Chapter 1: How to Live to Be Thirty
In his 130 years, Karl Kaufmann had found Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to be ever a satisfactory place to dwell, although he had been deceased for over a century. Literally a phantom, Karl—the legendary Phantom Eagle—had intermittently returned to his hometown over the generations.
In late 1895, the kid Karl arrived in Oshkosh. He was born in the Nordheim neighborhood near Gruenwald Avenue to upright Eltern, German parents. They were intrepid immigrants who had fled northern Germany, having been devout Catholics in distinctly Protestant Hamburg. Father and mother wanted only the best for their son, so they sent him down Sawdust City's Main Street to the classy downtown. There, Karl attended St. Mary's parochial school at the corner of Boyd Street and Merritt Avenue.
Kaufmann's specter stands at that corner currently, and he considers his old elementary still standing after six score of years. It is an apartment complex now, but it is the same solid stone building erected to last in an earlier era. Stolid, stoic Karl steps off the curb before a "saloon", a bar calling itself that, to cross Boyd. Behind the bogey, the bar's bay window has Halloween art advertising beer. Two blocks west, another bar calls itself a "saloon". Both have been saloons, bars, drinking establishments for over a century at their present locations, here in Limbal Oshkosh. They are the old haunts of Phantom Eagle's childhood, and he skulks in their vicinity now.
Next to the past St. Mary's school stands a big courtyard in which youth used to play until recent times. As the sun sets, towering St. Mary's church sends a broad shadow like a veil over the vacant space, and Karl envisions Paula Jackson (see Marvel Super-Heroes #16), the apple of his eye in his adolescence. She lies long-gone in a Catholic cemetery, historically segregated from the city's main, on the shores of Lake Butte des Morts, a league away. Prim, pretty Paula was an "American" girl who courted Irish boys such as Rex Griffin, Karl's friendly lifelong rival, and "Dutch" fellows such as Deutch descendent Karl Kaufmann. Blithesomely, the Yankee lass, legitimate American of her time, and the immigrant boys, outsiders around 1910, used to dance the evenings away inside the school and community center's ballroom. Eventually, Paula and Rex were engaged. Soon after, Griffin died while aiding the Phantom Eagle against an invading German airship over the Atlantic States. A plum period later, Paula passed too.
But, the church still stands. It has since the nineteenth century. At that time, St. Mary's was to be the entire area's cathedral, and it has such presence. The great stone edifice spans almost an entire city block along Munroe Street, and its precipitous roof reaches well above the surrounding residences. As Karl strolls past, the stone steps of St. Mary's seemingly invite him in to visit the interior. However, the phantom figure only fixes his admiring gaze upon the gorgeous and wide stained-glass rose window momentarily. Then, he wanders west toward the setting sun and Oshkosh's Main Street.
Sometimes, when you have had a bird's-eye view of WWI battle, when your biplane systematically obliterated Silesian brutes who were someone's babies, when your bombs blew bodies to bits and your bullets butchered boys to their biers, when bounteous blood blackens your very being, you shouldn't bend knee before the Blessed Mother—unless to beg forgiveness.
Parish priest Fr. Coza (see Thor #303) wanders from the rectory aways away from Merritt and watches some weird wraith wash into Wednesday's receding rays and vanish. The sight does not ruffle a religious man who once met Manhattan's Mighty Thor, ersatz god, but the reverend does wonder what wayward marvel he witnesses: the righteous or the wicked.
Instantly, the Phantom Eagle appears outside an old abandoned building—although passerby cannot see him. A former pharmacy's wide front window is papered-over with yesterday's news. Above, dingy windows age amidst crumbling brick and flaking lead paint of an ugly, green hue.
Ghost Kaufmann takes a period to consider his reflection in the plate glass. He remembers standing on this spot, before this building, circa 1915. His Eagle alter ego was only beginning then, and he was very much alive. Post-adolescence, Karl and his adventurous spirit had discovered the nascent enterprise of flight, launched only a decade previous. This new contraption the airplane captivated Kaul's consciousness and imagination, and he cottoned to it as the career by which he would make his fortune. Therefore, with the bully gumption of Teddy Roosevelt, gallant Karl formed an exhibition group (soon to be called a "flying circus") doing stunt flying (soon to be called "barnstorming") that entertained all the Midwest from Missouri to Michigan with their moxy.
