Captain America # 325 1987 Slugfest pg 21 by Paul Neary & John Beatty

Captain America #325 January 1987
"Slugfest" Page 21
Ink over pencils on Marvel Comics board
Pencils: Paul Neary
Inks: John Beatty (Signed lower right)
Letters: Diana Albers
Writer: Mark Gruenwald

After receiving a distress call concerning Nomad, Captain America rushes to Miami to help his former partner fight the Slug. Nomad and Cap sneak on board the Slug's ferry and then the free-for-all begins!

Captain America's former sidekick, Nomad, returns! And Captain America is faced with one of the most difficult decisions of his career when he learns Nomad is out to kill Miami's biggest drug dealer, the Slug!

Jack Monroe/ Nomad

Jack was born the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Jack grew up in a town of Nazi sympathizers, and he and his sister were beaten by their parents. Jack secretly grabbed a swastika armband from his father's collection and took it to school for 'show and tell'. He was taken to the principal's office and the FBI was alerted. Most of the town was indicted as traitors and executed. Jack buried these memories, and began to idolize Captain America.

While at school he met a professor who shared his views -the man who would become the Grand Director. The man explained that he found a Super Soldier Serum formula from the notes of an SS spy. Hearing that the Red Skull (actually an impostor using the name) had taken hostages, 'Steve' and Jack injected themselves with the formula and began calling themselves Captain America and Bucky. However, the formula left them mentally unstable. They were captured by the real Captain America (Steve Rogers), Falcon and Sharon Carter, and placed into cryogenic stasis. They were broken out a handful of times but easily recaptured. Eventually after extensive rehabilitation, Jack was allowed to go out in public again.

He was taken in as a partner of Captain and took the name of Nomad, one of Cap's old identities. Later he struck out on his own as a vigilante. He usually associated with the homeless. Finding a small girl abandoned by a prostitute mother, he named her as his 'Bucky.' He continued to fight Neo-Nazi forces. On one occasion he learned a corrupt senator was a survivor from the same town Jack grew up in. He stopped the senator and Agent Axis, but there was an explosion that knocked him into a coma.

Jack Monroe is an early retcon. The character's original appearances from the 1950’s were written as James Buchanan Barnes, the first Bucky. It was Marvel editorial that decades later would distance the iconic Captain America and Bucky from the rabid anti-Communist stories from that era by creating Jack Monroe and the Grand Director as a result.

Side note the color guide for this page shows the last minute changes that were made to the page before the book went to print.