Ultimates 2 #8

Issue Date: 
November 2005
Story Title: 
Born On The Fourth Of July

Mark Millar (writer), Bryan Hitch (pencils), Paul Neary & Bryan Hitch (inks), Laura Martin (colors), Chris Eliopoulos (letters), Deborah Weinstein (production), Nicole Wiley & John Barber (assistant editors), Ralph Macchio (editor), Joe Quesada (editor-in-chief), Dan Buckley (publisher)

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Joe Simon & Jack Kirby (creators of Captain America)

Brief Description: 

Captain America has a discussing with Wasp, having heard the reports from the SHIELD spies that she’s sleeping with her ex-husband, Hank Pym, again. Janet tries to explain but Cap refuses to listen to her nonsense and runs out on her. He goes to visit Bucky and Gail, where he has a heart-to-heart talk to Bucky, who gives his old friend a hug in sympathy. Meanwhile, Nick Fury joins a search patrol investigating the murders at Hawkeye’s place. All of the Barton’s bodies have been found, except for Hawkeye’s. Fury also gets video pictures of the person responsible for all this: Captain America?! He leads a patrol of soldiers and also sends in the Ultimate Reserves to deal with the matter. Also, Natasha is accompanied by Quicksilver and Wanda, who help her pick out a wedding dress. Later, Bucky and Cap visit a graveyard and talk about old times. Suddenly, they are attacked by Fury and his men, who carry Bucky to safety and take Cap down. Fury no longer believes Cap is the real deal and now sees him as a traitor, and demands to know whom he’s working for. After this, both the media and the other Ultimates are informed about the shocking turn of events.

Full Summary: 

At Cap and Wasp’s place, Manhattan…

Janet wakes up alone in bed. She gets up and enters the living room, where she sees Cap on the balcony, thinking. She joins him and asks Steve how long he has been up. Cap, drinking some of his coffee, admits he never went to bed: he has just been out walking all night. He admits Nick Fury told him everything: about the drinks, the lunches… the fact that the two of them spent four hours alone in that apartment last week… Janet is shocked. Cap, ashamed, knows that Janet’s sleeping with Hank again. He explains that SHIELD considers Hank a security risk and have the whole thing on camera.

She sighs that’s just awesome. Cap is glad that at least Janet’s not denying it, however Janet claims that they were only talking. She and Hank have been married eight years, and that isn’t something you can just switch off. Cap turns around, asking Janet if she wants to know what he thinks. He thinks Janet hates herself so much she won’t allow herself to be happy. Somebody treats her nice for the first time in her life and she has to go and make an idiot of him. Janet doesn’t know what Steve is talking about. He hardly even speaks to her. He just sits there and reads his newspaper every night and plays his stupid old Bing Crosby records.

Cap asks if that’s a good reason to sleep with someone else. Hank put her in the hospital. He cracked the roof of her mouth open! Janet reminds Steve she already told him she isn’t sleeping with Hank… not yet, anyway. They quietly stare at each other. Cap jumps over the high balcony, ignoring Janet’s call to come back and also her apology. He lands on a roof below, and keeps jumping down to street side.

Hawkeye’s place, the suburbs…

Nick Fury, Betty and some SHIELD analyst s have gathered around the place and found the bodies of Hawkeye’s kids. One of them reports to Fury that only four bodies have been accounted for: Laura Barton and their kids Callmu, Lewis and baby Nicole. The exact location of Hawkeye’s body has yet to be determined, but bloodstains on the kitchen floor match his DNA profile. The guy asks Fury why he thinks they took Hawkeye’s body. Did they do it like some kind of trophy?

Fury is too shocked to say anything concrete. They asked him to be Nicole’s grandfather. He’s got the kid’s name tattooed on his shoulder. Everyone’s quiet for a while. Fury eventually asks to be patched through to SHIELD-EYE. He wants to see what the security cameras picked up in here. A woman reminds Nick she already told him it was a wet-job. Whoever these guys were, they snipped the wires before they fired a bullet. Fury asks Betty if she really thinks he just had one set of cameras in this place. He contacts SHIELD-EYE to go to Clint Barton’s file and picture-search the backup cams for the kitchen, hallway and upstairs bedrooms for one a.m. until two-fifteen.

