Background

One World Under Doom

During her recent tenure as chairperson of the Avengers, Carol Danvers entered a reluctant partnership with Kang the Conqueror to stop a series of high casualty events he called The Tribulation Events. One such event was The Blood Hunt, where a vampire cult known as The Structure would successfully summon the spirit of Varnae, the first vampire, into the body of Blade, the Daywalker. As Blade, Varnae would continue using Atlantean magic to turn darkforce users into fonts of darkforce blocking out the sun, allowing for eternal night and vampire supremacy. The sun touched no part of the Earth but Latveria. Doctor Strange travelled to Latveria to request Doctor Doom’s help clearing the skies on the rest of the planet. Doom claimed he would need the title of Sorcerer Supreme in order to enact such powerful magic. Doom promised to return the title once the world was saved. Believing Doom to be a man of his word if nothing else, Strange transferred the title and vestments to him. Thus, Doom cleared the skies but refused to return the title due to the Earth not being “saved” to Doom’s standard.

Doom would go on to install himself as World Emperor, gaining public support by forcing education and medical care to be free and destroying much of the terrorist organization, Hydra. Over time, cracks in Doom’s promises start to show and when it was revealed that Doom was avoiding paying the price of his magic by forcing residents of Latveria, including women and children, to pay it for him, the public finally turned on him. The Avengers confronted him in battle but were no match for him. Unfortunately, Valeria Richards, the only living person Doom truly cared for, was mortally wounded in the battle. Doom searched the cosmic hierarchy for a being willing to trade his life for hers, which he does in the Living Tribunal.

At this time, Thor was killed by Loki and resurrected on Earth as Sigurd Jarlson, an amnesiac Eastern European immigrant in New York City. This is part of a larger scheme by Loki which has not been fully explained. This caused Midgard to be cut off from the other nine realms. The Asgardians are once again just stories of ancient Earth. Doctor Strange, who had fled to Asgard to study new magics that could steal the Sorcerer Supreme title back from Doom, was trapped there. In his absence, the Sorcerer Supreme title was transferred to the Scarlet Witch.

Superhuman Borders Act

In the wake of Doom’s death, Latveria fell into a state of civil unrest. Multiple revolutionary groups were in constant battle for power. As a result, the United Nations passed the Superhuman Borders Act, which stopped anyone with superpowers or advanced technology from entering Latveria to help stop the civil unrest. It granted an exception to “enhanced soldiers” employed by United Nation members. This resulted in two different US backed task forces searching for weapons of mass destruction that Doom may have been hiding and stopping them from falling into the wrong hands.

One agency was the newly revived SHIELD, a CIA task force led by Nick Fury Jr. It included a multinational team of enhanced spies and soldiers including Captain America and Russia’s Red Widow. The other team was a U.S. military team led by Thunderbolt Ross. Ross was a prisoner of war by World Emperor Doom and despite his aggressiveness towards the country, his knowledge of its area during his escape from captivity was seen as a positive. Unfortunately this led to a confrontation between Red Hulk and Captain America over the weapons.

Additionally, a super soldier received a power upgrade. David Colton, who had a short-lived career as Captain America during the War on Terror, was fatally injured while trying to shut down super soldier programs across the country. To save his life, Wolverine, who was investigating the same super soldier program, used the contents of an origin box to revive Colton, granting him new powers. Origin boxes were used on Earth-6160 by the world’s Tony Stark to return superpowers and weapons that were stolen from their rightful owners by The Maker, Earth-1610’s Mr. Fantastic. He had used time travel to remake Earth-6160 into his ideal world. Some of these origin boxes made it to Earth-616 thanks to Miles Morales, although it is unclear how this particular origin box came to Earth-616. At the time, it was also not clear who the rightful owner was or what the full suite of powers Colton had received.

Reading List

• One World Under Doom story arc
• Red Hulk's imprisonment and escape during One World Under Doom
• Red Hulk's search for Latverian weapons
• Captain America's search for Latverian weapons
• Miles Morales' adventure on Earth-6160
• Dave Colton's mission against super soldier programs