted him to take the plane and had been firing blanks and throwing low charge grenades at Fury. The plane’s jets were rigged with a sonic detonator that would detonate nuclear weapons as the plane passed over them. The plane was fixed on a set auto pilot course with Fury unable to steer the plane once it had reached a certain speed. The plane was also rigged so that Fury could not escape unless he wished to jump from a speeding jet without a parachute. Fury would be the cause of nuclear weapons detonating in France, England, and the United States. This would demonstrate to the world Hydra’s ability to use the sonic detonator and also its willingness to do so.[87]

CIALD had made preparations to mobilize if the sonic detonator was detected. Their monitors detected the particular sonic waves of the detonator coming from a private jet. Jets from NATO were scrambled to intercept it. Fury opened the door and jumped over the Mediterranean. The plane was shot down. Using his paratrooper training, he slowed his fall as best as he could but still fell fast and hit the water hard; most men would have been killed, but due to the infinity formula in Fury’s system his injuries were minor. A British submarine patrolling the Mediterranean picked up Fury.

Once the NATO planes had downed the Hydra plane, they flew to the Hydra outpost at Karnopolis and bombed it. However Hydra had already abandoned it. William Luthor had also abandoned the Don Caballero identity and began using the identity of Emir Ali Bey. Hydra had taken up temporary headquarters in an area outside of Cairo, Egypt, where they held Laura Brown captive. Fury and the British tracked Hydra by means of a homing device Fury had planted on the Imperial Hyrdra’s robes. Fury and a team of British commandos under NATO authority stormed the Hydra redoubt. Laura Brown was rescued, but the Imperial Hydra had escaped.[88] After the destruction of his Egyptian outpost William Luthor abandoned the Emir Ali Bey identity

It was decided to take Laura Brown to a safe house in the Southwest region of the United States. Hydra became aware of the route that Laura Brown and her escorts were traveling and tried to abduct her by running the car off of the road. Gabe Jones and Jasper Sitwell defended her well enough to keep the Hydra agents at bay.

Nick Fury and his companion Dum Dum Dugan took a CIALD strike force to rescue Laura Brown and the two agents under siege by Hydra agents. Hydra had a tank, which was put out of commission by one of the agents who had accompanied Fury, Agent Bronson. Fury was impressed with his bravery and gave him a post at the central command on the Helio-Carrier [89] guarding Laura Brown.

As depicted in the comics a few days after Agent Bronson took up his post on the Helio-Carrier a killer robot programmed to kill Fury invaded CIALD headquarters, Laura Brown had been severely injured trying to destroy the main computer at CIALD headquarters. CIALD’s computers divulged the information that Laura Brown was the actual head of Hydra [90]. A Hydra assassination squad gained access to CIALD headquarters. One of CIALD’s top scientists was replaced with one of Hydra’s agents, who planted a powerful bomb in the device the scientist was purportedly putting together. And three of Fury’s companions were turned into programmed assassins whose target was Nick Fury.[91]

Agent Bronson was William Luthor in disguise and he used his access to CIALD to try and sabotage it from within and destroy the agency. Instead of creating a fictitious identity Luthor took the identity of a real person, of a captured CIALD agent named Bronson. Luthor used a device called the epiderm-mask to duplicate Bronson’s face. This device seems to have made masks akin to the masks utilized by the Impossible Missions Force.[92]

Luthor as Bronson admitted an assassin wearing powered armor who then attacked Fury. This was the “robot” depicted in Strange Tales 154, (March 1967). Luthor reprogrammed CIALD’s computers with the information that Laura Brown was the actual head of Hydra, damaged most of the mainframe, and made it appear as though Laura Brown had been severely injured trying to destroy the computer

He also gave access to CIALD headquarters to a Hydra assassination squad, which was also defeated by Fury. Luthor replaced one of CIALD’s top scientists with one of his own men, who planted a powerful bomb in the device that the CIALD scientist was putting together. Luthor used powerful hypnosis to turn three of Fury’s companions into programmed assassins [93]

Despite his combined use of hypnosis and Black Lotus juice Luthor’s efforts to have Fury’s most loyal companions kill him failed since even this usually effective programming technique could not overcome their loyalty to him. Fury’s friends froze and lapsed into unconsciousness rather than kill him. Their ability to overcome the hypnosis may have also been due to the rather quick and sloppy way William Luthor had to utilize the combination of Black lotus juice and hypnosis; had it occurred over a period of several days with reinforcement of the commands, the outcome may have been different. The fake scientist and his bomb, which could have destroyed The CIALD Helio-Carrier, was stopped in the nick of time.[94]

Laura Brown lay in a coma and seemed on the verge of dying. The medical center had been destroyed in the blast that had destroyed most of the computer. She needed to be flown to medical facilities in a super sonic jet. Agent Bronson volunteered, and since Fury had been confined to his quarters on orders of the President, Bronson was allowed to make the flight.

“Agent Bronson” flew directly to Scorpia Island. This was an artificial island floating off the coast of the original Scorpia Island. William Luthor placed Laura Brown in the hands of his medical cadre. She was not ill but rather had been injected with the death sleep.[95]

Nick Fury had hidden aboard the plane carrying Laura Brown. He kept to the shadows, eliminating Hydra agents as silently as he could while seeking Laura Brown. “Agent Bronson” dressed in the robes of the Imperial Hydra and sent a broadcast to the world that unless the governments of the world united under the rule of Hydra, a bomb would release a deadly disease into the atmosphere, infecting the earth at large. Luthor broadcast his demands on the public airwaves because he wanted public pressure to build on world leaders. Most people however believed the immediate government response that this broadcast was the result of a disturbed man who had figured out how to circumvent broadcasts but otherwise posed no real threat.

Nick Fury was captured and William Luthor sentenced him to death. Before Fury’s execution was carried out, Luthor revealed his “true” identity, that the head of Hydra was none other than Fury’s old enemy Baron von Strucker.[96]

Seconds before being killed Fury escaped from the platform where he had been secured. In the comics he did so by using a pill that conferred invisibility for one minute. In real life, he was strapped naked to the platform and had been searched for weapons hidden weapons however the search was not as thorough as it could have been. Fury was able to slide his hand over to his privates where a monofilament wire had been hidden among his pubic hair. He used the wire to surreptitiously saw the strap confining his hands. Once his hands were free he quickly used the wire more effectively and cut himself loose in a matter of seconds.

Fury wreaked havoc in Hydra headquarters and managed to delay the launch sequence for the rocket containing the deadly virus. Fury and von Strucker confronted each other in single combat; however, William Luthor had an ace up his sleeve, a device called the Satan Claw, a glove that gave off a powerful electrical discharge. Despite the advantage of the Satan Claw, Luthor and Fury were evenly matched, Fury’s stamina and speed were that of a younger man courtesy of the Infinity Formula. Fury eventually disarmed Luthor by pulling the glove off with an improvised lasso. Once his advantage was gone, Luthor commanded his Hydra legions to shoot Fury.

Fury eluded the Hydra soldiers and ran through the Scorpia complex. He returned to confront von Strucker once again. Fury and von Strucker were fighting in hand-to-hand combat when Hydra soldiers burst in on them. The soldiers were confused because there were two Baron von Strucker’s fighting against each other. One of the von Strucker’s flipped the other one into the arms of the waiting soldiers and told them to pull the epiderm-mask off of him. A Baron von Strucker mask was pulled off to reveal Nick Fury. Nick Fury ran away from the weapons barrage but was electrocuted when he stumbled against a generator.

Baron von Strucker told his followers he wished to watch the bomb explode from his private jet and took Laura Brown to witness the culmination of her life’s work.

After von Strucker and Laura Brown took off, the sealed island shook with explosions as the rocket failed to take off. The death spore bomb was detonated inside the sealed dome of Scorpia Island, wiping out the elite command of Hydra.

This Baron von Strucker revealed to Laura Brown that he was really a disguised Nick Fury. He had rendered the real Baron von Strucker unconscious but knew he would not be able to leave the island even with von Strucker as a hostage. So he had gone to extra length of creating a three false faces in the epiderm-mask machine, two von Strucker masks and one Nick Fury mask. He had placed the Nick Fury mask over von Strucker and then a von Strucker mask over the Nick Fury mask. Fury had donned a von Strucker mask knowing that the Hydra agents would be unable to discern which one was the true von Strucker.[97]

In January, 1967, William Luthor died a rather ignoble death; ignoble for one who despite the methods he might have used, had the best interests of mankind at heart.

Yet his legacy continued, and this death was not the end of his life, in a manner of speaking.

The remaining sections of Scorpia and Hydra splintered into many organizations. AIM seceded from Scorpia and became its own organization. In 1967 Serina Luthor/Irma Bunt seized control of many remaining factions of SPECTRE and Scorpia. She borrowed and altered Laura Brown’s old title and became known as Madame Scorpia to demonstrate that she ruled all the factions of Spectre, Scorpia, and Hydra, although various accounts depicted her as either Madame Spectra or Madame Hydra depending on the source material of the depiction.[98]

She was based in New York and Europe although a rival Scorpia group run by Count Otto Vermis also operated in Europe, as did the scatter-shot organization run by Dr. Amal, although by this time he was using the English translation of his name which was Dr. Evil.[99]

An assassin named Scorpio attempted to infiltrate CIALD several times in 1968 with the express purpose of killing Nick Fury.[100] From the name one would have assumed that Scorpio was an agent of Scorpia, and in a sense that is correct, although he was in fact the agent of a splinter group of Scorpia called the Zodiac Cartel. While the sponsors of Scorpio would have liked to control CIALD, their primary motivation in killing or trying to kill Nick Fury was ritualistic.[101]

Despite three attempts, however, Scorpio failed to kill Nick Fury.

In 1968 the daughter of Serina Luthor/Irma Bunt and Ernst Blofeld was 18 and ready to become the public face of Hydra/Scorpia/SPECTRE. Because of her facial paralysis, Serina Luthor had never felt comfortable in the role as spokeswoman, even when she had done so for her father as the Mask of Death. Even after her facial paralysis had been partially cured by surgery, she still felt uncomfortable as the spokesperson of the group. She preferred to work as the power behind the public face.

Nena Blofeld felt that the Blofeld name was still too notorious, so she began using the Luthor name. While this name was also notorious, there were enough Luthors running around that it would the name would divert people from her true ancestry. She also knew that her mother would be pleased, as if she were honoring William Luthor. Nena dressed in a black bodysuit with the scorpion tail symbol created by her grandfather. She had a cat of nine tails whip made, the steel barbs shaped like scorpion tails.[102]

Her first public appearance as the new Madame Scorpia was to enact a small plan designed to introduce the world to the new head of Hydra/Scorpia/SPECTRE. Generally the connection between these three organizations has been unknown and so the organization that Nena led was referred to as Hydra in the press therefore to simplify matters we will hold to that label and call refer to the combined organization of Hydra/Scorpia/SPECTRE as Hydra unless there is a specific need to highlight one of the sections, either under its name or its connection to Scorpia. When we refer to Scorpia we are referring to the organization as a whole that includes Hydra, SPECTRE, Scorpia, Kobra, KAOS, and many other organizations as well. The label Scorpia also includes splinter factions from the original Scorpia organization that broke all ties with Hydra once Baron von Strucker had died and no longer used that name. It is admittedly confusing, so if it helps matter to think of them all as Hydra, please do.

However to build up Hydra’s reputation after it’s reputation suffered due to a series of thwarted operations, the plan was to contaminate the water supply of New York City with a hallucinogenic drug.[103] The chaos that would ensue would tie up the police and fire departments; Hydra could then loot and destroy to utmost advantage. The looting would fill the coffers of Hydra and the wanton destruction would demonstrate Hydra’s power.

However Captain America had just taken on Rick Jones as a junior partner. They were on a training mission when they stumbled upon the Hydra forces in the act of contaminating the water supply. Only a few barrels of the psychedelic drug had been dumped into sewage treatment tank that had been re-routed to empty into the reservoir. The drug was in a very diluted form and so posed no threat to the city of New York when Captain America and Rick Jones broke up the operation.[104]

Nena was understandably upset when Captain America ruined her debut. She used all the Hydra resources in New York to hunt down and kill Captain America. Captain America’s true identity as Steve Rogers was publicly known and had been since Batman and Robin discovered his cryogenically frozen body. She used this information to hound and hunt down Captain America. Her Hydra agents were apparently successful in this for Captain America fell under a hail of bullets and fell into New York Harbor. His body was not recovered, however, and a bullet-perforated epiderm mask proved that the Steve Rogers identity was a fiction.[105]

Although Madame Scorpia did not possess the body of Captain America to display as a symbol of her organization’s power, she thought of a way to get revenge on CIALD, the organization that had killed her grandfather. As one of the many interfering costumed vigilantes, Captain America often worked for CIALD; he had also been friends with Nick Fury and his cronies during WWII. It was an cinch that many costumed vigilantes (although quite likely out of costume) would show up at the funeral of Captain America, as would Nick Fury and many CIALD members.

Since the body of Captain America was not found after a week, it was decided by his friends to hold a memorial service as he had wished, a small private affair.[106] Although CIALD agents thoroughly examined the funeral parlor and gravesite, Hydra agents had booby-trapped both sites. An anesthetic gas hidden in the coffin of Captain America rendered everyone in the room unconscious. Hydra agents then loaded the unconscious people into coffins, stacking them two to three in a coffin. The coffins were loaded into hearses and transported to a cemetery. This was not the cemetery where Captain America was supposed to be buried but one owned by Imperial Industries, one of Hydra’s legitimate businesses.

While it would have been a coup to have immediately killed Nick Fury and other known and unknown CIALD agents, Nena was more ambitious than that. She wanted to interrogate the prisoners and discover every bit of information they could about CIALD, its agents and operatives. She then planned to bury them alive in the coffins that transported them. Nena personally supervised the operation.

However Captain America and Rick Jones arrived on the scene as the caskets were being removed from the hearses. Rick Jones jumped into the fray to break up the operation. Jones initially took on the Hydra agents single handedly but was joined by Captain America. They fought the Hydra agents until a combined CIALD/New York Police squadron arrived. Nena saw her men being defeated by Captain America and arrested CIALD and the NYPD. Rather than see her empire crumble she made a strategic retreat and took refuge in a mausoleum where some weapons were cached. She fired a heat-seeking rocket at Captain America, but he deflected it with his shield and it came back at her. She slammed the heavy bronze doors shut but the deadly force of the rocket was not stopped. The mausoleum was blown up and Madame Scorpia was believed to be dead.[107]

Actually this mausoleum and many others in this cemetery contained elevators leading to an underground complex. This is where Nena had planned to interrogate the prisoners she had taken

In late 1968, at the request of her mother Serina Luthor/Irma Blunt, Nena’s first order of business was revenge. After several attempts to destroy both CIALD and Nick Fury had failed, she contracted outside of Hydra and hired a very expensive assassin code named Bullseye. It was critical that this occurred at a specific time because they wanted Fury's death to coincide with Hydra's all-out assault on CIALD with Hydra agents attacking all of the known CIALD bases.

So Bullseye tailed Fury all day until the Hydra agents were in position and ready for the attack. Nick Fury was at a concert in Central Park with Laura Brown. As soon as he was given the order, he pulled out his special rifle and shot Fury in the back of the head. Fury died enroute to the hospital. For many years his closest friends doubted that his death was real since his body had been cremated almost immediately upon arriving at the hospital, supposedly due to a clerical error. There were persistent rumors of sightings of him after his supposed death.

After the assassination of Fury however Nena changed her mind about the full out assault, suddenly uneasy about Fury’s death. Although she did not understand why, she felt that perhaps Fury had out maneuvered Hydra and was expecting the assassination and would use the simultaneous Hydra assault as a means of capturing all of Hydra’s operatives. She called a halt and a withdrawal. Hydra therefore gave no aid to Bullseye when CIALD agents swarmed the area near Fury’s assassination immediately after the shooting. Bullseye fired at the CIALD agents who were chasing him and succeeded in taking out quite a few. The assassin was hunted down by Fury’s old comrades, Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones and shot to death. Dugan and Jones had been with Fury in the Howling Commandos.

Nena soon realized that she had wasted a great opportunity because Fury seemed to be truly dead. She then planned vengeance on the man who had killed her father to satisfy both her mother and herself.

James Bond was assigned to investigate the possibility of sabotage on the airship Golden Ghost. A well known witch and clairvoyant named Bridget Penwyn had publicly predicted disaster for the airship and the death of James Bond. Penwyn was an agent of Hydra. The British Secret Service was assigned to investigate the possibility of sabotage, especially since James Bond had been mentioned by name.

Once Bond was on board the airship was taken over by Hydra agents using the name SPECTRE with a masked Nena leading the takeover. She held Bond hostage, his ransom was to be information from MI6. Although she did not expect MI6 to accede to the ransom demand, she thought it was worth a gamble. She intended to kill Bond either way. However with the aid of a stewardess, Bond escaped, killed Nena’s squad leader Bruhl, and freed the passengers. [108]

Her organization was in shambles and so after this string of failures Nena chose to take a leave of absence from running Hydra, feeling that she was not mature enough for the task. This caused a serious rift between her and her mother.[109]

Nena Luthor attended various universities in Europe, picking up degrees in art history, design, and physics. While she was attending school, Hydra/Scorpia/SPECTRE fragmented into several autonomous factions. One of these factions of Hydra was taken over by her cousin, Wilson Fisk.[110]

While Richard Fisk was attending college in Europe he read a newspaper account about his father, Wilson Fisk. Fisk was nicknamed the Kingpin of Crime in New York. Richard faked his own death and then launched a campaign against his father that was motivated both by revenge as well as a desire to get his father out of the crime business. Calling himself the Schemer and wearing a disguise, Richard Fisk attempted to bring down the Kingpin’s criminal empire, aided by the Spider-Man, although Spider-Man believed that he was intervening in a looming gang war. Eventually when the Kingpin’s organization was in shambles, The Schemer revealed to Wilson Fisk that he was none other than his beloved son, Richard. The shock of this was so great to Fisk that he fell into a catatonic state.[111]

Richard Fisk and his mother tried every possible treatment to cure Wilson Fisk’s condition. His father’s condition made Richard Fisk feel incredibly guilty. As a means of retribution he entered an existing criminal enterprise that he thought was part of the Mafia. He believed that if he could become a success, his father could forgive him. The organization was actually part of Hydra. Richard Fisk’s organizational skills soon brought him to the attention of the Red Skull, William Luthor’s old nemesis/protégé Johann Schmidt, who had seized control of the Las Vegas faction of Hydra, although he hid behind the scenes. He believed that young Fisk would make a good figurehead for the Las Vegas Hydra operation and possibly be a useful asset as well. However young Fisk had other ideas once he was offered leadership of the Hydra organization. Richard used a special form of shock treatment on his father, using a device he had devised himself.[112]

In 1971, once Wilson Fisk had recovered from the shock treatment and regained his senses, Richard, through third-party contacts handed over leadership of the Las Vega Hydra section to his father.

