SHIELD
is cleaning up Scorpio’s lair while Nick Fury asks his LMD (later known as
Max Fury) about the circumstances of the death of his brother Scorpio; Max declines
to provide details. Jack Norriss airs his grievances against Fury who responds
by offering Norriss a job with the company. Moon Knight explains to Nighthawk
how he survived the villain’s death trap (in issue #48): by emptying the can of
beer Scorpio gave to him and controlled breathing of the air reserved….
In
Russia, Dr. Tania Belinsky realizes that her Soviet captors are not going to
Moscow but heading away from the city. She is told they are taking her to the
one known as Codename: Sergei….
In
Manhattan, Kyle Richmond advises Valkyrie to attend college to learn more about
American culture and make new friends. He gives her the name of his contact and
drops her off at Empire State University. She enters to learn that Kyle’s
contact has been dead for years and she is subjected to a serious runaround
through college bureaucracy because she doesn’t know what she’s doing and grows
angry….
Meanwhile,
Kyle has arrived at his office building to discover the place surrounded by the
SWAT team; Police Lt. Kris Keating tells him there is a supervillain holed up
inside. It’s a robber called the Ringer and soon Nighthawk has entered to face
the villain…who hurls constricting rings around the hero which tighten,
crushing his jet pack and causing him to crash to the ground. Ringer justifies
his crimes by claiming that Kyle Richmond became rich through exploiting his
employees. He blasts Nighthawk with more rings and tries to escape….
Jack
Norriss returns to Defenders headquarters looking for his “wife” Valkyrie. But
he finds only Patsy “Hellcat” Walker who
flirts with him and takes him out for a “lovers’ walk”….
Ringer
and Nighthawk continue to fight with he bad guy taunting the good guy as a
hypocrite, fighting crime because of a love of violence and a lust for hero
worship. Ringer links his rings into a chain and whips the hero but then he
discovers he has run out of rings. The baddie leaps out of the window and
Nighthawk swings his ring chain at him, entangles him and slams him into a wall.
Kyle departs, thinking about his life….
Elsewhere,
Jack tells Patsy about his struggles to give up his wife Barbara, who is not
Valkyrie, who merely resembles Barbara. Hulk drives off the cops trying to stop
him from eating a hot dog vendors wares. Val sits at a coffee shop, fuming
about her miserable experience at the university. She is approached by Dollar Bill
and his pal Ledge; to cheer her up they offer to take her to the movies,
surprised that she claims to have never seen a movie. As they walk toward the
theater, several paces behind them, a fat man tosses some litter on the ground
and is immediately clobbered by a pipe-wielding figure in an alley, soon to be
introduced as…Lunatik….