One of the tossed-off lines in the MCU that’s always going to stick with me is when, in the first Avengers movie, Tony Stark remarks that he’s, “kind of the only name in clean energy right now.” The MCU never really returned to that idea, at all, and I really wish it had. I get that the point of the Marvel movies is not to make pointed observations about the state of the world today – except in the broadest possible way – but I’ve always felt that one of the points Marvel Comics have tried to make, from their inception, is that there are so many different ways to work to save the world. Punching aliens and robots and madmen bent on global domination are very public ways to do this work, yes, but opportunities abound to work to make things better. The computerized national tipline that Captain America established during Mark Gruenwald’s time writing his adventures, or Rick Jones’ Teen Brigade, Aunt May’s volunteerism, Sam Wilson’s social work… The list goes on and on!
Given that I started making this comic in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to find ways to engage my stories with the global crisis affecting the lives of nearly ever person on the planet. With the incredible resources that genius billionaire/monarch superheroes like Iron Man and the Black Panther have at their disposal, one would imagine they could contribute to fighting the pandemic in a substantial way! Hawkeye offhandedly mentioned that the Avengers had already been vaccinated, in an earlier comic, but heroes wouldn’t stop at protecting themselves. Manufacturing and distributing vaccines is an obvious way to work to save the world!
Taking a cue from King T’Chaka’s declaration that Wakanda would step out of the shadows in Captain America: Civil War, it made sense that the most technologically advanced nation on Earth would get to manufacturing vaccines for a global pandemic ASAP, and distributing them wherever they were needed! It also makes sense that dastardly villains would be trying to steal those vaccines, so, here we are!
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