In the Marvel Comic’s version of this event Captain American and the elite all woman squadron called Femme Force were deliberately lured to Las Vegas with the intention of killing them enroute, so that Hydra would deliver a devastating blow to the United States morale which would lead to the destruction of SHIELD as an organization. The Supreme Hydra spouts the usual rhetoric of wanting to destroy the United States and so it is quite a shock when the Supreme Hydra is revealed to be Richard Fisk and the man behind him to be his father. Wilson Fisk was unaware however that the Supreme Hydra was his son. The Las Vegas based Hydra is run out of the office and holdings of reclusive billionaire Harold Howard front organization. Later on it is revealed that both the Fisks had been used as unwitting fronts by the person who really controlled the Las Vegas based Hydra, The Red Skull. He had wished to lure Captain America to Las Vegas so that he could unleash his do weapon of mass destruction the Fifth Sleeper. This was a giant humanoid robot that generated and released an infinite about of poison gas. The Red Skull would poison the populous of Las Vegas working it way through the American heartland to Washington. The path would then be open for The Red Skull’s Fourth Reich to take over America. Upon learning that they had been duped by the Nazi, the Fisks allied themselves with Captain America and SHIELD to stop the Red Skull and his Sleeper Robot.[113]

Yet there are a few problems with this particular sequence of events. The Fisks had never previously exhibited such anti-American sentiments nor did they ever do so again. Nor did they ever have true political ambitions except to control politicians and so control the forces of law enforcement. They were criminals at their core not political terrorists. While it is true Richard Fisk could have been spouting the political line of Hydra as a ruse to get the members of Hydra to follow his commands but why would he and Wilson Fisk would want to lure Captain America and Shield to Vegas. How would they, that is their criminal empire, benefit from such a direct clash with the United States Government. The answer is that there would not be any benefit to their criminal enterprises and would in fact be detrimental, as increased government activities would curtail their profits.

Therefore the Fisks role in this incident is much less than depicted in the Marvel Comics version.

It was most probably the Red Skull who was giving the anti-American speeches and who had lured Captain America and CIALD to Las Vegas. He undoubtedly wanted Captain America captured alive so that he could torture Captain America by having the Sleeper Robot kill the population of Las Vegas while Captain America watched.

The Fisks had used the organizational structure of Hydra was a means to coerce various crime families to cooperate with them, using the well known nihilistic terrorist organization as muscle against the Mob. Since they were actually disconnected from the political foundation of the organization, seeing it as merely an ends to a means, it was probably quite easy for the Red Skull to work around them within the structure of the organization. The Fisks unwittingly provided with personnel, funds and a front organization, that is, the Fisks with Hydra aid, had seized the Las Vegas holdings of billionaire Howard Hughes and convinced everyone that Hughes was back in Las Vegas and running things.[114]

In the Marvel Comics version of events Harold Howard was kidnapped by the Kingpin and after the ruse had been discovered and the Red Skull had been defeated, Harold Howard returned to his suite, all of this having occurred off camera. Hughes was not actually kidnapped by the Kingpin or his men, rather like Clifford Irving, Hydra merely used the absence to seize power in a bold manner. Hughes holdings by this time were so vast in such a disarray that not even he knew the extent and breadth of his organization. He was also so deeply entrenched in mental illness, drug use and his secret hobby by this time his business ventures lurched along under their own inertia. The use of the reclusive Howard Hughes’ holdings as a front organization also provides a clue that the Red Skull’s Sleeper duping of the Fisks in order to destroy Las Vegas with the Sleeper device was not the only plot with he was involved, however due to legal and licensing considerations, Marvel could not even mention the other plan.

In the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, Ernst Stravo Blofeld uses the holdings and personnel of reclusive Las Vegas based billionaire Willard Whyte to finance and build a diamond powered super laser mounted on a satellite. With this device he intends to hold the world for ransom. The film was released in December, 1971 which is also the issue date for Captain America 144 that began this story arc. Although the comics were written and published prior to the release of the film the similarity in dates and events is probably not a coincidence.

Ernst Stravo Blofeld was killed by James Bond in 1963 as noted earlier so the Blofeld running this operation was not Ernst Stravo Blofeld. Nor was it Irma Blunt or Nena Blofeld. This was an operation run by the section of Spectre taken over by Blofeld’s self proclaimed protégé, Dr. Evil. This plan was a particular brain child of this and he had set a very exact time table for it to transpire. Dr. Evil had himself cryogenically frozen in 1969 and placed in earth orbit with the belief that he would be retrieved and defrosted in time to see this plan carried out. However there were problems with the retrieval of the capsule and Dr. Evil stayed in orbit for thirty years.

Being the good administrator that he was when all the segments for Dr. Evil's diamond plan came to fruition, Number Two went ahead and let the plan be carried out. In a uncharacteristic display of fiendish humor, Number Two chose as the Blofeld figurehead of this operation, a brainwashed Dikko Henderson. Henderson was a friend of Bond's who had seemingly been stabbed to death when Bond was investigating the return of Blofeld to Japan.[115] Henderson had actually been stabbed in the back in a non-fatal area with a blade covered with a paralytic compound. Number Two had interrogated Henderson for information. Dr. Evil desired to turn him into a SPECTRE agent through brainwashing. Once Henderson had been turned into “Blofeld”, Number Two also had a series of doubles of Henderson made through plastic surgery. This turned out to be a fly in the ointment however.

The Red Skull infiltrated Dr. Evil’s organization and began to circumvent the plan to his own agenda. Dr. Evil had taken over the diamond smuggling operations begun by the Spang brothers which had been expanded by surviving members of the Spangled Mob.[116] Since monetary wealth was not the Red Skull’s primary objective, he had his agents close this smuggling pipeline by killing all the members of the smuggling ring. He also arranged to have one of his henchmen become one of the Dikko Henderson-Blofeld duplicates. Because of the massive amounts of diamonds being smuggled out of South Africa and the sudden deaths of people associated with some of the diamond mines, British Intelligence was asked to look into the case. Ironically one of the “duplicates” killed during the course of James Bond’s investigation into this case was actually Dikko Henderson.

Number Two, Dr. Evil’s right hand man was unaware that anything was wrong with the LSD plan or that his brainwashed dupe had been turned by another evil madman until the satellite actually began destroying things such as a missile silo in Kansas, a Soviet Submarine patrolling the Northern Sea and a Communist Chinese rocket base and then targeted Washington, D.C. This had not been Dr. Evil’s plan at all. The Lucy satellite was supposed to show the United States, England, France and the Soviet Union that Dr. Evil meant business by targeting national monuments and carving the likeness of his face on them, Mount Rushmore, Picadilly Circle, the Eiffel Tower and Red Square. If necessary they would then move to military targets. Dr. Evil would have been furious had he known that Number Two had allowed someone to subvert the LSD operation and so Number Two was relieved when the CIA and British Intelligence stopped the turncoat Henderson-Blofeld.

The Red Skull’s involvement in this was not known by Number Two and was not known to the general public or even to the Intelligence community for months after the incident. When British Intelligence and the CIA had invaded the oil drilling platform that Henderson-Blofeld was using as his satellite command center, Henderson-Blofeld, or rather the Red Skull’s minion who had been transformed into a duplicate Henderson-Blofeld, tried to escape in a small miniature submarine being lowered by crane. James Bond taken over the crane and used the submarine as a wrecking ball to destroy the computer control room. “Blofeld” was founded dead his body a broken mass but his face was set in a horrified rictus. It was only after a thorough autopsy was performed to see if the actual person could be identified that it was learned that “Blofeld” had died from an infusion of the Red Skull’s death dust. The death dust had apparently been expelled from the console of the miniature submarine when engines were started. The Red Skull did not want to leave behind any witnesses to his involvement so this “Blofeld” had to die.

The Red Skull’s plan to hit the United States with a two fold punch, one the Sleeper [117] in Las Vegas which would tie up all activity in the Las Vegas area, hopefully kill Captain America and most of the CIALD organization. It would also strike fear and terror in the heartland of America. The nerve gas attack would also provide cover for the satellite operation, no one would think that the heart of that attack was based inside the kill zone of the Sleeper. However the double edged plan fell apart because both operations came under attack. Although the Red Skull believed that this was a coordinated attack by the CIA, British Intelligence and CIALD it was not. It was only after the fact that the CIA and CIALD became aware that they were operating in the same vicinity at the same time.

Due to the diligent efforts of British Intelligence and the CIA the Red Skull’s “Blofeld” was forced to abandon the command post outside of Las Vegas and flee to a back up command post on an oil rig based in Baja California. Yet this flight was in vain for the LSD project was prevented from achieving its goal which was to incinerate Washington, D.C and London England.

The Las Vegas Sleeper operation failed because of the Fisks. They were unaware that the Red Skull had lured Captain America and CIALD to Las Vegas just in time for Las Vegas to be turned into death zone. The Fisks were informed by their sources that Captain America and a CIALD task force was winging their way to Las Vegas to destroy the Hydra organization based there. They sent an assault team to sabotage the plane, to make it look like an accident and prevent the CIALD force from reaching Las Vegas and buy them time to either relocate, go underground or disassociate themselves from Hydra.[118]

During the course of the attack on the CIALD airplane Sharon Carter was shot. Once the Hydra forces had been defeated, Sharon was rushed to the hospital. Captain America went after Hydra with a vengeance because of Sharon Carter’s injury. Richard Fisk thought he could contain Captain America and the CIALD force by kidnapping Sharon Carter and luring Captain America to a Hydra owned business and capturing him. Captain America seemingly took the bait but once Captain America was inside the facility, CIALD agents attacked the facilty. In the ensuing melee Richard Fisk was nearly captured.

Sharon Carter’s injuries had been a ruse designed to lure Hydra into attacking the weakest member of CIALD.[119]

Upon seeing the defeat of the Hydra forces and near capture of the Supremel Hydra, Wilson Fisk was going to destroy the facility by remote control to remove all traces between him and Hydra but his wife stayed his hand. The delay allowed him to see the unmasking of the Supreme Hydra as his son Richard. Richard escaped from the fighting and fled the scene. He retreated to the one of suites owned by Howard Hughes in one of Hughes hotels. Wilson Fisk was furious at seeing his son because Richard had stupidly led Captain America and the CIALD squadron directly to Fisk and so uncovered their use of Hughes’ corporate empire as a cover.

A few hours before James Bond had discovered that Blofeld was using the Hughes corporate empire as a cover for his insidious plan.

The Red Skull was forced to personally intervene in order what he could salvage out of the collapse of his brilliant two pronged attack on the United States.

As Captain America was confronting the Fisks, The Red Skull appeared or at least a televised projection of him. He told the Fisks that the had used them as dupes to provide personnel, financial resources and a cover for his activities as he built the Sleeper. The Red Skull told Captain America that if Captain America met the Sleeper at the city outskirts of Las Vegas and surrendered to the Red Skull, then Las Vegas would be spared, if not Las Vegas and then every city on a path to Washington DC would be destroyed.

Captain America discovered that the United States Army and Air Force were currently dealing with an even greater threat and could not spare any personnel in the area to stop the Sleeper.[120]

Captain America went to meet the Sleeper, although he realized that the Red Skull had no intention of honoring the bargain. The Fisks rounded up as the few members of Hydra who remained loyal to them and also rounded up as much Mob muscle as they could muster in an attempt to stop the Sleeper.

The Sleeper was a tank the size of a semi.[121] Heavily armored it opened a door for Captain America who met it in the desert outside of Las Vegas. Captain America had hoped for this contingency, knowing that like all megalomaniac’s the Red Skull needed someone to whom he could boast.

Captain America was put under heavy guard and taken before the Red Skull who proclaimed his intention to destroy Las Vegas and have Captain America witness it, before his own death. The combined CIALD and Mob forces used all the armaments at its disposal and created impromptu blockades by using all manner of vehicles to form barriers to slow down or stop the Sleeper tank. Captain America used the distraction of the Mob and CIALD attack to wreak havoc inside the Sleeper. When the control panel was destroyed by Captain America’s shield, the Red Skull used an ejection seat to escape from the Sleeper. Captain America was able to stop some fanatical members of the Red Skull’s entourage from releasing the deadly nerve gas by hand.

During the attack on the Sleeper, Richard Fisk was injured when the car he was in was crushed by the Sleeper’s treads. Richard Fisk suffered a severe brain injury. Wilson Fisk and his wife searched the world for a cure for his condition.

In 1973, the Kobra organization, acting entirely on its own without any instructions from the Scorpia Central Council decided to hasten the process of the Kali Yuga by destroying San Francisco. Possibly the Kobra organization believed that Scorpia/Hydra had broken up into such fragmented factions that there no longer was a guiding council. Atlhough in essence this was true there was still a ruling central council led by Serina. However it seems that their reasons for the Their reasons for choosing this city are unclear; it may have had something to do with the conjunction of lines of naga force or ley lines, or personal or political reasons known only to Kobra. To destroy San Francisco Kobra planned to use a device called the heliotron, in reality this was the diamond satellite designed by Dr. Evil to use in his Operation LSD, which plan had been subverted by the Red Skull as discussed previously. Despite the failure of the plan to be initialized the satellite was still orbiting the Earth. Somehow Kobra had gained the codes necessary to activate the satellite. Kobra’s plan to incinerate San Francisco was defeated by Jonny Double, a private eye, Randu Singh a Sikh warrior, and Ross Emerson, a professor of physics.[122]

Kobra’s planned action brought renewed attention to it and to its associated organizations. The fragmented factions of Scorpia no longer had a central command that successfully obliterated most traces of their actions, research facilities, and agents. Instead the various Scorpia factions, often working against one another, carelessly left evidence that was easily discovered by the authorities. As evidence was uncovered arrests were made. The various cells of Scorpia began disappearing with an alarming speed. Each arrest made it the more likely that somehow Hydra could be connected to Serina Luthor and Nena Calvert.

Nena Calvert left school citing health reasons when a Hydra agent who had known her personally was arrested. Through intermediaries she had the captured Hydra Agent to terminated as a precautionary measure. For reasons of self-preservation as well as to replenish the fortune that had diminished with the confiscation of various Scorpia holdings, Nena Calvert took charge of various factions of Scorpia in 1974. Blaming Kobra for most of the destruction of the Scorpia cells that had occurred in the past year, Nena took personal vengeance on it. She “rescued” the captured Lord Naga as he was enroute to trial. She shot and killed him and took over personal leadership of the Naga cult, backed by Hydra soldiers.[123]

The first action of the reformed Scorpia/Kobra was to kidnap the president of the petroleum conglomerate called Roxxon in Marvel comics [124] and referred to as Petrox in at least one motion picture [125]. They believed that his company would pay a great amount to have him released unharmed.

Hugh Jones, the President of “Roxxon,” was kidnapped outside of a movie theatre. The kidnapping did not go as smoothly as planned, however, since one of the other patrons waiting to get inside the theatre was Steven Rogers. Rogers had recently given up his Captain America role because of the Watergate scandal. However this did not stop him from trying to stop the kidnapping of Hugh Jones.[126] The kidnappers escaped with Jones despite Steve Rogers efforts.

There were rumors that “Roxxon” had in its possession an artifact predating known history.[127] It was not generally known at the time that the petroleum conglomerate in question was a criminal organization using the façade of a legitimate business as a cover. Although “Roxxon” was owned and operated by Lexcorp, the conglomerate had been infiltrated and was secretly run by The Nine through proxies. This was one of the first steps that the Nine began to make to acquire and control the vast fortunes of Lexcorp, culminating in their control of Alexis Luther.[128] The president of the conglomerate did indeed possess the fabled artifact, the Cobra Crown. Although the artifact was very powerful and could be a great weapon, the Nine had learned through a tragic experience that the Crown was not a reliable tool, since the person who wore it became possessed by one of the Great Old Ones [129]

Hugh Jones, the president of “Roxxon,” tried to dissuade Madame Scorpia from taking the Cobra Crown, but his protestation and refusal to aid them only made them blow the safe containing the artifact. Once the artifact was possessed and worn by Nena, it began to control her. Instead of holding Jones for ransom, Nena was seized by the desire to take him to one of “Roxxon’s” South Pacific oil platforms. This was near the location where Nena could use the Cobra Crown to raise the sunken continent of Lemura. Even in this bizarre notion, the entity that controlled Nena, and it is not certain if this entity was Tsathooggua or Nyarlathotep, hid from Nena the true purpose for which she was using the Cobra Crown. Her true purpose was not the impossible task of raising a long shattered and broken continent but rather to free the Lord of R’lyeh from his eons of imprisonment. [130]

Fortunately Steven Rogers, who had been trailing them since their escape at the cinema, stopped them. He had hidden aboard the plane that took them to the oil platform, waiting to see what exactly they were planning to do. Once it was apparent that they did not plan to sabotage the oil rig or even have that many weapons with them, which he thought odd since this was purportedly a Hydra operation, he decided to stop whatever it was they were doing and apprehend them.

Rogers stopped the arcane ceremony, but Nena and one of her companions escaped on a “Roxxon” company helicopter reaching Guam before becoming so low on fuel that they had to abandon the helicopter. In Guam they stole a plane and headed to the United States, believing that Hugh Jones would return there. Nena was determined to kidnap him again because she hated not achieving her goals. There may have been another factor determining her monomaniacal desire to get Jones, since the Crown was still controlling her to a certain extent. “Roxxon” Oil needed to be punished for having kept the Crown locked away and also for being among those who kept the Great Old Ones locked away while still using power and influence gained through objects associated with the Great Old Ones.