Inside the SHIELD-EYE base, the troops do as told.

The woman is surprised Fury had cameras in the house he never told the Bartons about. Fury smiles that he’s got cameras in places she wouldn’t believe. An agent informs Fury he’s got Betty Ross on his phone for an update. He also asks Nick if he wants her to bring the rest of the team up to speed on all this. Nick doesn’t. He explains that the Ultimates don’t even hear about this until they know exactly what they’re dealing with. Strategic figures there’s a traitor in the ranks, so Hawkeye’s death stays full-time military until he gives the say-so.

The soldiers inside SHIELD-EYE report the pictures are coming through. Fury asks Agent Toffler what the situation is, and if there are any clear shots. With Toffler and the other soldiers just too shocked to answer when they see the pictures, Fury starts to worry a bit when he doesn’t a response.

Bucky’s place…

Cap visits Bucky and Gail. Bucky and Cap spend some time on the porch and drink a beer together. Bucky asks Cap again who Jan’s seeing now. Steve explains she’s seeing her ex-husband again; Giant Man. He doesn’t understand how she can even speak to a guy who beat her up every night. He doesn’t know what goes on in that girl’s head. He has tried to be a decent guy and put up with all her crude friends and weird TV shows, but nothing’s ever enough. All Janet wants to do is have these big, long discussions about “where we’re going as a couple” and he doesn’t even have a clue what she’s talking about half the time.

Steve apologizes to Bucky. He knows he’s got the family over for lunch and everything, but didn’t know who else to call. He starts to cry, admitting that he doesn’t know anybody else. He doesn’t even have other friends. Bucky quietly turns away. Inside the house, Gail stares at the two, quietly whispering that Bucky just has to hug the guy, and he does.

The Triskelion launching pad…

As Fury enters his helicopters, agents report they’ve got a position on their target. Recon says he’s with a civilian in Clinton Hill. Fury can’t believe they were this stupid. How could they just take this punk at his word when everybody else on the team gets six months of background checks? His companion thinks it’s because the guy showed up when they needed him most and wearing the flag on his chest. What were they supposed to think? Fury says he gets paid to be a pessimist. Believing in Santa Claus just cost his friend and his family their lives. He can’t believe what an idiot he was! The agent asks Nick if he’s sure he doesn’t want the Ultimates in takedown. Fury, holding his gun ready, reminds the soldier he said just the Ultimate Reserves.

Greenwood Cemetery…

Bucky jokes to Cap that, if he’s hanging around graveyards in his spare time, it’s no wonder he’s so depressed. Steve guesses he just hit an age where he knows more people under the ground than walking around on top of it. He asks Bucky if he remembers Artie Hollenbeck, that big, skinny guy. Bucky does: the guy looked exactly like Jimmy Steward and had the best singing voice he ever heard. Bucky smiles and admits he used to come down here every weekend after they were discharged. But as time went by, he showed up less and less, until he hardly got a chance to stop by at all. He tells Steve he knows how these things go… real life just gets in the way after a while.

Steve disappointed mocks that phrase doesn’t count for him. Staring at some graves, Cap feels he should never have been brought back to life. He thought he could fit in, but he can’t. He belongs in the ground with these poor guys. He doesn’t belong in this weird America. Bucky smiles and asks Cap if he ever saw the statue they put up for him in this cemetery. They had a memorial for him every year until the nineteen-sixties. Steve should have seen what great funeral he had… he would have sworn it was a funeral for a president.

Overhearing Bucky’s words, soldiers report to each other that Fury just gave them a green light.

Steve suddenly hears something and Bucky asks what’s wrong. On that moment, all of the Reserves show up out of nowhere and attack Cap! One of the Iron Men grabs Bucky who panics. Steve gets hit by tranquilizers and panics when he sees his friend being carried away. The Four Seasons hold Steve back and kick and punch him several times until he eventually falls on the ground. Fury shows up, and tells Cap he must have been laughing his butts off… Stark’s deep sea unit just happens to find him bobbing along in a big chunk of ice at exactly the same time SHIELD was putting a super-hero team together. He shouts that Cap and his buddies must have thought they were pretty stupid.