Somewhere around this time, the U.S. War Department queerly came calling to eastern Wisconsin. The elder Kaufmanns—and German buffs like them—were of interest to Uncle Sam after events of (July) 1914 initiated upheaval. Patriotic to the core, the recent immigrants returned to the Fatherland to clandestinely correspond with their curious American counterparts. Pres. Woodrow Wilson would have them monitor the situation in Europe.
Soon enough after, in 1917, America entered WWI. And, Karl eagerly volunteered for the Army, as young men do early in war. His trusty mechanic Curly Anderson accompanied him into the Air Service out east. They built the Phantom Eagle's customized Bristol F.2B biplane that, God willing, would bring baneful death upon American and Allied enemies, the Central Powers. They designed Karl's aquiline costume complementing his plane's eagle element, and seamstress Sarah Rogers of Brooklyn sewed it. By kid Kaufmann's insistence, he needed a secret identity for two reasons. For one thing, his folks operated in the lion's den of Hohenzollern Germany, and they could not be the target of reprisals—for Karl's costume's second raison d'être. Young Kaufmann figured that—with such fantastic flying ability—he would soon be the foremost fighter pilot of the conflict. He did not need Cap. Karl Kaufmann to be a famous name. Rather, he wished for the ace Phantom Eagle to be infamous amongst the enemy.
Phantom Eagle took off from there. He downed devious Cap. Werner Karlson audaciously delivering his Fokker-flying "sky-dogs" to Long Island Sound by dirigible and dispatching them upon U.S. interests. Then, the Phantom flew reconnaissance all the way down over Argentina after U-boats attacked there. Lucklessly, he got lost and crash-landed in the Savage Land (see Skaar: King of the Savage Land #5). Eventually, beneficent British forces rescued him and returned him to Allied service. Serendipitously, der fantastische Adler, as adversaries knew him, encountered the Incredible Hulk when some time machine tossed the Green Goliath briefly into the Great War (see Incredible Hulk #135). Afterward, the astounded American was sure that he had now seen everything—from Doyle's Lost World to Stevenson's Mr. Hyde in real life. Back in Great Britain, Phantom Eagle formed the extraordinary Freedom's Five with gentlemen Union Jack, Crimson Cavalier, Sir Steel, and Silver Squire (succeeded by Iron Fist), and Karl encountered the even stranger. The courageous quintet combatted Baron Blood and his vampiric brood a bunch of times (see Invaders #7) before battling belligerent Barsoom colonizers (see All-New Invaders #12) from a Burroughs book.
Throughout the war, Freedom's Five fought the fray upon the fields of France and distinguished themselves.
It was soon the autumn of '18, and the American avenger slipped into Germany to deliver his dear folks from hostile territory where the espionage agents had bravely abided for four fraught years. Like an angel, the Eagle would deliver them the great, dangerous distance from Hamburg to Alsace. And, after that, all would live happily ever after in Oshkosh or Omaha or anywhere in the Land of Opportunity.
However, honorable Hermann von Reitberger, solid Saxon soldier, could not allow the reviled Phantom Eagle and his wretched Eltern to escape after their efforts extinguished so many German lives. Such would be obscene. So, informed by the Kaiser's intelligence, and with the Almighty on his side, aviator assassin and enemy ace von Reitberger went to slaughter the Kaufmann family like sleazy curs. And, he did. From above, machine gun rounds riddled the trio ruinously raw red and dropped them dead on European earth.
Upon von Reitberger, a curse resulted (see Ghost Rider #12). A week later, rife with righteous wrath, Phantom Eagle rose from the Ruhr Valley soil as a revenant ghost. You see, the wish for revenge had so raised him. His bullet-ridden biplane roared to life, and Phantom Eagle rode like a witch over the Rhineland hunting von Reitberger around Halloween 1918. For the next fifty years or so, the wraith haunted hexed and vexed Hermann wherever he would run in Europe or elsewhere. Ultimately, Phantom Eagle ended the haunting and Hermann von Reitberger in the Sonoran Desert of south Arizona. Aptly, the Spirit of Vengeance—Ghost Rider—witnessed the resolution execution. As did Reitberger's blood relative Joel Tanner. Karl killed his grandfather right in front of him. And, Karl Kaufmann then parted ways with his counterpart Johnny Blaze, one Alastor in his airplane and the other on his motorbike.