Rogers believed that it was also a distinct possibility that Hydra would try to kidnap Jones again and so informed the police. Nena and her Kobra companion became involved in a gun battle with the police and took refuge in an abandoned building. Nena began consulting the Cobra Crown to determine her actions. The Kobra member found this too much for even his belief system and tried to escape. Nena shot him down. She also gunned down three police officers who stormed the building. Rogers entered the building just as Nena set it afire. Rogers rescued the shot Naga cultist but was forced to leave when the building became fully engulfed in flames. Madame Scorpia was believed to have perished in the flames as the building collapsed.

Nena was buried in the rubble from the burning building as was the Cobra Crown however the Cobra Crown was buried under enough rubble that its control over her ceased.[131]

She escaped from the rubble of the burning building by opening a large drain and following it to the sewer. Nena realized that without the proper resources that she could not adequately rebuild the fragmented Scorpia into a viable organization; the factions were too independent. She returned to Europe to attend university and finish her degrees. She used her influence to get the various Scorpia factions to fight against one another in the hopes that they would destroy one another. She also re-established contacts with the some of the original organizations that had comprised Hydra, including some of the Yakuza crime groups.[132] The core members of Scorpia also maintained relations with the Yakuza despite the fragmentation of the main body of Scorpia

To this end she sponsored Silvio Manfredi, a Mafia leader sometimes known as “Silvermane” for his gray locks, to take over the New York Hydra faction in late 1974, hoping that he would wipe out all the opposing factions. Nena’s representative stated that their goal was to make the newer version of Hydra less sexist and ideological than the original and to run it like a business. Manfredi was asked to become the Imperial Hydra and he accepted. Manfredi kept his connection with Hydra secret from the Mafia and intended eventually to use Hydra's power to crush his Mafia rivals.

Manfredi quickly built his Hydra group into a large well-organized and well-equipped fighting force. He brought his son, Joseph Manfredi, another Mafia member, into Hydra as one of his principal aides. Manfredi, however, was ultimately out of his depth in running Hydra and was easily defeated by CIALD under director Bruce Wayne. The Hydra faction deposed Manfredi but, because of his Mafia connections, did not assassinate him. Manfredi returned to running his Mafia family and Joseph returned with him.[133]

Shortly after receiving her degree, Nena Calvert used one of her grandfather’s old schemes to try to blackmail the United Nations or at least the United States into giving her blackmail money. She needed the money due to Scorpia’s near-bankruptcy. She created a hypno beam from plans developed from her grandfather. The key ingredient of this beam that William Luthor had lacked was a piece of the element known as cavorite. Cavorite, discovered by Professor Selwyn Cavor makes objects opaque to gravity and prevents objects from gravitating towards each other. Making the element into a paint allowed him to create a vessel that carried Cavor to the moon.[134]

There is a very limited supply of Cavorite in the world, all of it deriving from the fragments of a spacecraft that crashed near Egypt thousands of years before. Although cavorite was activated by and fueled by solar radiation to interact with electromagnetic forces to negate gravity, this was not its only quality. Later tests demonstrated that the substance, like some forms of Thyophite, was a psycho-reactive agent.[135] Its interface with electromagnetic forces could be controlled by thought when a person became attuned to the cavorite.

William Luthor’s hypno-beam was designed to utilize the psycho-reactive properties of cavorite and its ability to interface the electromagnetic spectrum by creating a sort of mental radio broadcast on such a strong signal that it would overwhelm the thought processes of anyone exposed to it, in essence making them mental thralls of the broadcaster.[136]

Once the hypno-beam was completed and the cavorite [137] used to fuel it, Nena, as Madame Scorpia, decided to test it on her and her grandfather’s greatest enemies, the agency known as CIALD. This was more than mere revenge, however. Rumor had it that CIALD had direct emergency communication with the President and most of the cabinet and CIALD that could commandeer the emergency broadcast system, thus giving Nena access to use her weapon on a nation-wide basis. As related earlier there was a very limited supply of Cavorite in the world, the largest source of Cavorite on Earth was very conveniently adorning the hull of CIALD helio-carrier. Nena planned to use the psycho-reactive properties of Cavorite tied into the broadcast system to take over America.

There was an ancient power crystal that had been part of helm of the crashlanded Thangarian ship, it had been one of several crystals that interfaced with the Nth metal drive. The ring had found its way into antiquities shop in Tokyo owned a man named Lu-Shi. Lu-Shi and his father were friends of noted archeologists Henry Jones jr. and Carter Hall and so recognized the ring as being from the reign of Pharoh Khufu. He sent the ring to his father in New York who ran an import-export business. One of Lu-shi’s employees routinely sold information to the Silver Samura’s Yakuza branch. Nena recognized the ring as being one described in ancient Hydra and Scorpia texts.

The Silver Samurai discovered in short order that J. B. Lu-Shi [138] had never received the ring that the delivery service had accidentally sent it to John Belushi, one of the stars of the Saturday Night Live. The Silver Samurai invaded the Saturday Night Live studio just as the show was about to go live. Fortunately for the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, Peter Parker was in the audience. He saved the life of the cast members however Silver Samurai escaped with the ring.[139]

Nena and her Yakuza companion, the Silver Samurai managed get inside a CIALD outpost. The Silver Samurai had an electric sword that could kill with a touch or cut through metal. Once in the CIALD outpost, they hypnotized Clay Quartermain, one of the top agents of CIALD, who was manning this outpost. To Nena’s fury, they discovered that they could not access the communications system that connected to the Presidential staff or to the Emergency Broadcast system from that location. They had to be inside the CIALD Helio-Carrier to do that. Before they did, however, Quartermain had to contact his superior and inform them that he was going to visit the CIALD Helio-Carrier.[140]

Using Clay Quartermain as their entrance key, Nena and the Yakuza warrior entered the CIALD Helio-Carrier and begin the process of hypnotizing and controlling CIALD agents. Unbeknown to Nena the CIALD had been placed under a high security alert because Quartermain’s facial expression had triggered the suspicions of his superior. Quatermain and his captors were allowed inside the headquarters but were not allowed access to anything of real importance; all security systems based on physical traits such as retinal, fingerprints etc were deactivated so that hostages could not be forced to give the invaders access to any vital systems. Because of the redundant codes and countersigns needed to access the high security facilities, Nena and her companion did not get much accomplished before the Director of CIALD Bruce Wayne arrived.

Nena had foreseen this possibility and had kidnapped and tortured the CIALD agent code named Black Widow, a former Soviet agent named Natashia Romanov.[141] The Black Widow had refused to talk but the electro-shock had left her an amnesiac. She had filled in the void of her memory with a cover identity, Nancy Rushman and had been in this persona when she encountered Spider-Man. Since they had previously worked together Spider-Man recognized her, although “Nancy Rushman” was reluctant to believe she was the Black Widow, even when a CIALD team tried to retrieve her. Through a misunderstanding, Spider-Man believed that the CIALD team was trying to kill her and fought against the CIALD team. Both Spider-Man and the Black Widow were rendered unconscious by tranquilizer darts. Spider-Man trailed her to a CIALD holding facility where she was being treated for her amnesia in the facility’s medical ward by a Doctor Ames. However Nena used the communication terminal in Dr. Ames to hypno-control Dr. Ames and ordered him to kill her. Natashia’s sense of self-preservation brought her training to the fore and she defeated the Doctor and was escaping from the facility when Spider-Man reached it. Spider-Man took the still exhausted and confused Natashia to his apartment. They were soon confronted by Director Wayne, who had used a tracking device.

He had realized that something was hinky on the Helio-carrier and asked for their help since he was not certain who in CIALD he could trust. Director Wayne told them of his suspicion that someone had invaded CIALD and was trying to take it over. While Director Wayne flew past the Helio-carrier, Spider-Man and the Black Widow jumped out of Wayne’s coptor to land on the exterior of the Helio-carrier. Wayne then went directly into the Helio-carrier’s loading bay and then boldly walked into CIALD as if nothing were wrong. He was attacked by hypnotized CIALD agents, who were aided by CIALD’s Suicide Squad member Boomerang. Boomerang was a hitman from Australia who used gimmicked boomerangs as his calling card.[142] Captured, he had been offered a deal to work with the Suicide Squad for an eventual commutation of sentence. Madame Scorpia had offered him a better deal, or so he thought.

Black Widow led Spider-Man into CIALD headquarters using secret passages.

The man known as Shang-Chi assisted Director Wayne in his fight against the Hydra controlled CIALD agents. Shang-Chi had been trailing the Silver Samurai on a matter of honor and followed him into the CIALD stronghold. Although Director Wayne and Shang-Chi managed to fight off the hypnotized CIALD agents with ease, Boomerang proved to be much harder. His explosive boomerangs were quite deadly; one of these knocked out Shang-Chi.

Spider-Man and the Black Widow were also captured by a group of mind controlled CIALD agents personally led by Nena shortly after they entered the headquarters.

They were brought before Nena who wanted them eliminated immediately. Boomerang also brought Shang-Chi before her and the Silver Samurai insisted that Shang-Chi also be executed. However Shang-Chi broke loose and attacked the CIALD agents and he was joined in this fight by Boomerang. The Boomerang that had assisted Shang-Chi was the Director of CIALD. When it appeared as though Wayne and Shang-Chi had been overcome by Boomerang’s weapon, the Director had taken out the Boomerang and donned an epiderm-mask of the Boomerang’s likeness

Silver Samurai stunned Spider-Man with his electric sword and threw him out of one of the Helio-Carrier’s portholes. Natashia jumped after him, snaring Spider-Man snaring him with a grappling line and snaring the porthole with another grappling hook. The Silver Samurai and Nena ran to the bridge of the Helio-carrier and had Quartermain seal off the bridge. Having failed to achieve her goal of hyno-controlling Congress and the United States, Nena decided to use the Helio-Carrier as a weapon and crash into the join session of Congress while the President was making his State of the Union speech.

Director Wayne of CIALD, The Black Widow, Spider-Man and Shang-Chi gained access to the bridge and stopped Nena from crashing the Helio-Carrier into the Capital building and killing President Carter and Congress. Nena made her escape but was confronted by the Black Widow in a fight on top of the exterior of the Helio-Carrier. Nena was apparently knocked off the Helio-carrier and fell to her death. However she had a black parachute that went unnoticed when it opened up.

Nena escaped and returned to Europe to lick her wounds and plan vengeance. While in France she met Markus Bismaquer, an older gentleman who shared some of her interests in art and some of her avowed political views. Markus Bismaquer had not served in the United State military because he was considered undesirable because of his political affiliations. Previous to the war and even a year into the war, Markus Bismaquer had been a member of a German Bund.[143] While others were fighting World War Two, he had profited from it and made his first million before the age of twenty. He used these profits to open the first nation-wide chain of ice cream parlors and packaged ice cream factories. He became very wealthy from this and became even wealthier when he sold the business in the late 50’s. [144]

Nena did not meet Markus Bismaquer by accident; she had thoroughly researched prospective husbands until she found one that was suitable for her needs. Markus Bismaquer was an obsessive man with a streak of ruthlessness, yet he was ultimately weak enough that she could control him. Bismaquer was compulsively obsessed by two desires, his sexual desires and his desire for his art collection. He would often use ruthless tactics to acquire new pieces, both artistic and sexual. By playing up to both of his main compulsions, Nena was able to snare him. They met when he consulted her as an art expert. Nena had, through intermediaries arranged for Bismaquer to buy a forged piece of art and then dropped hints that it was forged and that she would be the best qualified person to determine if it were a forgery. Their initial meeting led to Markus being sexually obsessed with her. He agreed to marriage so that he could have her.

Nena knew that once Markus quenched his lust for her, his fascination with her would soon diminish and he would move onto other conquests, she used this as a pretext to have sex with him as infrequently as possible. By providing Markus with new sexual conquests and steering his obsession about art Nena was able to dominate and control him, gaining full control over his financial empire. With the Bismaquer fortune she was able to locate old loyal members of Hydra, Scorpia, SPECTRE and some qualified new employees.

The fascination she had for snakes ever since wearing the Cobra Crown manifested in an assassination weapon that she sponsored and tested, using members of the Naga cult to create and implement the weapon. This was a remote-controlled snake that could deliver not only a venomous bite but also an electrical bite and would exude gas upon being terminated. She thought it fitting to test it on her father’s greatest enemy. A package was sent to Miss Moneypenny at her home when it became known that James Bond a few others would be dining there. The serpent attacked the person who opened the package who was one of Moneypenny’s other guests. He died from a high voltage bite. Bond destroyed the snake by lopping off its head with a carving knife and he received a large electrical shock. However the poison gas did not activate as planned.

Bond was given convalesce leave. He took a vacation on the Cornish coast. Several of the remote-controlled snakes were released on the village. They caused some problems but overall the snakes were not any more effective as an assassination tool than a regular snake.[145]

In late 1980 Nena set her sites on acquiring the deadly Doomcrack weapon, a focused beam of sonic energy that could vibrate and crack open tanks, submarines, battleships and even nuclear power plants. Her plans solidified when she learned that Commander James Bond, looking very well preserved and none the worse for wear after the snake incident, was involved with this weapon, or at least involved with the representative of the inventor of the weapon.

James Bond escorted Liliane Miklos, the inventor’s representative, from Cairo to London. Scorpia/SPECTRE ambushed them. The weapon was captured by SPECTRE, and they tried to frame Bond by making it appear as though he had allowed it fall into their hands when they revealed that Liliane Miklos was a double agent. Bond was savvy enough to have placed a tracking device inside the Doomcrack weapon and used that to find the weapon. SPECTRE had put the weapon on board a submarine, planning to test the weapon on United States vessels. Bond boarded the submarine and allowed himself to be captured by SPECTRE. He met the masked Madame Spectra in person and was a bit surprised, because he had assumed Madame Spectra was Irma Bunt not a young and physically attractive woman, from what he could tell in the black body suit. This did not deter Bond from escaping and then using the Doomcrack weapon to destroy the submarine. He believed that Madame Spectra died in the submarine’s break up.[146]

Nena narrowly escaped death and vowed to bring Britain to its knees and to give Commander James Bond a long lingering death. Nena set into motion a plan that would make Markus Bismaquer the prime suspect in the disappearance of several U.S. federal agents. Agents from the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had disappeared enroute to the Bismaquer estate in Amarillo, Texas. The Central Intelligence Agency sent a female agent to investigate, and she turned up dead in a swamp outside of Baton Rouge, a note signed by Blofeld was in the lining of the girl’s clothing.

The location in Baton Rouge was the site of the new SPECTRE headquarters, inside a dilapidated mansion. Giant pythons, another example of Nena’s fascination with snakes, guarded the outside of the mansion.

Nena also planned to start Operation Hound at the same time that she was killing Bond. Operation Hound was a commission from the Soviets to give them a lead in the race to build a particle beam weapon. They needed to cripple America’s presence in space, and to do this the Soviet’s wanted control of America’s killer satellites. The codes and schematics for these satellites were at NORAD. NORAD was one of the largest consumers of Bismaquer Ice Cream. Nena planned to have the next shipment of the ice cream doped with a narcotic that would make anyone who ate it amenable to suggestion.[147] SPECTRE could then get these codes without too much bloodshed. About ten percent would be immune to the ice cream or choose not to eat it. To gain access to the base they planned to have one of their people impersonate a four-star general.

Nena successfully manipulated Bond when he arrived at the ranch and had him believing that she was an abused, lonely wife. It took very little effort to seduce him. However Bond was not easily lulled into a false sense of security and continued his mission clandestinely, While exploring the grounds, Bond overheard Markus Bismaquer’s right-hand man explain the plan to a group of people. Bond assumed that Bismaquer would pretend to be the four-star general.

However Nena’s plan was that Bond would be drugged and hypnotized into believing he was an American general named James Bunker. This plan also nearly succeeded but Bond came to his senses enroute to NORAD. Once in NORAD he played along with the SPECTRE agents until he could secure the computer tapes and printouts. Bond remembered Nena giving him pills and believed that she had given him something to counter-act what Bismaquer had done to him.

Nena had gone to NORAD to oversee the operation. She was furious when Bond turned the tables on them again. Seeing the situation, she ran to Bond and claimed that she had followed him in an attempt to stop Markus Bismaquer’s plan. She believed that Markus had fled to a safe house in Baton Rouge; in her private helicopter, she flew Bond there. Markus however was not in residence and Nena convinced Bond to quell her shattered nerves by sleeping with her.

Bond awoke in the night to see Nena Bismaquer shoot her sniveling husband. It had been Markus Bismaquer who had given Bond the counteragent that undid his drugged hypnotic state and it had been Nena who had caused Bond to be drugged. After disposing of Markus, Nena admitted she was disappointed that Bond had seen her murder Bismaquer since she had wanted to destroy Bond slowly. Nena revealed that she was Nena Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE. She shot at him but missed. He hit her in the chest with a heavy wooden chair. Nena was propelled backwards and crashed through a window. She fell near the den of the giant pythons and they wrapped themselves about her, crushing her to death.[148]

Scorpia/SPECTRE did not dissolve upon Nena’s death however but was taken over by a former protégé and lover of Nena’s, Tamil Rahani. Rahani attempted to again the access code that would place American and Britain on a high alert status, activating America's vast nuclear defenses. As in Nena’s previous plan, Rahani planned to lure Bond in their clutches, use him, disgrace him, and kill him. Once again however Bond triumphed over SPECTRE.[149]

A year later Rahani discovered that he was dying of spinal cancer. He decided to use his wealth to finally destroy Scorpia/SPECTRE’s greatest enemy and put a ten million dollar bounty on James Bond’s head, open to anyone who could kill him. Despite the great odds, Bond survived “Project Head Hunt” and got his final revenge on Rahani.[150]

When Bruce Wayne became Director of CIALD in 1968 the use of LMDs had stopped because he disapproved of the ethics of using living beings who might have be sentient as clay pigeons. After Wayne disappeared in 1982, newly appointed Director Admiral Don Winslow was convinced by several affiliated agencies that the LMDs were not sentient and that if they could be perfected no human beings would ever have to fight and die in a war ever again. LMD research began once again on a limited basis. One of the scientists went beyond creating duplicates of already existing persons and used the pod plants in concert with a plant from South America that acted as a genetic virus,[151] (allowing several traits from various people and from various other species to be combined into a new LMD. He was attempting to replicate comic book superheroes through genesplicing.[152]

One of the first LMDs the scientist first created was a LMD of Baron von Strucker from DNA samples CIALD had in storage. To the LMD of Strucker, he added DNA from Nick Fury, the Hate-Monger (a clone of Hitler), and several others. Although LMD was predominately William Luthor (von Strucker) the other genes did have an influence on his behavior. Once the LMD was conscious and aware it sneaked into a laboratory and synthesized some Black Lotus juice from chemicals. He put the project scientists under his control. The research project, controlled by a re-born William Luthor, became his new power base.