Cap, almost breathless, tells Nick he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His head feels so weird. Fury punches into Cap’s face with his gun. Fury holds Cap’s head straight up and points his gun to his mouth, shouting at him not to lie. He punches him down again. He orders the soldiers to get Cap back to the Triskelion before he loses his cool and puts a bullet in his head. He wants Cap taken apart until he gets the name, address and telephone number of whoever put him up to this. He still can’t believe they thought a punk like this was Captain America.

One of the Four Seasons mocks Cap, saying that with all those years floating around in a block of ice, they must have needed their heads examined, falling for all that nonsense. They’re going to fry Cap for what he did to Hawkeye’s family, and that he’s going to burn like Bruce Banner. Cap lifts up a tombstone and slams it into the Four Seasons faces! They try to get up and beat Cap down again, but he moves just too fast for them. The other soldiers think that’s impossible, as the guy’s got a pint of tetrodotoxin in him! Fury tells the soldier to shut up and just take Cap down!

Cap tries to fight his way through the soldiers and Reserves, and Fury asks Rocketman Two what he’s doing. He’s got a priority-one emergency down there! The Rocketman, already high up in the sky, says he’s just finding a little distance. Fury shouts at him to just shoot to kill, whatever it takes! They just can’t allow Cap to reach their chopper! The Rocketman gets a clear lock on Cap and fires his missile at him, taking him down.

At a brides shop downtown…

Natasha is busy trying a dress on. She gloats that she’s going to kill Janet for this. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to chooses a wedding dress on her sister’s recommendation when that woman dresses like a pole dancer. She also wants to know who invited Quicksilver, as this was supposed to be a girls’ thing only. Pietro jokes to his sister to listen Natasha, wondering if this is just pre-wedding nerves or if she has simply realized how ridiculous her thick, Russian ankles look in that puffball of a dress. Wanda, ignoring her brother, answers her cell phone and stares in shock at it. Pietro notices this and asks Wanda what’s going on.

Stark International…

Tony is in a meeting. A general tells Stark he’ll be frank with him: they can turn a blind eye to the Iron Man suits, but they have it on good authority that he’s assembling a military warplane at his Nevada base. He demands to know why a private citizen would be assembling a plane that’s five years ahead of anything the United States Air Force is developing. Tony’s secretary approaches her boss and whispers something in his ear, leaving Tony thinking.

At a bar…

Janet, carrying some bags, approaches Hank and informs him she finally did it: she walked out on Steve. Hank tells her to be quiet, as he wants to hear the news. A female reporter standing outside Clint Barton’s home reveals that leaked reports suggest that a multiple homicide has taken place there and that Hawkeye, his wife and all three of his children were brutally murdered. Betty next confirms in a press meeting that they are aware that they have a security issue and that an incident did indeed take place at Hawkeye’s home last night, but at the moment she’s unwilling to confirm Captain America’s involvement in this matter and investigations are still underway. Janet and the other bar patrons are all shocked.

The graveyard…

Captain America is down. One of the Rocketmen stands triumphantly over his unconscious body and reports they’ve got him. Nearby Cap is the statue placed in his honor, which has a golden plaque on it reading “In memory of Steve Rogers, Captain America, who gave his life for the lives of his countrymen.”

Characters Involved: 

Black Widow, Captain America, Iron Man, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Wasp (all Ultimates)

Four Seasons, Giant Men, Rocketmen (all Reserves)

Nick Fury

Betty Ross

Bucky & Gail

Various SHIELD soldiers (Toffler and unnamed others)

Various people present at Tony Stark’s meeting (all unnamed)

Various citizens and reporters (all unnamed)

Story Notes: 

There are also special thanks to Andrew Currie, but it isn’t mentioned in the credits what he provided for the issue.

Included in this issue are a few preview pages for the first issue of “Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos.”

Captain America was found in a big chunk of ice in Ultimates (1st series) #2 and everyone immediately assumed he was the real deal. Hank Pym fighting his now ex-wife Janet can be found in Ultimates (1st series) #6.

The warplane the general mentions Tony Stark is building could be a future introduction of the Quinjet, a planet the Ultimates’ counterparts use in the 616-universe as a transport vehicle.

Issue Information: 
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