The Human Rocket, The Scientist, And The Killer Robot

Recently, I put in an order for some trading card sets. I get that bug occasionally, and this time I indulged. So pretty soon I had the complete Marvel Universe sets 1, 2, and 4, to go along with 3 which I already had.

I was flipping through Series 4, and I reach this set of characters I don't really know. I guess they were from a Marvel UK line, or something to that effect. I remembered seeing Motormouth pop up in Peter David's Incredible Hulk run at some point*, and I may have seen some of the others at some point, but they weren't ringing many bells. I'm looking at the back of Death's Head II's card, and first I see it's name is "Minion". An unimaginative name, but OK. Then I see it's origin.

'Cyborg created by Dr. Evelyn Necker of A.I.M. in the year 2020.'

The name rings a bell. Fortunately, I'm in the same room as all my comics, so it's over to Nova, and yeah, there's a Dr. Eve Necker working for Project PEGASUS. A Dr. Necker whose pet project is a series of defense robots titled Project Minion. A Dr. Necker who is an A.I.M. mole placed within PEGASUS.

Then it took a few minutes poking around online to learn that hey! Death's Head II's series was an Abnett/Lanning joint. The Internet's great for random stuff like that, you know? Otherwise, I'd either have to travel to a comic store (about an hour both ways) and hope they had back issues (or employees) that could enlighten, or suffer in the cold shadows of uncertainty.

It's not something I was expecting, for a trading card from '94 to add another angle to a series I greatly enjoyed that came out 15 years later. I'd have to read DHII's series to see her motivations for the project at that time, but it'd be interesting whether her experiences with Richard Rider changed her (for better or worse**), or if the experience of seeing what her 'bots could do with a little Nova Force and the Worldmind guiding them spurred her on.

Maybe it changed nothing, just one more strange experience she had during the years she worked on her project, but no particular significance.

* It was #409. Thanks Grand Comics Database!

** Rich was a good guy around her, but he also turned down her offer to help because she worked for A.I.M., regardless of the fact it was Eve, and not A.I.M. offering to help. Assuming we take her offer at face value, and DnA didn't give me any reason to doubt her sincerity.