Using his access to the memories of Fury and others, and by questioning the project scientists, the reborn William Luthor learned all that had happened in the world since his death in 1967. Learning of the death of Nick Fury in 1969, coupled with Fury’s memories and thought processes, he thought there was something odd about Fury’s death. He learned about his grand-daughter’s forays against CIALD and all of the subsequent successes and failures of various other organizations that went against CIALD. He learned the organizational structure of CIALD and then began to implement his great plan, in which he could reshape the world and in the process get revenge on his two greatest enemies, Don Winslow and Nick Fury.

It should be noted that this reborn William Luthor, while having much of the memories and thought processes of the original was a duplicate that was also influenced by the DNA/RNA introduced into his genetic code. William Luthor had been a radical social Darwinist who believed that conflict was the best method of making humankind evolve to its utmost. The new-born William Luthor retained this philosophy but he was also influenced by the Hate-Monger’s extreme racist philosophies. From this combination a new and deadly philosophy emerged and the new William Luthor believed that LMD’s were the highest form of evolution created to replace mankind.

William Luthor’s plan was to take over CIALD with LMD duplicates, then replace the United States government with his LMDS. He could then use the resources of the United States to exterminate mankind. Realizing that his earlier plans had failed because of impatience, he worked slowly and gradually began replacing core CIALD members with duplicates. He also amused himself by creating several copies of the original William Luthor and altering them in some fashion, he even created a pair of twins based on the original William Luthor, although with significant differences; He also made one of the twins into a female. He also mixed in genetic material from Captain America and spliced in the DNA of electric eels so that they would be able to generate electricity. This was only a partial success; through some process he did not understand the twins had to join hands so that organs inside their hand palms could make contact and initialize their electrical generating capability. Their bodies also only stored charges for five bolts and each bolt fatigued them as energy from their bodies was depleted. After five bolts had been expended they were completely exhausted.

A problem arose in implementing the plans of the reborn William Luthor, or—as he began to modestly style himself—the Creator. The LMD’s had extremely short life spans, after five years they began to undergo a rapid deterioration, a fate from which the Creator was spared. He realized that this was because of the infinity formula from Nick Fury in his DNA.[153] While another duplicate could be grown from a LMD’s pod plants, this secondary copy had physical and mental deficiencies and deteriorated more rapidly.[154]

Therefore to save the entire plan, he had to move on Fury while the plan was still in its delicate stages. He dispatched several of his trusted duplicate agents under the reborn Nena Luthor LMD, who once again took up the mantle of Madame Scorpia, to capture Nick Fury.

Although the world at large believed that Nick Fury had been killed in 1969, it had been an LMD killed by the assassin Bullseye. Nick Fury had discovered the true identity of the assassin known as Scorpio and had left CIALD to pursue him. Ostensibly, Fury had spent twenty years tracking down the Zodiac cartel and finally brought it down. He had discovered that the original members of the Zodiac Cartel had been replaced by LMDs. This discovery had caused him to make inquiries about CIALD, believing something had gone awry in this organization.[155]

Nick Fury’s investigation into CIALD at the same time that the Creator had decided to find and capture him was either a great coincidence or a deliberate orchestration of events on the Nine’s part.

Nick Fury and a few of his loyal friends began attacking CIALD installations, making it seem as though Fury had gone rogue. The Creator used this to his advantage to brand Fury a traitor.

Forced to abandon his plan to gradually replace world political leaders with LMDs, the Creator decided to put into action one of the plans he had previously used to blackmail the world several years before. He would release a virulent plague that would wipe out humanity. He and all the extant LMDs gathered in a Scorpia redoubt in the Himalayas, a training facility Scorpia had used in affiliation with one or two of the criminal lamaseries. The Creator had captured as many CIALD agents could found and had taken them to the Himalaya, planning on making LMDs of them and then disposing of the original, as was standard procedure. Among the personnel captured was Admiral Don Winslow.

Nena and her men had captured Fury and several of his companions, although it is unclear if they had been captured or allowed themselves to be captured. Probably the latter considering what later ensued. Nena became very attracted to one of Fury’s companions named Pierce. Pierce used this attraction to turn Nena from aiding in her grandfather’s plan. Pierce had convinced Nena that she was not a LMD but rather had been tricked into believing so by her grandfather.

With Nena aiding them, Fury and his colleagues were able to escape from the gas chamber. They discovered that a few of the LMDs were very much like their originals and also aided Fury and his companions. The turncoat LMDs secured the base after its nuclear power plant had been sabotaged by the Clay Quartermain LMD. Most of the LMDs were destroyed, although a few escaped.[156]

Nena Blofeld was proven to be a LMD and placed in a maximum-security facility until her eventual deterioration.[157] So many of CIALD’s agents had been replaced by LMDs that it was believed that the security of the agency had been forever compromised. Director Winslow decided to resign and he recommended that CIALD be terminated and its facilities destroyed.

Nick Fury agreed to take on the job of closing the CIALD bases. In the course of closing them, Fury and his companions encounter the parasitic aliens whom von Strucker and Baron Zemo had encountered during World War II. Severely wounded, the defeated aliens had gone into hibernation until they were healed of their injuries. Fury, Lyta Trevor, and Arnold Munro defeated the “Death’s Head Squadron” and destroyed the alien queen with the help of one of the queen’s warriors.[158]

A terrorist and cult leader, styling himself Leviathan, began raiding the closed CIALD bases. He attempted to steal a B-2 bomber but was easily captured. Leviathan had planned for his capture, for it served two purposes: he was able to interrogate his interrogators and also he gained access to several other captives. Escaping from his holding cell, he released the Jaffa warrior who had been placed into custody despite having aided Fury and company. Leviathan made an alliance with the Jaffa warrior L’mp. The Jaffa pretended to be a demon to demonstrate Leviathan’s power. [159]

Leviathan used a combination of blackmail and brainwashing to convert many military and political leaders to his cult. Leviathan held degrees in theology and psychology, his cult was a mixture of chaos theory, social Darwinism, Hobbesian political theory and serpent worship. In appearance Leviathan was of African descent with dreadlocks. He had a horrific scar on the right side of his face with a scarred expanse where his eye had been. The dreadlocks were emblematic of his name Leviathan, which means twisted or coiled. The name Leviathan also hints at his origins. In mythology the Leviathan was also known as Lotan by the Caanites. Lotan was the seven-headed serpent of chaos slain by Baal. This many-headed serpent motif hearkens back to the many-headed Naga cult—called Kobra by DC Comics—and to the many-headed serpent Hydra, which was one of the cover names used by Scorpia and the one most used by Marvel Comics to describe the whole Scorpia organization.

Leviathan’s original name is unknown, yet it appears that he was from the region of Africa known as Uganda. His ancestor may have been a man named Bokero who instigated the Majimaji rebellion of 1905 in what is now Tanzania. Bokero claimed to have a potion called Majimaji. The rebellion was named after those who partook of his special potion. He claimed this potion:

had been given him by the Snake God to whom he referred as Koleo. (The word koleo literally means “a pair of tongs,” suggesting that this serpent was a python, well known for squeezing its victims to death; the worship of the python is widespread in Africa). Bokero, whose real name was Kinjikitire Ngwale, came from Ngarambi Ruhingo in the Rufiji Valley. He was well known for his magic powers, particularly for his ability to raise the spirits of the dead so that a man could see his own ancestors. Bokero and his colleague were hanged by the Germans. Bokero's last words were that it did not matter, for his dawa had already spread to other parts of the country and with it the spirit of independence. This dawa, the famous maji, was composed of water, matama (sorghum) and perhaps other millet as well as roots and various secret ingredients. It could be sprinkled over a man, or carried on his chest on a string round his neck, in a bottle made from bamboo, or it could be drunk as medicine. In whatever way it was taken, the man who had taken it was supposedly immune to German bullets: they would become muddy, majimaji (Matschi Matschi), before hitting his body, and be harmless.[160]

As with the similar Ghost Shirt religion of the Native Americans, the bullet proofing ritual was not as effective as hoped.

Leviathan’s people had migrated to Uganda and been absorbed by a larger population of Waziri. Although Leviathan had benefited personally from the absorption with his parents becoming wealthy enough to send him to several universities, he felt resentment towards the Warzii, considering them lackeys of the imperialist British. In the 1950s during the Mau Mau rebellions in Kenya, a group of Leviathan’s relatives revived the cult of Koleo as a symbol of their rebellion. Koleo was not worshipped very much at that time, although when he was more widely worshiped he was a beneficial god, much like Damballah [161] who was given eggs or milk as sacrifices. The Cult of Koleo, however, revived the traditionalist view of Koleo as a dark god who demanded human sacrifices, mostly Africans of European descent or those who would not join the cult. Although the Koleo cult was quickly suppressed, tales of it left a great impression on the boy who would become Leviathan.

As a student he became interested in comparative mythology, which led him to the Kali-Yuga cult with their anti-imperialist stance and snake symbolism. He joined this cult in order to gain more information about them and learned of its connection to Scorpia. When Leviathan formulated his own cult, he used this connection to the Kali-Yuga cult for support and personnel. On its own the Kali-Yuga cult would have regarded him as a heretic and not given him any support and might have had him killed; yet controlled by Nena Blofeld, the Kali-Yuga supported and aided the formation of Leviathan’s cult.

Leviathan’s cult was in a real sense another one of the many offshoots of Scorpia. Nick Fury and his colleagues from the now defunct CIALD stopped Leviathan and brought him to justice. However their unauthorized status caused conflict with the CIA and NSA. Nick Fury and his companions began to realize that completely closing down CIALD had been an error, that there was a need for such an organization. Despite Fury’s patriotism, he wondered if it was appropriate to have the organization so closely tied to one government.

Nick Fury began meeting with members of the United Nations Security Council to get CIALD reformed as an international peacekeeping organization. Fury was aided in this effort by multi-millionaire Maxwell Lord, who had taken over portions of Hughes International after the death of Howard Hughes. Other sections of Hughes International had been taken over by Lexcorp and the Waynetech. Maxwell Lord was an interesting rags-to-riches story, having clawed his way out of abject poverty to become one of the richest men in the world. He stated that he owed his great success his power of persuasion.[162]

So it was that the United States government agency known as Combined Intelligence and Logistical Developments became part of the United Nations under the name Central Headquarters-International Logistical Directorate.

Shortly after being formed under the United Nations’ aegis, the new CIALD faced some old foes. The LMD Nena Blofeld was freed from her prison by the Yellow Claw with the intention of reviving Scorpia to take advantage of the sweep of political reforms taking place in Eastern Europe and Asia. Nena would be in charge of the European section and the Yellow Claw in charge of the Asian sector. Nena Blofeld, however, sabotaged the success of this plan because of her infatuation with CIALD agent Pierce. She had Pierce kidnapped and used a combination of hypno-therapy and Black Lotus treatment to turn him into her right-hand man and lover. However when the inevitable confrontation between CIALD and Scorpia came about, Pierce’s conditioning failed and he aided CIALD in capturing the Scorpia agents including Nena Blofeld. The Yellow Claw escaped once again. [163]

Another of Fury’s enemies from WWII resurfaced to strike a blow against him. As his fiasco in Las Vegas the Red Skull had carried out other plans to destroy the United States and bring about the Fourth Reich, all of which were defeated by Captain America. In the mid-seventies, the Red Skull’s immortality seemed to be wearing off and he started to age at an accelerated rate. He determined that the gas that he thought had preserved him had actually adversely affected his natural longevity. Determined not to die without taking his greatest enemy with him, he “borrowed” the genetic virus based on progeria from the Ultra-Humanite [164] and had Captain America infected. He then had challenged Captain America to a duel to the death as ransom for Captain America’s friends. The Red Skull died of old age in the course of the duel.[165] Rogers aging reversed itself as the super soldier serum created antibodies to eradicate the progeria virus.

In the Marvel comics version, the consciousness of the Red Skull had not expired however and was transferred into a new body, a cloned body of Steve Rogers. There was some partial truth to this. However it was not the actual Red Skull who began to age rapidly, rather it was an LMD undergoing the rapid cellular degeneration that most LMDs were subject. The LMD did believe he was the actual Red Skull and so did seek this vengeance on Captain America.

The real Red Skull never suffered a life threatening disease but he hated the ugliness that his body had become during his hibernation. The Creator (William Luthor II) contacted him and offered him a way to get a new body. This involved an enhanced LMD of Steve Rogers, one not subject to the cellular decay and a tailored genetic virus using the kothoga virus that would transfer the Red Skull’s RNA into the LMD. Upon awakening the first act of the Skull/Rogers LMD was to kill the original Red Skull.

While the Deltite affair was transpiring Red Skull/Rogers began working on a plan to displace Steve Rogers as Captain America and replace him with a man who would discredit the concept of Captain America.[166] Eventually this plan also unraveled and the Red Skull/Rogers found himself dosed with his own “Dust of Death”. This body was only partially immune to it, while it did not kill him it did permanently disfigure the Red Skull/Rogers’ head, the flesh became seared scar tissue that resembled a grinning red skull.[167]

Skull had planned to seize control of the European faction of Scorpia from Nena Blofeld once she had gotten the organization up and running. Planning and organizational skills were really never his strong point; although he could plan and carry out tactical actions, he was pretty much out his depth when it came to long-range strategy. He was forced to come up with a more creative plan. Gathering various former Scorpia members and affiliates, he launched an expedition to the sunken Scorpia base off of Scorpia Island. Since the globe was still sealed and the air inside contaminated with the Deathspore virus, the Red Skull needed to get inside without getting contaminated and without letting the virus out. Among the people chosen to aid in this venture was Leviathan.

The Red Skull planned to retrieve the body of Baron von Strucker and use it to create a LMD using LMD creation plants still retained by Hydra.[168]

Almost as soon as he was born, this newly duplicated William Luthor began maneuvering to remove the Red Skull from the equation. Through a stratagem involving unstable events in Russia, Luthor convinced the Red Skull that Soviet secrets could be obtained for Hydra and used against Hydra enemies. In an operation that involved Erik Klebb, the son of Rosa Klebb,[169] the Red Skull orchestrated the theft of Soviet state secrets. This theft was a trap for the Red Skull with Soviet Intelligence and the new international version of CIALD working together to capture the Red Skull.[170]

While William Luthor was not known for his humanity or compassion, the LMD version was even less so. In his first public action against the new version of CIALD, he had suicide bombers enter several of the CIALD facilities worldwide at the same moment and destroy them. Approximately 1500 CIALD agents were killed.[171]

Another part of his plan was to set CIALD against itself by using the Kobra cult to plant evidence that one of the many secret organizations affiliated with CIALD was thoroughly infiltrated by traitors, and then allowing the paranoia and suspicion inherent in such organizations to do the rest. Because the evidence was not specific and open to interpretation, the various agencies looked askance at each other. Among the organizations involved in what became known as the Janus Directive were the organizations portrayed in the comic books as the Captain Atom Project, Checkmate, Suicide Squad, and the American Security Agency. Although the agencies eventually realized that they were being played against one another approximately two thirds of their members were casualties of the Janus Directive.[172]

William Luthor’s ally the Yellow Claw struck simultaneously, killing several members of an anti-terrorist conference.[173]

Using some of the information passed to him by Erik Klebb, William Luthor sent a Hydra team to retrieve a lost Soviet icebreaker submarine hoping to capture the nuclear warheads. Nick Fury, accompanied by the man known as Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine, kept the Soviet submarine out of Hydra’s hands. [174]

William Luthor next tried a personal attack on Nick Fury. Leviathan’s cult took a group of people hostage and also threatened to release a computer virus into CIALD’s computers. Fury and his team defeated the terrorists and freed the hostages. But they learned too late that the operation was a ploy designed to allow Leviathan access to the CIALD computers, where he accessed all information about the Infinity Formula. Hydra scientists then devised a counter agent to the Infinity Formula, which they introduced into Fury’s system via an airborne mist. Fury noticed that the Infinity Formula had been negated when he did not heal as rapidly from injuries. After a period in which Fury remained susceptible to injury, his body seemingly began to produce the effects of the Infinity Formula on its own.[175]

Nick Fury learned through an intercepted encrypted message that Hydra had been keeping many of his original CIALD agents in suspended animation. All of the agents replaced during the LMD crisis were alive but in hibernation. Nick Fury and several of his top agents traveled to Iceland to find the suspended animation facility. It was apparently true. Fury and his team worked feverishly to revive the sleeping agents. However the program to revive them released acid into the hibernation chambers, and all of Fury’s agents were killed before his eyes.

Once this had been accomplished, William Luthor and his Hydra agents moved in to kill Fury and his team. This had been an elaborate ruse. Luthor hoped that seeing his friends killed before his very eyes would be an emotional torture for Fury that would dull his senses.

Fury engaged the William Luthor duplicate in hand-to-hand combat in a fight that echoed their fight thirty years earlier, with Luthor using a Satan Claw. Fury cut the Satan Claw from Luthor’s body by chopping off his hand. The LMD Luthor fell to his death among the mountain fastness of Iceland.

The legacy of William Luthor continued for a short time after his death.

William Luthor’s daughter Serina Luthor/Irma Bunt took revenge on James Bond for having killed her daughter by killing his son, James Suzuki, in 1996, although she did not herself live long after carrying out this deed.[176]

The LMD version of Nena Blofeld once again escaped custody, and with the unwilling aid of Logan established herself as ruler of the island of Madripoor. This island had long been a Scorpia outpost but without the resources of Scorpia to back her up, Nena could not firmly establish her rule.[177]

Nick Fury continued as the public Director of CIALD until 1994 when he was shot to death by a hypno-conditioned Mack Bolan.[178] His position at CIALD was taken over by another Fury, Lyta Trevor Munro.[179]

Special thanks to Douglas Ethington who convinced me that Nick Fury was a member of the Carter family and that AXE was a cover for CIALD.

[1] William may have believed his father’s tale of having been acquainted with the renowned opera singer Irene Adler. This however cannot be substantiated. Paul Finglemore aka John Clay’s acquaintance with Irene Adler may have been second hand, Paul in his John Clay identity, having been once arrested by Sherlock Holmes. Holmes acquaintance with Irene Adler is well known, if denied in some quarters.

