So, besides those 3 mini-series I bought during Hickman's Secret Wars, I also bought this one-shot. Probably because Marvel wasn't putting much else out I was interested in at the time. It starred the Agents of Atlas, who hadn't gotten much run in the previous 4 years, though this was written by Tom Taylor rather than Jeff Parker.
Like most of the tie-ins, this focused on a specific section of Doom's Battleworld, one Heinrich Zemo rules through constant, totalitarian oversight and control, with SHIELD as his police force. Atlas is a hidden cell fighting against Zemo, but their leader Jimmy Woo (rocking an eyepatch in this world) went missing after the last mission. So besides the exposition, it's a rescue mission story.
With only one issue, Taylor can't spare much focus for Namora or Marvel Boy. Gorilla-Man gets most of the page time, since he describes the mission where Woo went missing to SHIELD boss Phil Coulson (who's been secretly helping Atlas), and is the one who finds Woo. And since this is essentially a What If? story, Taylor can afford to do a few things Parker didn't. So we finally see the Gorilla-Man curse transferred (to Helmut Zemo, who Pugh draws as a psychotic-looking kid before he becomes a psychotic gorilla-kid.) And we see Venus return to her roots as a siren, leading Heinrich to his death.
Those Zemos, always falling off stuff.
Pugh's design for Zemo's realm, called Metropolitia, is a weird mix. SHIELD's HQ reminds me a bit of Jetsons' architecture, all curved lines and discs, while the vehicles hew to a sort of '50s aesthetic. Which maybe fits with the origins of some of the characters, especially the later idea of Jimmy Woo as sort of a super-spy. But the Metropolitia also has circles in the ground that seem to discharge huge bursts of fire or energy, so there's a bit of Apokolips there. The bits of the city and factories imply a closed-in place, though this place is nowhere near as dirty and drenched in shadows as Darkseid's turf. Zemo's home basically looks like a classic medieval castle, all mortared stone and wooden doors with barred windows.
It could be argued to fit the hodgepodge nature of Battleworld, plus Zemo's attempts to dress up 20th Century fascism with a veneer of the divine right of kings. He should rule, because he's Zemo and he's better. And he should get to have a goddess for a wife. But he rules through a repressive watchdog state that treats his subjects as guinea pigs (he has an army of Weapon Xs, which are just regular people that were experimented on and run around in the weird helmet and underwear from the Barry Windsor-Smith story), and he has to imprison and torture Venus' friend to have any hope of getting her to speak with him.
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