[2] This organization bears a resemblance to the Controllers, described in Taylor Caldwell’s The Captains and the Kings. While the Controllers did not claim to have this avowed beneficial philosophy, it may be that Caldwell was unaware of it. The members of Brown’s organization, however, called themselves the Prometheans. They were radical social Darwinists, using their wealth and positions to promote social engineering and eugenics. As part of their social Darwinist philosophy, they also believed in the evolutionary theories of social development that coincided with race. Caucasians were the apex of civilization and of human evolutionary development from their point of view. It is easy to see how they could later become affiliated with such organizations as the German Bundists and Ku Klux Klan.

[3] It is not known if John Lafitte, whose autobiographical account of his life as South Sea’s Pirate was published under the title of Pirate Blood under the byline of Edgar Rice Burroughs) was a member of this pirate organization or not. The pirate chief who captured John upon his unexpected arrival in the South Seas was named the Vulture which means he may have had ties to the loose confederation of the Scorpia and Hydra sponsored pirate bands operating in the area.

[4] William Luthor’s role in this incident was revealed in burnt fragments of what seemed to be portions of a memoir. These fragments were found inside a shark’s stomach off the coast of Tasmania in 1982. Some believe that the fragments date from the destruction of Scorpia Island in 1943. As for William Luthor’s contention that he was suddenly induced to do murder against his will by a potion, experts are divided on this action. Some claim that the Black Lotus and derivatives can induce a person to become so suggestible that under its influence people will perform acts against their conscious will and against their own innate morality, others believe that such potions merely remove all inhibitions and the person’s innate morality remains intact.

[5]  Scorpia may well have been an offshoot of the Cult of the Scorpion, although with few of the religious elements intact. Although Scorpia is said to have its origins as an organization back in the 1500s as a pirate band, it may go back further than that. They seem to have originally been a group of Cult of Scorpion adherents who refused to convert to Islam and fled from Egypt. They maintained a small enclave in Northern Africa funded by piracy. As time passed and the original members died off, often replaced by outsiders, the religious elements and true origins of the organization became less pronounced as piracy became their primary vocation.  In a bizarre coincidence that demonstrates the odd synchronicity between the motifs of skull, scorpion, and octopus, Sir Christopher Standish the sole survivor of a pirate raid in 1635 washed up on a remote Bangalla beach and was saved by pygmies.  Upon finding body of pirate who killed his father, Standish swore an oath on the skull that he and his descendents would fight pirates and evildoers. The dead pirate had been the leader of the Scorpia. Christopher Standish was the first Phantom of a long line of Phantoms whose surname eventually became Walker, perhaps from a translation of The Ghost Who Walks which is what the Bangalla pygmies called the Phantoms. Many of the Phantom’s adventures were depicted by Lee Falk. in the Phantom comic strip and novels. Although Standish’s origins occurred in Africa in an area Falk called Bangalla, the first Phantom strips were depicted as taking place in Bengali, an island in the vicinity of Java/Sumatra. At the time Falk did not have complete information on the Walker family and may have misinterpreted Phantoms’ fights against various South Sea island strongholds, each confusingly enough called Scorpia Island. One of these Scorpia South Sea island strongholds was the center of worship for a winged octopus cult. William Luthor found this particular group fascinating because their mythology seemed to be a syncretism between Polynesian mythology, the Cthulhu Mythos cycle, and, oddly enough, Babylonian mythology. Some of the early oral traditions stated that they had originally come from the land between the two rivers but that during the war between the Gods, between the Dragon of Chaos and her offspring, they had been brought in the Sun’s chariot to this island for safekeeping by the Scorpion men. The Scorpion men Luthor knew were according to mythology the children of Tiamat, the dragon mother of the universe. They were giants whose heads touched the sky. They possessed the head, arms and torso of a man, but below the waist they had the tails of scorpions. Deadly warriors, they could fight either with their scorpion tails or their bows and arrows, which never missed their targets. They were the sacred guardians of the sun god Shamash. In the morning they opened the gates of the Mountain of the East and Shamash ascended into the sky. At night they shut the gates of the Mountain of the West as Shamash descended into the underworld. Gilgamesh, the great Babylonian hero, was aided by a scorpion man in his quest for immortality. Luthor would use his position as the Scorpion to advantage over the people of Ral.

[6] Part of the history of the pirate society Scorpia was revealed in Lee Falk's graphic history of the mystery man known as The Phantom. This particular strip first appeared in 1957. For a more accessible version of these events, please see the novelization of the comic strip, The Scorpia Menace (Avon Books, 1973).

[7] For more on Kathulos and the Cult of the Scorpion please see The Demon’s Head: The lives of Ras Al Ghul

[8] Don Winslow’s career in Naval Intelligence was chronicled by Frank V. Martinek, a former Naval Commander. Winslow’s adventures debuted in a syndicated comic strip named Winslow of the Navy in 1934. By the 1940’s his adventures were being published in comic books and in novels written by Martinek. Winlsow’s adventures were also heard on the radio in Don Winslow of the Navy and depicted in two film serials, Don Winslow of the Navy and Don Winslow of the Coast Guard.

[9] Although the Crocodile was depicted as having a floating Sky City island and had a grudge against America, killing America sailors in the South Pacific, this headquarters was actually a hideaway on a tall mountain in New Zealand. The Crocodile used prototype helicopters to fly to his lair.

[10] Summation of Don Winslow’s foes taken from Nevins, Jess Pulp and Adventure Heroes of the Pre-War Years,

[11] No critical examination of the family tree of Don Winslow has yet been undertaken so it is not known if Count Borg was in anyway related to Don Winslow. One rather sordid explanation that has been raised in some quarters is that Don Winslow and Count Borg are half brothers. Don Winslow’s father, Horatio Winslow, also a Navy man had been stationed in Europe and was known to have visited Lubeck several times and Lubeck was the ancestral home of the Counts Borg.

[12] Diels disregard for the Nazi cause would cause him to lose his post as head of the Gestapo shortly after this. Diels barely escaped being executed after the notorious Night of the Long Knives. He was nearly arrested on a number occasions, notably once in 1940 when he declined to order the arrest of Jews and more vitally after the July 20 Plot. He was saved on each occasion by his mentor Hermann Goering.

[13] There may have been another reason for Hermann to have hated this infant whose birth killed his Martha. Months before the birth a stranger passing through their village had befriended Hermann and Martha. He had been badly wounded by a fire and so hid his face with bandages. Although Martha and Hermann had tried continually for several years, they had no children. Shortly after the stranger left, Martha became pregnant. Herman may have had his suspicions about the parentage of the child but kept silent for he also had wished to have a child. Yet when his wife died in childbirth, he felt compelled to kill the child. His suicide note stated that this child was so profoundly evil that evil radiated from its eyes. Although tissue samples do not exist to make a genetic comparison, it is possible that the biological father of “Johann Schmidt” was Erik the Phantom. Erik had survived two disasters at the Paris Opera House that had nearly killed him. After surviving the one in 1891 he decided to travel for a while. During his travels in Germany he may have fathered Johann Schmidt. Erik continued traveling across Europe and ended up in Siberia where he became a leader of Cossacks known as Koschai. Erik had inherited his hideous features as well as his longevity, stamina, strength and recuperative abilities from his own father, Frankenstein’s Monster “Johann Schmidt” would also inherit these traits. That Erik’s parentage can bee seen at Lofficier, Jean-Marc The French Wold Newton Universe, “Gods and Monsters”

[14] This film was the classic M directed by Fritz Lang.

[15] One of the more controversial historical subjects is when did Hitler order the Final Solution to take place. A good starting point is When Did Hitler Decide on the Final Solution.

[16] The existence of Exile Island was first revealed in Captain America V1, 102 June 1968.

[17] For more information on the Shadow’s encounter with William Luthor see The Shadow Strikes, #27 DC comic, January 1992, as well as the David Luthor section of this article.

[18] For those of you who are not familiar with The Phantom comics strip, The Phantom was of course Christopher “Kit” Walker.

[19] Falk, Lee The Scorpia Menace, Avon, 1972

[20] For more on Alexi Luthor’s career see Lethal Luthors: A Deceptive Brilliance Alexi Luthor.

[21] This is briefly described in Falk, Lee The Hydra Monster, Pyramid Books, 1973

[22] Marvel Comics published an organizational chart of Hydra in Strange Tales, V1 132, pg. 4 . As you can see they depicted the concept of the animal divisions correctly but due to either deliberate misinformation or the lack of information, they were incorrect about which animals were assigned to which division.

[23] Falk, Lee, The Hydra Monster, Avon 1973, pg. 58

[24] Strange Tales V1, No. 135 August, 1965

[25] Winslow’s impersonation of Borg and the investigation of the Chinatown cell of Scorpia is detailed in Frank Martinek’s Don Winslow of the Navy (Grossett and Dunlop, 1940).

[26] Ironically Lotus seems to have been put under the influence of the Black Lotus plant and so was temporarily made into a willing acolyte of Scorpia.

[27] According to Martinek, Don Winslow penetrated the Scorpion’s impersonation because he could tell that von Hollenbeck was a fake by his atrocious German accent; however, considering that Luthor had been impersonating Baron von Strucker for years, his German accent was undoubtedly perfect. Also the crew, who were very familiar with von Hollenbeck, were also fooled by the impersonation. What triggered Winslow’s suspicion about von Hollenbeck was probably something that Winslow himself could not ascertain.

[28] Although there exists no solid documentation to ascertain if the theory is true or not, Tasmia may have been the same woman called Lai Choi San, The Dragon Lady by Milton Caniff in the Terry and the Pirates adventure strip. According to field notes from various operatives of United States Navel Intelligence, United States Armed Forces G-2 and OSS which were later correlated by CIALD records section, Tasmia bore a striking physical resemblance to both Caniff’s Dragon Lady and also to the Scorpion’s man Cho-San. It is at least likely that Cho-San and Lai Choi San were brother and sister. It is not certain however if Tasmia was their sister or one of the identities of Lai Choi San.

[29] This Don Winslow adventure is recounted in Don Winslow: Face to Face with the Scorpion, by Martinek (Grossett and Dunlop, 1940). The Falcon was the head of the section dealing with aerial transportation/military action. This was one of the few sections that Marvel was correct about in their chart on Hydra’s organization.

[30] This hideout was later taken over by William Luthor’s nephew, Dr. Evil.

[31] Don Winslow Saves the Secret Formula (Grossett and Dunlap, 1941).

[32] The Cult of the Feathered Octopus plays a role in the Doc Savage adventure, The Feathered Octopus, Doc Savage Magazine September, 1937. Although a thorough study of the subject has not yet been undertaken, some scholars of the Cthulhu Mythos believe that the Cult of the Feathered Octopus is a remnant of a Cthulhu cult considering that Cthulhu is often depicted as a winged cephalopod.

[33] The events of this encounter between the Scorpion and Don Winslow were depicted in the movie serial, Don Winslow of the Navy, Universal 1941. In the comic strip and the novels based on the exploits of Don Winslow, his superior was always called Admiral Colby, the father of his girlfriend, Mercedes Colby. However in the serial Don Winslow’s commander was named Admiral Warburton. William Luthor sometimes used the guise of D. D. Warburton as a public face, which further muddied the trail of those seeking the true identity of the Scorpion and caused his brother, the real Warburton, some grief. The alteration of Winslow’s commander’s name in the serial was done at D. D. Warburton’s request. He financed the making of the film and so was granted this odd request, which most people thought was a bit of egotistical grandstanding. Actually, David Luthor was sending a message to his brother, stating that he knew of William’s misuse of his name, knew of William’s connection to the Scorpia organization, and that he would give Don Winslow full support to bring William Luthor to justice.

[34] Oddly enough, both of the men who would be William Luthor’s greatest enemies were both at Pearl Harbor during the attack. Don Winslow was there investigating possible Japanese saboteurs and Nicholas Fury was also present at Pearl Harbor.

[35] This was depicted in the oddly named film serial, Don Winslow of the Coast Guard, Universal 1943. In the serial the character of the Scorpion spoke with a pronounced Germanic accent. Ostensibly this was done to further the allusion of the alliance between Germany and Japan but it may also have been David Luthor’s signal to his brother that he knew about William’s Baron von Strucker identity.

[36] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos Volume1, No 5 January 1964

[37] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Volume1, No. 9, August 1964

[38] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Volume 1, No.13 December 1964

[39] Sgt.Fury and His Howling Commandos, Volume 1, No. 14 January, 1965

[40] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Volume 1, No. 20 July 1965

[41] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Volume 1, No. 22 September, 1965

[42] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos Volume 1, No. 28 March 1966

[43]The following summary was adapted from the synopsis of the Samurai Squadron at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/samusqua.htm. The story was first depicted in Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders, Vol. 1 issues 2, 3 and 4.

[44] This was depicted in the three story arc in Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos Volume 1, No. 112-115 August-October 1973

[45] The official account was among the records destroyed in the bombing of Berlin. The remaining oral accounts vary quite a bit so it is unclear what parasitic species took over the village of Gruenstadt. One likely scenario is that this was a Gou’ald attack or an attack by a sub-species of the Gou’ald that also consumed humans that can not serve as hosts..

[46] The version of this incident in Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. Volume 2, No. 3, 4 and 5 (1989) has the aliens as benign creatures whose high technology von Strucker wished to steal. To eliminate the existence of the aliens and their technology, Strucker had the entire village exterminated and was going to exterminate the aliens when Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos showed up. However Nick Fury and his men showed up in the middle of things and reached their own conclusions. Luthor thought that the alien contamination was too great a threat to humanity and so regretfully destroyed those infected by the parasites. He did acquire some of the aliens’ technology but it took years to reverse engineer it into anything useful.

[47] Marvel Spotlight 31 “Assignment: The Infinity Formula” (March, 1976) Nick Fury did not die although he was near dead. Fury was gravely injured, but saved from death by French Partisans, who brought him to Professor Sternberg, a local doctor. Sternberg operated on Fury, saving his life. However Sternberg was also experimenting with potions that would prolong life, and without Fury's knowledge decided to test his "Infinity Potion" on him. According his history in Marvel Comics he was found by a Doctor Sternberg, who had accidentally discovered an elixir that slowed down the aging process. Dr. Sternberg would make Fury pay a high price for yearly booster shots of the Infinity Formula. Dr. Sternberg was most probably not the creator of the Infinity Formula. The Infinity Formula was probably a form of the elixir given to the Servants of the Nine, which also conferred longevity, enhanced stamina, and recuperative abilities. Fury was probably a member one of the seed families that the Nine used for their selective breeding programs. They had noted his performance in the war and had plans for him in the post war era. The Infinity Formula gave him a better chance for surviving the war. Eventually Fury would no longer need the Infinity Formula so it may be that prolonged use of the formula may have eventually activated latent “immortality” genes. The Fury family that the Nine were watching was descended from the immortal John Carter through his grandson Nick Carter. As revealed in The Carters of Virginia: A Tragedy by Jess Nevins, Nicholas Carter married Edith Blake in 1892. She was killed in a most vile fashion by Dr. Quartz, Nick Carter’s archenemy that same year. What Jess Nevins did not know was that Nick Carter and Edith Blake had a son named Joseph also born in 1892. Joseph had escaped the savage attack of Dr. Quartz’s upon his mother simply by being asleep. Having lost two wives in the space of a few months, fearing for the life of his child and feeling inadequate to the task of raising a child, Nicholas fostered his son with relatives of Edith’s named Fury. Joseph Fury died fighting in WWI, leaving behind a wife and three children, one of whom was Nick Fury.

[48] Hitler may have not really needed much convincing. He had earlier attempted to flee Germany only to be stopped by Doc Savage. He had been freed by a commando raid by Otto Skorzeny. Robeson, Violent Night, Doc Savage magazine, January 1945. Luthor may not have known about this escape attempt since he was in Asia at the time.

[49] Of these three schemes, two of them had limited amounts of success. The consciousness transfer was depicted in Marvel Comics as the career of the Hatemonger, (http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/hatemonh.htm) although the Hatemonger might actually have been Jonas Sown whose emotion controlling machine is very similar to the Hatemonger’s Hate-Ray. Jonas Sown was a one of the few villains fought twice by Doc Savage in Violent Night (Doc Savage Magazine January 1945) and The Frightened Fish Bantam 1992. The embryo scheme was revealed by Ira Levin in the novel The Boys From Brazil. The scheme to plant his successor in the United States was thwarted by the Shadow as seen in the novel, Death has Grey Eyes.

[50] It is doubtful that any of the parties involved knew that this was a slightly incestuous union since Blofeld and Serina Luthor were distant cousins. Ernst Stravo Blofeld was the son of Baron von Hessel, the assumed name of the man known as Wolf Larsson and of Ermione Stravo. Ermione Stravo was the great-granddaughter of William Clayton and Ermione Khatamagos. Serina Luthor was also the great-granddaughter of William Clayton. William Luthor’s father, Paul Luthor had been born John Clayton, the son of William Clayton and Josephine Balsamo. For more on Blofeld’s background please see The Malevolent Moriarty’s by Win Eckert.

[51] This is depicted in a slightly altered form in Uncanny X-Men #161

[52] What was not known to other than a few people was that Charles Javier was the son of Odd John and his step sister. Charles was the result of the first of Odd John’s in utero manipulations using techniques that his associate Lo had designed. Charles Javier also had a twin named Cassandra who was almost physically identical to Charles except for being female. When Charles Javier died in 1964, Odd John assumed the identity of Charles Javier. John Wainwright was born in 1910, but in the late forties only appeared to be in his early twenties. This youthful appearance gave him the air of a wunderkind. In addition, Wainwright had honed his mental powers for years and was able to project a mental image of himself of an average young man with a bald head. more on Javier, please see X Marks the Sport (forthcoming)

[53] For the origin of the term oddian and an analysis of this mutant strain in Challis, Henry Odd Quirks and Wonders of Human Development. Henry Challis was a self styled anthropologist who spent a great deal of time with Victor Stott, the Hampendshire Wonder during the child’s formative years. Victor Stott was a precocious child who exhibited some of the same physical traits as John Wainwright as well as greater than average human intelligence. Victor Stott drowned at the age of eight. Challis was greatly affected by the child’s tragic death feeling that his lost potential was a loss for the world. In 1934 he heard about the death of John Wainwright and began investigating the similarities. Challis believed that Stott was the same type of rare, sport mutation as Wainwright which he termed oddian after the novel Odd John had popularized this mutation.

[54] See The Lethal Luthors- A Deceptive Brilliance: John Wainwright for more information on the circumstances of Odd John’s parentage and birth

[55] Sen Gat’s career and death was depicted in Doc Savage novel The Thousand Headed Man by Kenneth Robeson.

[56] Jeffrey Burr was depicted in DC comics as Lord Naga, the head of the Kobra Cult. Kobra #1 (February-March 1976).

[57] This operation was depicted in Fleming, Ian, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Signet 1963 and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (United Artists, 1969) The description of the events of this SPECTRE operation that follow are a combination more accurate description than what was portrayed in either the novel or film and is in essence a combination of both. A more extensive analysis of the differences between the novel and film will be presented in the Shaken But Not Stirred; On Her Majesty’s Secret Service article (forthcoming)

[58] That Blofeld had artificially increased the suicide rate was not known to Fleming and was only revealed by Irma Bunt much later.

[59] James Bond’s destruction of Blofeld’s Japanese operation was depicted in Fleming, Ian, You Only Live Twice, Signet, 1964.

[60] Dr. Amal, who would become better known as Dr. Evil, was in fact not William Luthor’s son, he was however his nephew. Dr. Evil’s father was David Warburton, aka David Luthor. For more information see “Lethal Luthors- A Deceptive Brilliance- Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.”

[61] This operation defeated by Batman was depicted in Batman No. 167 November 1964. Only the bare facts of the case were released to the writing staff of the Batman comics and so Hydra was depicted in as being an international crime cartel with its members wearing everyday street clothes. This is in fact the case, the costumes depicted in the Marvel comics were used only for rituals and ceremonies. William Luthor used the trappings of secret societies and mystery religions to attract followers and to also maintain control of these organizations through the hierarchical structure and secretive nature that are the foundation of such cultic practices.

[62] It is not really known from what was the source of the name Hydra as depicted in Marvel Comics. It may have been taken from the name of the organization in Batman 167 which was published in November 1964 a few months prior to the name appearing in Strange Tales 135. However given the resemblance between the chant of the Hydra organization depicted in Marvel Comics and the one depicted in The Phantom strip it seems more like that the latter was the inspiration for Marvel’s depiction of Hydra.

[63] Despite the similarity in names, Cobra is not Kobra. The Kali-Yuga sect was not part nor did have any direct connection to the terrorist organization named Cobra whose most frequent foe was CIALD’s covert operations team code named G.I. Joe. Although Cobra was connected to Hydra-Scorpia organization it was more of an offshoot organization that derived its organizational structure and personnel from affiliated Scorpia groups such as the Sons of the Serpent, MARS and Hydra. Cobra was formed by William Brown, the nephew of Arnold Brown the former Supreme Hydra the American branch of Hydra-Scorpia. William Brown created Cobra in 1979 after his brother Dan had been killed in a automobile accident caused by his own recklessness due to alcohol and drug abuse. William Brown blamed Dan’s death and his addictions on his many tours of Viet Nam, which seemed to have an adverse psychological effect. However Dan Brown’s United States Psychological profile tells another story. Despite having told his younger brother that he had continually enlisted so that William would not be drafted, Dan kept re-upping in the army and volunteering for Viet Nam because he liked to hunt and kill people, which made him a valuable asset in the Phoenix Program. When Dan returned home once the war was over his outlet for legalized killing evaporated. Needing an outlet for his hatred and his resentment against the government for betraying his efforts in Viet Nam Dan Brown joined one of the various anti-government militia movements. This was one rather close to the family, since it was, in part, composed of former members of Arnold Brown’s version of Hydra-Scorpia. The group called The Sons of the Serpent was composed of disaffected former members of Hydra-Scorpia, the Ku Klux Klan and the Posse Comitatus. Despite their depiction in Marvel Comics as being attired in costumes built to resemble Serpents, generally the Sons of the Serpent did most of their illegal activities in street clothes. They did however don their costumes for meetings as do Klan Members. Their costumes were a greenish in color but resembled the costumes of the Ku Klux Klan or Hydra than they did a replica of an actual Serpent. The Serpent motif came from having adopted the Revolutionary War motif of a serpent with the motto of “Don’t Tread on Me” A serpent symbol with this phrase was emblazoned on their robes. This was their warning to the United States Government whom they saw as the enemy. William Brown was not a member of the Sons of the Serpent until after his brother’s death. Upon joining he soon realized that this group would never accomplish anything on its own. Using the contacts given to him by former members of Hydra-Scorpia, William Brown opened a dialog with Nena Blofeld. She was intrigued by Brown’s premise and thought that if given the correct amount of shaping and support Cobra could help destabilize the United States and aid in her ultimate plans. Nena Blofeld arranged for Brown to establish a base in Springfield, Kansas, a small rural town that had fallen on hard economic times. She also arranged for him to make contact with MARS, the European equivalent of The Controllers, which was run by the Scottish Destro clan. The Destro’s were the descendents of a 14^th century condottiere who made his way to Scotland to fight in the Border Wars. William Brown’s Cobra organization adopted a symbol of two Cobra’s striking however it also resembled the symbol of Hydra to demonstrate their affiliated status. After the death of Nena Blofeld , William Brown adopted a hooded uniform reminiscent of the Imperial Hydra in order to draw in members from the shattered Hydra organization.

[64] CIALD (Combined Intelligence and Logistical Department) coordinated the activities of specially skilled or powered government agents and also investigated and dealt with threats posed by villains who fall into the scientific/supernatural category as well as investigating scientific/supernatural anomalies. CIALD was affiliated with the Impossible Missions Force or Office of Strategic Investigations, although all these agencies ran semi-independently.

CIALD began as Section 31 of Bureau 13 but soon expanded into an agency of its own, called the Auxiliary Logistical and Special Tactical Response Squadron or ALSTR Squad. This was attached to the OSS, OCI, and other intelligence services. The Internal Security Department also an outgrowth of Section 31. There is also a section of CIALD named Task Force X also known as the Suicide Squad where criminals were offered reductions of sentences or pardons for carrying out various operations for the U.S. Government. This was probably an outgrowth of Colonel Riseman's Dirty Dozen commando team (which for more information see E.M Nathanson, The Dirty Dozen.)

After the war ALSTR became known as the Auxiliary Response Group & Emergency National Threat Team, two separate teams run under one director, one team was run by civilian team leader the other was run by a military team leader. The Auxiliary Response team was the civilian section of ARGENT, charged with the task of coordinating the activities of costumed vigilantes to more effectively fight costumed villains and general crime. The first team leader took his charge too seriously and recruited some of the worst elements, who used brutal and illegal means to fight crime. When the team was going to be disbanded in 1960, the team leader and his group disappeared. The military section absorbed the civilian section and it became a mixture of civilian and military employees, working with both military and civilian intelligence agencies under the name of Mission X.

Because ALSTR, ARGENT, and later CIALD coordinated the activities of costumed vigilantes for assorted missions, often combining them in mission teams, there arose the notion that there were organizations composed of costumed vigilantes, such as the Justice Society of America or the later the Justice League of America. Although the CIALD helped promulgate the notion that these organizations did in fact exist (as a means of identifying powered and non-powered vigilantes) they in fact did not exist. Most of the costumed vigilantes stuck to their own territories and only worked together when asked to do so by the CIALD or when their own particular paths crossed for various reasons. The famous Baltimore Club was a recruiting and meeting place for agents of Bureau 13, the infamous Cobalt Club was a recruiting, meeting and sanctuary for the agents of Section 31 and CIALD.

[65] Between the end of World War II and 1964 when he became the Director of CIALD Nick Fury worked for the OSS. Although the main chronicler of his life, Marvel Comics has only released recently released some information about his career during this time, during their Marvel: Lost Generation mini-series, some of Nick Fury’s pre-CIALD exploits were disseminated for the public’s consumption. These adventures however were attributed to another person, another Nick. Because of the popularity of the James Bond spy novels, American publishers rushed to fill this publishing niche with an American spy to popularize. Among the espionage agents who suddenly found their past and present cases as fodder for novelizations were Matt Helm and Sam Durrell. Yet another publisher believed that the American spy needed a recognizable name so they took Nick Carter, the American Sherlock Holmes and re-invented him as the American James Bond. Nick Carter, the Killmaster was code named N3, he worked for an Intelligence agency called Axe. Axe’s front organization was Amalgamated News and Wire Services. The idea of using the Nick Carter character came from William B. Gibson, author of many of The Shadow novels. This was public knowledge, that they based many of the adventures of Nick Carter of AXE on the missions of Nick Fury of OSS was not public knowledge. This new information dispels the speculation that the Nick Carter of the Killmaster series was not the same Nick Carter as depicted in the Dime Novels of the early 1900s and the Pulp magazines of the 1920s as previously seen in The Mysterious Carters of Virginia and in Little Big Men: Crabbes and Carters. Yet there is another layer of intrigue and not quite coincidence at work. AXE was more than just a government operation seeking to neutralize Soviet and Chinese espionage missions or various terrorist threats, it was a sort of family operation; this fact however was known only to a few people. The front organization Amalgamated News and Wire Services was a real news agency owned and operated by Jules Ainsworth Carter, at least on paper. As seen in the article, Burroughing Beneath the Page,. However like his father, Matthew Nicholas Carter, Jules detested business but needed a tax shelter business in which to funnel the profits from his grandfather’s gold mine. The business was operated by Jules cousin, Nick Carter. Nick Carter was the same person as depicted in the 1900’s dime novels and 1920’s pulp tales. After his short stint at a being a private detective again from 1932 to 1937, Nick Carter devoted himself to working on a grander scale than criminals and began using his abilities to fight those whom he believed threatened democracy and freedom. Forming Amalgamated with his cousin uncle Matthew Nicholas Carter in 1937, Nick posed as freelance newspaper reporter as he gathered information on criminal activities domestically and internationally which he disseminated to the United States Law Enforcement Authorities. He also gathered intelligence on foreign powers he considered threats to the national security of the United States. When World War II broke out in War II Nicholas Carter was a working on a story in Germany, he deliberately stayed behind when all other foreign correspondents fled Germany. He worked as a roving agent creating liaisons between the United States Office of Strategic Services and various partisan/resistance groups in German, France, Belgium and Eastern Europe. He learned that his grand-daughter Margaret had been visiting her father in Paris when the Nazi’s had occupied it. Margaret Carter was the daughter of Nick’s and Princess Carma’s son, Simon. After the death of Carma Nick did his best to raise Simon and Horace by himself. Simon was very headstrong and had ended up eloping with the daughter of a lawman, Brian Savage, a sheriff in New Mexico. Brian Savage had been killed in 1909 in the course of his duty. His wife had pre-deceased him, leaving young Kate to be raised by her older brothers, Steven and Simon Savage. When Simon Carter eloped with Kate Savage, they had to make themselves scarce to avoid the wrath of her brothers. Being a bride and a mother at the age of seventeen eventually palled on Kate Carter and she took off with another man. Simon placed his daughter in the care of his brother Horace and his wife Nancy while he went to look for his wife. Horace and his wife raised Margaret from the age of seven and she thought of them more as her parents than her actual parents, since she never saw her mother and only saw her father sporadically. She also thought of Cinnamon and Sharon, Horace and Nancy’s children as her sisters when biologically, they were actually her cousins. Horace Carter was a University Professor. His familiarity with the Carter family business of sleuthing was evident as has previously been noted by Rutt and McConnell In The Mysterious Case of the Carters, when Horace became involved in solving a murder case in 1945 that occurred while he was vacationing in Nantucket. The story is told in the book, The Widow's Walk, by Margaret Yates and Paula Bramlette. However Rutt and McConnell were unaware that Horace Carter was even as a youth very involved in solving mysteries, although his sleuthing skills were far outweighed by those of his girlfriend, Nancy. So as not to detract from Nancy and to prevent from alluding to another character under license to another publishing syndicate rather than using his actual name in the novelized depictions of his and Nancy’s case, Horace was named something else entirely. In the Nancy Drew mysteries Horace Carter was named Ned Nickerson. Yet this name was a clever allusion that few readers caught, Nick ‘er’s son or Nick Carter’s son. In early 1939, Simon Carter contacted Horace and Nancy, telling her that he wanted to make up for lost time with his daughter, that he had a steady job and had arranged for her to schooled in Paris. Although Margaret was reluctant to go Horace and Nancy convinced her that this was an opportunity that she should not miss. This was a decision that they would forever regret. Shortly after the Nazi Occupation of Paris, Simon Carter was arrested and not heard from again. Left to her own resources, Peggy Carter joined the French Resistance. As a member of the Maquis, she became romantically involved with the famed American hero, Captain America. Horace and Nancy lent their efforts to the war effort by becoming intelligence analysts for the newly formed OSS. They were very relieved when receiving word from Nick Carter that Peggy was alive and well. Nick Carter managed to extract her from France and get her to England. Nick Carter also gave Horace and Nancy what information he could learn about Margaret’s remaining Uncle, Simon Savage. Her Uncle Steve Savage had been a renowned fighter pilot in WWI and had opened an aerodrome after the War. However he disappeared while on a flight in the 1930’s. Simon Savage was a Marine Commando in the South Pacific, who on a couple occasions had worked with Nick Carter’s grandson, Nick Fury. At the close of World War Two, Nick Carter approached Horace and Nancy Carter with a proposal to continue their intelligence efforts on behalf of the United States government by working with the OSS which shortly thereafter became the Central Intelligence Agency to obtain intelligence and carry out some missions that the CIA could not for legal or diplomatic reasons. There would be three main operatives, all ex-service men with a knack for deductive reasoning, experience in intelligence work and who would not hesitate to use lethal force if necessary. The operatives would be N1, N2, and N3. Nick Carter wanted Hugh North for N1 but North refused to leave the U.S. Army’s G2 section. So Hamilton Nash was chosen instead. N2 was Nick Charles jr. who was a decorated paratrooper and N3 was Nick Fury. Fury was given the N3 designation because he was the third Nick Carter to appear in print and also because he was the third Nick Carter or would have been had his father not been adopted by the Fury family. Nick Carter and Nancy Drew Carter also became part of the organization although they worked behind the scenes as coordinators and analysts. The liaison with the three operatives was David Hawk whose origins and career remain unknown. Although the novelizations of the exploits of the three “Nick Carters” were loaded with sex and violence and filled with many exaggerated, unrealistic scenarios this was part of the formula to keep the books popular. The popularity of the books served to shield the agency from too much scrutiny since because the agency was publicized by the immense popularity of the books, the agency was believed to be fictional. The AXE encouraged the publication of the books and the use of the Nick Carter character for this very reason. The published accounts also served as case dossiers to other intelligence operations who were trained to weed out the fictional portions of the narratives and read the coded dossiers embedded in the texts. After Nick Fury became head of CIALD, the Nick Carter adventures based on him were his part in CIALD missions. After his “death“ in 1968 worked more or less full time for AXE once more until he returned to CIALD briefly from 1988-1994. The depictions of Nick Fury at CIALD during the period from 1969-1988 are fictional since CIALD was directed by Bruce Wayne and Don Winslow during this period. Also in 1968 Hamilton Nash retired and his slot was replaced by two people who worked part time as it were for AXE these were Ed Noon and Joaquin Hawks. There remained a close connection between CIALD and AXE however through the Carter family. Margaret, Cinnamon and Sharon all became operatives of CIALD. Sharon was an agent for the main CIALD organization, Cinnamon became an operative for the Impossible Missions division. Sharon became romantically involved with Steve Rogers, Captain America. After a several year tumultuous relationship, they finally wed and had a daughter, Shannon Carter-Rogers.

[66] Strange Tales 136 Marvel Comics, September 1965

[67] Strange Tales 137-140, October-December 1965

[68] The version depicted in Tales of Suspense 78 has Captain America and Fury being attacked by an android created from synthetic materials. The creature was impervious to most weapons but was rendered insensate by knockout drops. A chemical reaction or the short life span of the android caused it to dissolve. The comic does provide a clue as to how Captain American and Nick Fury captured the Scorpia assault team by using the gas created by Doc Savage, which became standard issue for CIALD agents.

[69] Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos Annual No. 3 August 1967

[70] Tales of Suspense 79, Marvel Comics, July 1966

[71] Tales of Suspense 80, Marvel Comics, August 1966. The comics depicted the Red Skull’s episodes of madness as if the “Cosmic Cube” were a real devise and as if the hallucinations that the Skull experienced were real events that actually happened.

[72] For more information on the Founders see Proto-Types.

[73] Yet there remained some slight risk to the person being duplicated, as seen in Strange Tales 135. When Nick Fury first is taken to CIALD headquarters he was placed into a special chamber so he could be duplicated and create a multitude of LMD’s. These were going to be released to draw out the many assassins Hydra sent against him. During the duplication process he was is told not to move, not even to breathe, as the slightest error could cause his death.

[74] Although the first account of the Parasite was not published by DC Comics until 1966, in Action 340, the actual event probably occurred in the fifties. More details will be revealed in the upcoming Superman Family 800 Page Giant series of articles.

[75] This was depicted in Tales of Suspense 83, Marvel Comics, November 1966 The ex-circus performer costumed vigilante was called The Tumbler. The Tumbler felt that in order to fight crime effectively he first had to defeat Captain America in single combat. As might be deduced from this line of reasoning, the Tumbler probably was not psychologically stable. His obsession with Captain America eventually grew into hatred.

[76] Tales of Suspense 84, Marvel Comics, December 1966

[77] John Macklin’s career was depicted in In Strange Company by Guy Boothby, Cadwiller Olden appears in the Doc Savage adventure Repel by Lester Dent, and Miguelito Loveless was one of Jim West’s most persistence adversaries in Wild Wild West television show. Siegfried’s descent from Moriarty is explored in the article Moriarty and the Secret Service by Brett Fawcett

[78] This claim and other speculations about the Moriarty family and also about the true origins of Mr. Big are detailed in the intriguing article Small Wonder: The Loveless Clones. Although we do not subscribe to many of the conclusions contained in the article, it does provide some valuable pointers for further research.

[79] The struggle between these two organization became the basis for the espionage spoof and parody called Get Smart, 1965-1968 NBC television, 1969 CBS television.

[80] Rogers would later learn that Agent 13 was named Sharon Carter. Sharon Carter was the younger sister of Margaret Carter, Steve Rogers’ love interest in World War II.

[81] Tales of Suspense 92-93, Marvel Comics, August-September 1967

[82] Tales of Suspense 95-98 November 1967-January 1968

[83] Tales of Suspense 99, Marvel Comics, March 1968

[84] Although it has been one of the mainstay’s of Marvel “history” of Captain America, James Buchanan Barnes did not die at the time he and Captain America stopped Baron Zemo’s V12 rocket from hitting Washington D.C. As revealed in Brad Mengel’s Super-Soldiers article, Bucky Barnes lived although he was severely wounded. Once he recovered however he was again asked by the United States Government to resume his role as Bucky to work with the second Captain America Jeff Mace. Barnes was once again severely wounded in an incident that killed the second Captain America. Barnes refused to have anything more to do with the Captain America project, especially when the third chosen Captain America turned out to be a radical anti-communist and racist. Barnes public disavowal of the Captain America project had him blacklisted so far as the government was concerned. He was disallowed much of his Veterans benefits on the grounds that he had lied about his age to get into the service. Because of his blacklisted nature and for other reasons, when Captain America was revived in 1965 he was told that Barnes had died in 1945. Partially this was to shield Captain America from the shock that his young companion had grown into a security risk. They also wished to shield Captain America from the fact that Barnes had married Peggy Carter, Captain America’s wartime flame. Yet when they discovered Roger’s felt guilt about not having been able to save Bucky. It was decided by upper echelon members of the United States Intelligence services to manipulate Captain America by using his guilt over Barnes death to convince him to work for the U.S. government. Although Barnes death continues to be a constant in the “Marvel Universe” version of events hints of the reality of Bucky’s life after WWII show up as seen in the What If Vol. 1 No, 5, Captain America Volume 2 and the The Ultimates V1 No.5. More recently in the Marvel Universe it has been revealed that Bucky’s body was recovered by Russian agents. Outfitted with cybernetic replacements and thoroughly brainwashed he became a Soviet Assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers used the cosmic cube to give Bucky back his memories. Although Bucky as the Winter Solider storyline is no more true than the recent depiction of Steve Rogers having been unfrozen in the nineties, it does point to the fabrication of Bucky having been killed in WWII.

[85] There are at least two variant stories of the discovery of the frozen body of Steve Rogers still garbed in the remnants of his Captain America uniform. The first version was published by Marvel Comics in The Avengers # 4, March 1964. In this version Captain America was found by the superhero team The Avengers consisting of Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man and The Wasp who were in a submarine searching for Namor. The second version was published in Batman and Captain America, DC Comics 1996. In this version Captain America was discovered by Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne Jr. in their guises as the second Batman and Robin. They were also in a submarine however searching for Joker jr. While the first version is the one that has become embedded in the mythos of Captain America as his postwar origin, it is actually the second version that is the more truthful. Batman and Robin are indeed the ones who found the frozen body of Captain America, although Dr. Henry Pym and his assistant Janet Van Dyne were also aboard the submarine. What Marvel Comics called the Avengers was actually one of several special teams put together by CIALD under the aegis of ALSTR. These teams were depicted in the comics under various names including the Justice Society, Justice League of America, Avengers, Defenders, Superfriends and a host of others. These teams were also depicted as having stable if sometimes changing memberships when in fact the teams were only brought together for special missions and the personnel make up of each of these temporary teams was picked from a variety of criteria from who was best suited to deal with a particular crisis as well as who was available at the time. Although the teams changed from mission to mission, there were several people who were called upon quite frequently, Captain America was one of these. This is how he became to become perceived as the de facto leader of the Avengers, because he was frequently picked to lead or take part in an ALSTR mission.

[86] The sonic detonator incident or the Overkill Horn was depicted in Strange Tales 150-153 (November, 1966-February 1967)

[87] Strange Tales 151 December, 1966

[88] Strange Tales 153, February, 1967

[89] Although many people regard the Helio-Carrier as part of the exaggerated science that permeates the Nick Fury comics, it is actually quite real, although not quite as depicted in the comics. A giant helicopter the size of an aircraft carrier or two seems beyond the capabilities of the contemporary era, much less the technology of the early 1960’s, especially when one considers the cost in construction and fuel consumption. Also if the capability to build such a vessel existed, why then wasn’t it mass produced? Certainly the tactical advantage of such giant flying vessels would not be overlooked by the United States military.

The Helio-Carrier does exist, but it is such a unique vessel that it cannot be mass produced. It is not a giant helicopter per se, but is rather akin to a large floating island of metal. Several aircraft carriers which had been designated to be scrapped were instead cut into sections and molded together to form a circular shape. Jet engines were attached to the new vessel, but they provided only part of its mobility. What provided the Helio-Carrier with lift and what kept it aloft was not a series of large propeller blades but rather one of the rarest elements on Earth, named cavorite after its discoverer. The substance was opaque to gravity, in other words it rendered objects weightless.

Most of Cavor’s cavorite was confiscated by the British government and subsequently stolen by Fu Manchu. Although a crack team of special operative retrieved the cavorite, it disappeared, along with Professor Moriarty as he fell into the sky as seen in the League of Extraordinary Gentleman Volume 1, No 6. Some believe that Moriarty might have come down in France and this supply of Cavorite was what Nyctalope used to fly to Rhea in 1923. Rhea is a natural satellite orbiting the Earth, inhabited by winged creatures, half of whom live on the day side and half of whom live on the night side. Nyctalope’s voyaged was chronicled in Le Roi de la Nuit (The King Of The Night) (1923) As depicted in First Men in the Moon (1901) Cavor created a paint out of the supply of cavorite that he found and used it to create a vessel to travel to the moon. His vessel was lost at sea when Edward Bedford returned from the moon without Cavor. The ship landed in the ocean and was lost.

In the late 1950’s Dr. Cavor’s ship was salvaged by the United States Navy working in concert with Hughes International. Hughes and the United States government worked to crack the mystery of cavorite, but being entirely extraterrestrial in origin the element to re-recreate did not exist. It was decided to instead use the remaining cavorite to aid the United States in its fight against the Soviet Union. Using the cavorite for a moon vessel was deemed too chancy, so another use had to be found. Hughes and CIALD came up with the Helio-Carrier as a floating, mobile fortress that could be used as quick deployment against Soviet aggression. Cavorite, judiciously applied to the vessel, would render it nearly weightless. The cavorite was spread over a much larger area than Cavor’s ship so the effects were not so dramatic. It did not have enough anti-gravitational force to fly to the moon, merely to hover at a set height above the Earth surface. It could be raised higher or move in any direction by nuclear powered jet engines. Of course such a large floating vessel would be an inviting target for enemy powers or just enemies of the United States. A means had to be found to keep the vessel out of sight. False cloud generation devices proved a dismal failure. Yet the answer was already in the hands of the CIALD, the OTSMID (Omni-directional Total Spectrum Molecular Interpenetration Device) which rendered objects invisible. The OTSMID rendered objects invisible within a spherical field of radius, so one of the major flaws of the device was the visible demarcation of the its field, which appears like a circular pit in the ground. (The Invisibility Affair) The OTSMID had been created and refined by Dr. Morthley and Kerry Griffin. The power source for the OTSMID was solar energy converted from larger collectors on the top of the carrier. The vessel was thus dubbed the Helio-Carrier, a reference to the sun rather than a reference to helicopter blades. The giant Helio-Carrier was invisible and so became one of the unseen command centers in America’s fight against the Soviet menace and an object of legend among the citizenry of the United States.

[90] Strange Tales, no. 154 (March 1967)

[91] Strange Tales, no. 155 (April. 1967)

[92] These identities of Don Caballero, Emir Ali Bey and Bronson can be considered evidence that the Baron von Strucker identity was also a false identity. Although the epiderm-mask would have given the wearer the features of a person, this alone would not be enough for a convincing impersonation. The person wearing the mask would have had to have the voice, mannerisms, and speech patterns of the person they were impersonating duplicated to an unerring degree. While there may be some leeway granted in the characters of Don Caballero or Emir Ali Bey, Luthor would have had to have the accent and language down pat. In the case of Bronson, however, he had to impersonate a man whose career was intelligence work and who was known to other trained intelligence operatives. William inherited his ability for uncanny mimicry from his father, John Clay who also impersonated real people to an unerring degree as seen in Allen, Grant The African Millionaire.

[93] Strange Tales 155 (April, 1967)

[94] Strange Tales 155 (April, 1967)

[95] This was probably either f. katalepsis—the cataleptic drug used by Dr. Fu Manchu—or a close derivative of the drug.

[96] It is possible that William Luthor did not originally intend to kill Fury but to put on a show, allowing him to escape from Scorpia Island so he could spread the word about the return of Baron von Strucker, the effectiveness of the virus that Scorpia held, and the floating fortress Scorpia had created. However as the battle between the two men raged, William Luthor allowed his rationality to slip and his emotions to hold sway and truly attempted to kill Fury.

[97] The saga of Nick Fury and CIALD vs Scorpia was fictionalized by Marvel Comics in Strange Tales 150-157 (November, 1966-June, 1967)

[98] Marvel Comics would refer to the new head of Scorpia as Madame Hydra, the James Bond comic strip referred to her as Madame Spectra.

[99] For more information on Dr. Evil’s organization please see Lethal Luthors- A Deceptive Brilliance- Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.

[100] Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Volume 1, No. 1 June 1968 and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Volume 1, No. 5 October, 1968

[101] The Zodiac Cartel was controlled by remnants of the Nine. They had chosen Nick Fury to replace the old head of the Nine, XauXaz. This plan was long in coming. When it was realized that neither Lord Grandrith or James Anthony Caliban were the Undying God that the Nine had sought to create, the Nine had splintered into many factions. One did not want to waste the many thousands of years of selective breeding that the Nine had fostered to create their Undying God and other useful servants and they also wanted a suitable replacement for XauXax. The Fury family was a member of their breeding families. Fury was a superlative soldier and it was decided when he lay dying in 1942 to give him the Elixir to save his life and to make him beholden to them. Dr. Sternberg was an agent of the Nine who gave Nick Fury what they he called the Infinity Formula. On his own initiative, Sternberg not only did not treat Fury’s wounded eye but made certain that it would eventually go blind, to match that of XauXaz. As they had with Lord Grandrith and James Anthony Caliban, the Nine caused two brothers to fight for the throne. These two brothers were Nick Fury and his brother Jacob, i.e. the assassin Scorpio, although the brothers carried out this ritual unknowingly.

[102] Marvel’s depicted Nena as Madame Hydra in a green body sheath with dyed green hair. The hair covered the right side of her face. She believed at first that Marvel had somehow gotten word of her mother’s facial impairment and attributed it to Nena. However she became infuriated when her mother pointed out that someone may have told Marvel about her real deformity, that she only had one breast. Since Marvel could not depict this in the comics, they may have created a pictorial image that would convey the sense that she was an incomplete woman.

[103] Captain America Volume 1, No. 110 February, 1969

[104] Some people were affected by the diluted form of the drug and became “happy”. However some scientists claimed that this outbreak of happiness was the result of a virus brought to New York by a toucan. This theory was popularized by the film, What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?

[105] Captain America Volume 1, No. 111 March 1969

[106] Captain America Volume 1, No. 113, May 1969

[107] Captain America 113, May 1969. Although this was not revealed in the comic book version, this was a CIALD sting gone wrong. Fury knew that Captain America was not dead and believed that Hydra would take advantage of the funeral of Captain America to make an attempt to capture or kill CIALD agents. He planned to use the capture as a means of infiltrating Hydra’s current base of operations. CIALD agents acted as though they were overcome by gas. However the impetuous act of Rick Jones to rescue the CIALD agents blew the operation. This is one of the reasons Jones was Captain America’s partner for such a short time.

[108] James Bond daily comic strip, “The Golden Ghost” London Daily Express, August 1970

[109] According to Marvel Comics lore, an alien creature called “the Space Phantom” switched places with Madame Hydra during this time period. This was entirely fictional. The rift between her mother and herself grew so intense that Nena abandoned the Luthor name and instead took the name Calvert after her nanny. In a sense she was telling Serina Luthor that Nena’s nanny had been more of a mother to her than had had Serina.

[110] Wilson Fisk was an adopted child and although his records were sealed when he had gained wealth, power and influence.

[111] Amazing Spider-Man 85, June 1970

[112] Although they often failed to display it or utilize it, both Richard and Wilson Fisk possessed flashes of scientific genius, courtesy of their descent from the Luthor family. Wilson Fisk was the son of Lawrence Luthor, the man called the Utlra-Humanite. Like David Luthor, the Fisks instead chose to focus their genius level intellects towards business and finance, and intrigue. Wilson Fisk often claimed to be descended from Professor James Moriarty. The orphan Wilson Fisk somehow found out his grandfather was Paul Finglemore, he might have mistakenly believed that he was descended from Paul's involvement with Urania Moriarty, or even if he later found out the truth, he probably would have preferred to be descended from the Napoleon of Crime rather than the psychotic Ultra-Humanite.

[113] This is the story arc from Captain America Vol.1 No.144-148 December 1971-April 1972

[114] In November, 1970 Howard Hughes and his entourage abruptly left his suite in the Desert Inn to purportedly reside in the Bahamas. His staff carried on the illusion that The Man was still in residence for about a week before the deception was discovered.

[115] This was during the events of the incident which was filmed as You Only Live Twice. The film differs substantially from the novel. As is explained in the Austin and Evil article, this was also a Dr. Evil operation with Dr. Evil posing as Blofeld.

[116] The Spang brothers and the Spangled Mob are the main villains of the novel, Diamonds Are Forever, which is substantially different from the film version

[117] This Sleeper, like all of the others versions of the Red Skull’s Sleepers, were not giant humanoid robots which had been pre-programmed to wreck devastation on certain date as depicted in Marvel Comics. Rather they were heavily armored manned vehicles. The first Sleeper had indeed been built like a giant robot based on designs from other such vehicles used in the Thirties. However there were great flaws in the design, mostly in the mobility of the arms and legs. The second Sleeper was a heavily armored plane, the third a heavily armored naval vessel. They were called Sleepers not because they were suddenly awakened from a slumber but rather because their function was to bring about Eternal Sleeper. In keeping with the Red Skull’s Masque of the Red Death motif, they were made to spread death on a wide basis by the release of poison gas, toxic chemicals or pestilence. The Sleeper heading towards Las Vegas was to release an especially virulent form of nerve gas.

[118] Even if Fisks had known the particulars of the Red Skull’s plan they would have likely reacted in the same manner or else made an alliance with CIALD even earlier.

[119] In the Marvel Comics version she was actually shot, taken to a hospital, shocked with devise designed to kill her and then miraculously was well enough to join in the fighting.

[120] This of course being the Laser Shooting Diamonds satellite.

[121] It was however depicted in Marvel Comics as a giant humanoid vehicle. (Captain America Vol, 1 148,)

[122] Kobra No. 6, DC. Comics, January-February 1977. Jonny Double was an idealistic and poor private eye. However he was slightly acquainted with some of the operatives of CIALD and with Randu Singh and so was briefly famous. He signed a licensing agreement with DC comics but they used his so rarely that this was not lucrative for him. He was highlighted in Showcase 78, 1978. Double had a slight partnership with Lyta Trevor, the second Wonder Woman in the seventies. Randu Singh was a member of the same sect to which Punjab belonged. Randu’s particular person to guard however was the demonologist Jason Blood. His main job was keeping Blood, and the world at large, safe from Blood’s inner demons. See The Demon, DC Comics August-September 1972

[123] In the comics, this event was depicted as Madame Hydra killing the villain known as Viper, taking the identity of Viper and forming the Serpent Society. Captain America 180, July 1974. The comic book depictions of Kobra in DC comics after 1974 were either fictitious or account for the activities of a splinter group of Kobra which have their own designated “Lord Naga”

[124] Roxxon Oil is a large conglomeration of oil companies owned by Lexcorp. The real name is Lexxon. One can see why Marvel used a different name for the company.

[125] King Kong, Universal, 1976.

[126] Although the comics of this period have Steven Rogers traveling about in a new costume using the named Nomad, he had foresworn wearing any costume but that of Captain America. He was dressed in civilian clothing in this and all of the other incidents that transpired during this period of his life.

[127] In the Marvel Comics version of events, (Captain America Vol. 1, 180) the Atlantean, Warlord Krang, possessed the Crown but was not possessed by it. He had been directed to take it to Madame Hydra. Marvel merely the idea of Lemuria, the Atlantis of the Pacific, as a means of creating a crossover with its Atlantean characters. Neither Namor or Krang, were actually involved in this incident. One has to wonder at the logic of involving Krang in the Marvel version of events anyway. Why would a water-breather would want to raise a sunken continent?

[128] The original Nine were an elite group of extremely long-lived individuals, mistakenly believed to be immortal by some historians. They were first brought to public attention in A Feast Unknown, The Mad Goblin and Lord of the Trees by Philip Jose Farmer. Although the Nine were immune from disease or poisons, possessed limited regenerative abilities and aged at the rate of 1 year per 300 they were still mortal enough to be killed by any extreme injury. The Nine’s extreme longevity was due to an elixir, the origins of which are discussed in Triple Tarzan Tangle and Triple Tarzan Revisited. Through the promise of a greatly extended life, they accrued several hundred followers who from various walks of life, many of whom were among the most wealthy and powerful individuals in the world. Even though many of the original nine were killed off during their struggle with Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith as described in Farmer’s trilogy, the group survived to carry on their traditions and maintain their influence. In the DC Comics the tale is given that the post crisis Lex Luthor made a deal with a demon named Neron who cured him of the terminal disease which afflicted him. In the comics when Luthor was dying of cancer his brain has been placed into a cloned body which then suffered from a rapid decay. The post crisis Lex Luthor was mostly modeled after the career of Alexis Luther. As will be explained in the The Lethal Luthors-A Deceptive Brilliance: Alexis Luther did not undergo a brain transplant but had been replaced by a duplicate. When Alexis Luther was dying of cancer, he did make a deal with the devil or rather a group of devils. Alexis Luther was the was given a chance to become a Servant of the Nine in exchange for the cure for his cancer, the regeneration of his hand and a long healthy life..

[129] Accounts differ on whether the Great Old One that works through the Crown is Tsathoggua or Nyarlathotep. Many accounts state that Set controls the Cobra Crown. Set is one of the names given to Nyarlathotep. Set is also attributed to be the god worshipped by the Serpent People of Valusia who had created the Crown. Yet in this case Set seems to have been a mistranslation of Tsathoggua. It is also unclear if perhaps if there were two crowns, one named the Cobra Crown and the other the Serpent Crown, each controlled by one of the two Great Old Ones or if there was but one crown controlled by one or the other Great Old One on some type of cycle.

[130] Tsathoggua and Nyarlathotep are two of the Great Old Ones and the Lord of R’lyeh, is Cthulhu who is said to slumber in the sunken city of R’lyeh

[131] The comic book account Captain America#180-183 (December 1974-March 1975) of this incident, in addition to referring to the resurgent Scorpia organization as the Serpent Society, also added in the character of Warlord Krang, an Atlantean. However if there was a counterpart of Warlord Krang in the Wold Newton Universe, he was not involved in this particular incident.

[132] This contact is symbolized in the Marvel Comic’s Marvel Team Up Vol. 1, No. 84 when Viper is rescued by Ishiro Tagara, The Silver Samurai. The Silver Samurai became Viper’s companion and lover. The Yakuza did provide Nena with some personnel, among them was a man with ninja training who wore power armor in the form of traditional Samurai garb. Whether or not this man and Nena were romantically involved has not really been determined.

[133] Silivo Manfredi’s term of service to Scorpia was depicted in Daredevil 120-125.

[134] Cavor’s trip to the moon was reported by H.G. Wells in The First Men in the Moon. Cavorite is also referred to as Nth metal in comic books published by DC Comics, particularly those featuring the first Hawkman. For a record of Cavorite or Nth’s metal discovery on earth, see http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/W/WellsHerbertGeorge/prose/firstmeninmoon/firstmeninmoon_02.html

.In the current Hawkman (Vol 4 2002-series), the psycho-reactive properties of Nth metal are being currently being explored. It has been revealed for instance that in addition to defying gravity, the Hawks can use Nth metal to increase their strength, stamina and speed up their healing process. Noted physicist Raymond Palmer has been studying Nth metal, not only as used by the Hawks but also by others, primarily Byth Rok and Carl Sands. Byth Rok was a former member of the Thanagarian Security forces who was also a drug dealer and smuggler. He became a metamorph through imbibing a pill. (Brave and Bold Vol. 1, No. 34, March 1961). The pill was more than a chemical compound however but an experimental nano-technology with nth metal as the base. Carl Sands was a thief who was contacted by Byth Rok, when Rok set up a criminal organization on Earth. Sands was given a Shadow vest, a Thanagarian device which was designed to make the wearer invisible for a short time. However Sands discovered that the vest allowed him to move into two dimensional space and thus able to travel with impunity in the three dimensional world. Despite this ability Sands was captured by the Hawks. However he claimed that he had gotten the technology from a crashlanded alien (Brave and Bold, Vol 1. No. 36, July 1961) rather than reveal his connection to Byth Rok.

Ray Palmer recently began looking at the Nth metal in conjunction with recent studies in physics, as noted in his published papers, “Preliminary studies of the “Nth Metal Also Known As Cavorite In Relationship To Quantum Gravity” Physics Review Volume 73, October 2002, “Nth Metal Interaction With Supersymmetrical Objects And Dimensions” Science, November, 2003 and “A Re-Appraisal Of Size And Mass Reduction And Enlargement In Light Of Continuing Nth Metal Studies”, Scientific American, April, 2004.

Without going into a great deal of detail, Palmer’s studied the properties of Nth metal as in relationship to current superstring theories. Palmer believed that the different effects of Nth metal could be explained if Nth metal were able to tap into or allow its users to tap into or use the energy and matter from the adjacent dimensions posited by the superstring theory. String theory which was developed partially as a response to why gravity is such a weak force as compared to the other forces of the electro-magnetic spectrum. The string theory posited that gravity bled into adjacent dimensions through a theoretical particle known as the graviton. Current string theory places 27 adjacent dimensions. Among the other particles in these adjacent dimensions is the fermion which is the building block of matter. Palmer theorized that Nth metal somehow used the medium of gravitons, the hypothetical elementary particle that transmits the force of gravity in most quantum gravity systems, to allow the person using the Nth metal, through the psycho-reactive connection, access to other dimensional space and particle. The Hawks were able to defy gravity, Shadow Thief was able to shunt his mass into other dimensional space and Byth Rok was able to shunt mass into other dimensional space and also use the building blocks of fermions to reshape his body as he imagined it. Palmer’s studies of the capabilities of Nth metal also hit close to home, as the more he studied the molecular structures of Nth Metal, he realized that the element (which had erroneously been called white dwarf star matter in the comic book versions of Palmers adventures) that he had been using for years to become The Atom was a form of Nth Metal. He believed that the Nth metal allowed him to utilize gravitons to shift matter back and forth through dimensional space. The way his ability functioned , although achieved through artificial means, was he believed, probably the explanation how natural shapeshifters, that is beings that changed shape and size through some innate power of their own shifted size and mass. Instead of an artificial conduit such as the Nth Metal, some people had a natural ability to tape into other dimensional space, possibly possessing the molecular equivalent of Nth metal in their genetic make up. Palmer believed that when most shapeshifters gained mass they attracted fermions from other dimensional space and convert it to bio-mass, when they decrease in mass they converted biomass into fermions and through the medium of gravitons shunt the extra mass into other dimensional space. Manipulation of gravitons also might explain how the people who reduced size such as Palmer, Henry Pym and Darrell Dane could retain their same mass and weight while miniaturized.

Palmer believed that this ability to use gravitons may also account for some shape shifters getting around the cube square law. These may also have the ability to control their specific gravity, thus larger beings could have the same mass and yet for the most part manipulate their gravity so that they are able to move about normally, they may be able to extend this field so that it appears that the gigantic beings are able to lift heavy objects. They may also be able to increase their specific gravity temporarily so that the when they need to the extra weight say in a fight or to break something they can do so without causing damage to the rest of their bodies. The ability of people who can fly without artificial aid or measurable psionic ability or who can increase gravitational pressure may also be related to manipulation of gravitons. Palmer believed that his discoveries of Nth Metal also explained how his colleague John Jones, the so-called Martian Manhunter had such variant abilities. For more on the String Theory see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory .

[135] Thyoph was a planet in our solar system that was destroyed by the fragment of a exploded star. Thyoph shattered from the impact and Thyoph’s planetary fragments became part of the asteroid belt. Thyoph’s human population, which had been taken from Earth and relocated to the distant past, had been evolved to the peak of human physical and mental ability through an artificial substance terraformed into the planet. Thyoph had been created by a group of beings called the Omni who were the descendents of Earth humans who had evolved into beings of pure energy. In order to ensure that humanity would eventually evolve into the Omni, the Omni had begun to create Preserves of Human population on many planets located throughout time and space. The various fragements of thyoph became known as thyophite. Thyophite or to call it by its more common name, Radium X, Most thyophite is in fact microscopic and takes on the properties of elements in which is its intermixed. It .has been discovered in minute amounts of various radioactive intensity throughout Earth's history although it was most often misclassified as similar terrestrial elements. Only sophisticated Geiger counters or microscopic examinations can detect thyophite. Thyophite’s is most commonly known for its affect on shapeshifters, its radiation can trigger a shift. The amount of Thyophite on the moon is vast and Thyophite radiations intensify when combined with solar radiation, thus the thyophite radiation flooding the earth during a full moon that triggers some forms of lycanthropy.

[136] Although Nena did not consciously realize it, her fascination with this particular project of her grandfather’s was a residual echo of her enslavement to the Cobra Crown. Those who were not immediately seduced and placed under control of the Great Old Ones, found that the Cobra Crown amplifies and multiplies the power of the human mind to affect the minds of other beings.

He who wears, if he knows the proper methods, can by the Crown’s power rule the minds of hundreds or even thousands of other beings. He can, for instance, drive a regiment of soldiers, utterly reckman [sic] of them be slain. He could dispatch a lion, a venomous serpent, or other deadly wild beast to seek out and destroy his enemy. None could stand against the wearer of the Cobra Crown. He could not be killed by ambush or assassination, for the Crown would convey to him the thoughts of the preparer of the deed, and none could get within catapult shot of him without coming under his governance.” (Conan the Bucaneer, Ace, 1968, p. 174)

From the moment she donned the Cobra Crown, Nena also had a fascination with snakes, a fascination she attributed to having taken over the Naga Cult.

[137]This cavorite that Nena Blofeld obtained was probably stolen from off of the interplanetary ship of the Nyctalope, which was a national Treasure of France. Nyctalope was Léo Saint-Clair or Jean de Sainte-Claire. He was a super-powered avenger who could see in the dark with his eerie yellow eyes and, as it was revealed later, sported an artificial heart. His adventures roughly took place between 1908 and 1940. In The King Of The Night (1923) by Jean La Hire the Nyctalope flew to Rhea, an unknown satellite of Earth, using a spacecraft patented by Dr. Cavor, and settled a war between its winged day-siders and night-siders. For more information on Nyctalope please see the Nyctalope entry at Jean-Marc Lofficier’s The French Wold Newton Universe

[138] J.B. Lu-Shi had been nicknamed Short-Round by Dr. Jones when Lu-Shi was a street waif in Shanghai. Lu-Shi was one of many Chinese Nationals who had left China when the Communists took power. He gained his initial wealth during the American Occupation of Japan and established export-import houses in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco.

[139] This incident was depicted in Marvel Team Up Vol. 1, No 74, October 1978

[140] In Marvel Team Up Vol. No. 84 April, 1979 the ring with the power crystal teleported Viper and the Silver Samurai directly into the SHIELD heli-carrier. While it is true that the ring could teleport, that is warp space by accessing other dimensional space, its range was very small. Also the Helio-carrier was invisible so teleporting would have been an almost impossible task. The Silver Samurai teleported inside the CIALD outpost from the distance of twenty feet.

[141] As discovered by Wold Newton researcher Matthew Baugh, The Black Widow was the daughter of Kent Allard, The Shadow and the lost Russian Princess Anastasia. The Shadow and Anastasia met in 1935 as recounted in The Shadow Strikes, Vol. 1. No. 1-4, DC Comics 1989. Why or how Natashia Romanov ended up in the Soviet Union is unknown.

[142] DC Comics portrayed him as Captain Boomerang

[143] The German American Bund was an organization of ethnic Germans living in the United States, was marked by a pro-Nazi stance. The German American Bund program included anti-semitism, strong anti-Communist sentiments, and the demand that the United States remain neutral in the approaching European conflict.

[144] Markus Bismaquer appears in the James Bond adventure entitled For Special Services by John Gardner.

[145] A drastically altered version of this story was presented in the James Bond comic strip with the episode title, “Operation Ragnarokk.”

[146] This too was depicted in the James Bond comic strip, as “Doomcrack,” in the London, Daily Star, February 1981.

[147] This sounds like a variation of the Black Lotus drug used by Kathulos and Fu Manchu, and by William Luthor

[148] Nena Blofeld’s final foray against James Bond was related in John Gardner’s, For Special Services, Berkley 1982.

[149] John Gardner, Role of Honor, Berkely, 1985.

[150] John Garnder, Nobody Lives Forever, Berkley, 1986.

[151] Deep within the remotest parts of Brazil, there exists a form of parasitic fungus which is known to grow only on one species of plant. The fungus is loaded with animal hormones and, through a virus, infects the plant. The virus takes over some of the plants cells and inserts its own viral genetic material, heavily lacing the leaves with animal proteins.

These proteins are responsible for growth, bone structure, exoskeletal physiology and skin maintenance. A huge influx of these proteins to any organism which eats the leaves causes dramatic physical changes as the virus introduces foreign genes into the hosts DNA. There are many examples of this happening in the earth based animal world, for example a salamander can turn into a frog through viral infection. These particular proteins cause a metamorphism in the animal, creating a chimera - a creature which is a combination of animals. Although known to a small group of researchers and scientists for years, the kothoga virus was brought to public attention after the Museum Murders in New York City in 1993 and the subsequent Subway Murders a year and a half later. The kothoga virus mutated a New York City Museum botanist named Whittlesey into a chimera, composed of reptilian and insect DNA. The Mbwun Beast, as it was called, needed a hormone similar to that secreted by the human hypothalamus and murdered people to get it. This was when the Museum Murders occurred. Dr. Frock was one of the leading evolutionary biologists in the world but he was suffering from a degenerative disease. He saw possibilities for a cure in the Mbwun or kothoga virus. His genetic tinkering led to a new infection of the virus among the homeless people living in the subways of New York City. These also murdered for the hypothalamus hormone.

[152] Other government agencies and some criminal enterprises were also researching this goal and using very similar methods.

[153] Why Nick Fury had to get yearly booster shots of the Infinity Formula and The Creator did not may be due slight differences in LMD and human physiology or else the Fury’s latent “immortality” was triggered in the William Luthor LMD

[154] Nick Fury Vs SHIELD Vo1. 1, No. 1 June 1988

[155] What Fury was doing during these years may be revealed in a planned article “’Zounds and Fury: the Lives of Nick Fury.”

[156] Nick Fury Vs SHIELD Vol. 1 No. 6 November 1988

[157] Nena and a few other of the surviving LMD’s were among the Creators more successful experiments. Splicing Fury’s Infinity Formula infused DNA into their structure extended their lives.

[158] In the comic book version of these events, (Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Vol. 2 1-6, September-December 1989) the aliens were depicted as a scholarly race that were infected by the mad hatred of Baron von Strucker. Their entire race had been so infected that it collectively wished to kill Nick Fury. However the alien Gnobians had sought Earth especially but their ship had been badly crippled by a ship of their enemy the Asgardians as they entered Earth’s system. What Marvel called the Gnobians were actually Goa'uld who had sought for Earth’s whereabouts for millennia. They arrived with a Goa'uld Queen and a Jaffa army. The Queen’s purpose was to reclaim the Earth for the System Lords by creating enough symbiotes to give her control of the planet. While it is true that Professor Schmidt informed Nick Fury of the awakening of the Queen and Jaffa from their sarcophagi,, the character called Werner von Strucker was a dramatic fiction.

[159] Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Vol. 2 No. 7-10 January-April 1990

[160] Myths, legends, beliefs and traditional stories from Africa, Majimaji, < http://www.a-gallery.de/docs/mythology.htm>

[161] Damballa is a god worshippied in Benin, Dahomey and the Caribbean. Portrayed in the form of a snake he is the embodiment of Love and fertility. Like many fertility gods his worship has often been twisted into devil worship, especially when malicious Elder Beings usurped his name and cults to gain worshippers as happened in the Hyborean Age as in "Red Moon of Zembabwei" Conan of Aquilonia, Carter and DeCampe, Ace Books

[162] Although it is not generally known, Maxwell Lord was the victim of an experiment by the insidious secret government agency known as The Shop. Lord exhibited the same sort of “push” as Andy McGee. See Firestarter by Stephen King for more information

[163] Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Vol. 2 , No 12-14, June-August 1990

[164] See the article Lethal Luthors-A Deceptive Brilliance: Lawrence Luthor for more details.

[165] Captain America Vol. 1. No.299-301 November, 1984-January 1985

[166] Captain America Vol. 1 No. 333 September, 1987 to Captain America Vol. 1 No. 350 February 1989

[167] Captain America Vol. 1, 370, May 1990

[168] In the comic book version the genetic material of Baron von Strucker had conjoined with the Deathspore virus thus enabling him to be revived. However if this was the case then all of the Scorpia agents trapped in the sealed dome with the Baron would also have been able to be revived. The Baron was thus not revived per se but duplicated. The rebirth of “Baron Von Strucker” was depicted, although in a vastly altered form in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Vol. 2 No. 20-23, February-May 1991 25-26 July-August 1991

[169] In the comic book version the Red Skull’s contact was Rosa Klebb. Rosa Klebb was the villainess of the James Bond case titled by Fleming From Russia With Love. Rosa Klebb perished in the course of that adventure. Therefore it was probably another Klebb. The existence of her son Erik was revealed in the James Bond case, Silent Armageddon, Dark Horse 1993.

[170] These events were depicted in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Vol. 2, No. 20-23, 25-26.

[171] In the Marvel Comics version of events (Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Vol. 2, No 25 it was the graduation class of SHIELD agents that was killed in an all out Hydra assault on SHEILD Central.

[172] The Janus Directive was a crossover storyline that appeared in the 1989 issues of Manhunter 14, Checkmate 15-18, Suicide Squad 27-30, Captain Atom 30, and Firestorm 86; all published by DC Comics in 1989.

[173] Depicted in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Vol. 2, No. 24. However for some reason (which is currently being researched and should be made clear in a forthcoming article on the formation of the Legion of the Strange by one of our colleagues) Marvel attributed the attacks to the Mandarin.

[174] Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Vol. 2, No.27-29 September-October, 1991

[175] In the comic book version the counter-agent seemingly negated the Infinity Formula in Fury’s body, causing him to age rapidly. Yet after a while the aging process reversed itself and it was discovered that Fury’s body now produced the Infinity Formula on its own and he was no longer dependent on yearly doses. However this was most probably a deliberate over dramatization of the incident. The rapid aging did not occur , although Nick Fury did go through a period where his regenerative process was compromised. This tactic actually alerted him to the fact that the Infinity Formula or Elixir had become part of Fury’s DNA and so Fury was freed of needing yearly doses of the Elixir.

[176] Blast From the Past, Playboy, January 1997. Serina did not consider the Nena Blofeld LMD to be her real daughter.

[177] Wolverine, Vol. 1. No. 125-129 June-October 1998

[178] As everyone knows, Marvel Comics published some fictionalized adventures of the Mack Bolan the Executioner as Frank Castle the Punisher. This incident was portrayed in Double Edge Omega Marvel Comics October 1995

[179] Lyta Trevor Munro was the daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. Lyta was also the wife of Arnold Munro. In Marvel Comics Fury’s place was taken by Sharon Carter, the former Agent 13, as depicted in Captain America Vol. 3, No. 31. Sharon Carter’s substitution for Lyta Trevor Munro was due to the pre-existing contractual agreements that Lyta Trevor-Munro had with DC comics. Lyta Trevor’s ancestry and career are discussed in the Wonder Woman article.

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