After that event, people, super and otherwise, have rarely seen Phantom Eagle. By magic means, Dr. Strange or Thor have briefly met him maybe a couple times. Other than that, eidolon Karl has kept to the ether and to himself. Except when visiting Oshkosh or other old haunts for good reason.
Phantom Eagle steps through the display window of the abandoned apothecary. His immaterial body rattles not a sliver of glass or a splinter of wood. Wheeling around, he glances straight through the yellowing paper covering the pane and peruses the passers-by on North Main Street. They are mostly college students from Oshkosh's enduring institute of higher learning, established 1871. They are downtown to get inebriated, drunk, and silly. Fun bars operate adjacent to the forsaken drugstore.
Phantom Eagle prays that the youth live to know thirty. He never did. While yet alive, Cap. Kaufmann got a comprehensive view of war's carnage. Once dead, he pursued grievous revenge for a half-century. For the fifty years since the '70s, Karl's company has been too often but demons, the damned, dolorous memory, missed delights, the darkness of oblivion, the occasional necromancer, and intermittent existential duty. Phantom Eagle wouldn't wish his afterlife—or in part exceptional life—on anyone. Especially not the "innocents" and idealists ambling about Main Street on an October eve. As they pass, eagle eyes see them, but they cannot see a phantom of the future. To them, his old ghost is invisible. Karl wishes that circumstances could stay that way although he knows that, one day, an era's young will be old souls too—the Almighty willing. However, before then, may youth live to be thirty.
The past soldier pivots back to the musty derelict's interior and continues his mission. He moseys between fixtures filthy with dust along aisles covered with deteriorating tiles. On the perimeter, display cases and carpeted sections likewise wear lint like a shroud. Walls have the paint patterns popular in a past time, previous even to when the place closed its doors. With a patter, rainwater drips through the stained and unclean ceiling, for there is an "aquafer" on the unattended roof (both its gutters and tar are long neglected) overhead. Some mice move about the morose remains.
Floating over the foul critters, Phantom Eagle slides right at the main service counter with its racks of expired opioids and other pharma. There is a louvered closet door near the empty card section and quieted food coolers. Like haze, Kaufmann can flow through the slats. Inside, he finds papers piled high in yellowing cardboard boxes complementing the central sloppiness of this store's whole scene.
In the walk-in's back, there is a door left with the mortice key still in it. It opens as if of its own accord, and an apparition ascends the staircase behind the peeling pine door. The rotten steps are barely fit for human foot, but Eagle is a man with no meaningful mass anyway. His boots blithely bound upward.
The brief trip really takes Karl back to his boyhood a century and some ago. Back then, the current closet was the mudroom before Bellis Chemical Company, and teenaged Kaufmann worked there for boss Bellis. Anthony Bellis was originally from up-north in Marathon County where he had encountered some controversy with his family's servant girl (see Vampire Tales #4), rumored ravished. After her death, which he discussed rarely and reticently, Anthony took his share of pa Martin Bellis' fortune, following Martin's mysterious death supposedly via a (vengeful) vampiress, and opened the chemical company in Sawdust City, as Oshkosh was and is known, providing solvents, seals, and stains to the local lumber industry.
Near 1910, Mr. Bellis hired a "Dutch" boy to do translations, for Anthony corresponded often with a German aristocrat in Zeulniz, Saxony. Baron Heinrich Zemo had a superb adhesive upon which he worked. He needed North American components for his experimentation. He also appreciated American expertise, the nation's noted industrial know-how, so he did not mind sharing notes.
KRA-BOOM! Failing plaster falls from the second-floor ceiling. It surprises Karl. For a split second, Phantom Eagle is spooked. But, the mishap rouses Kaufmann from reverie, which is good on a mission.
The brick building's upstairs has been abandoned for decades longer than the downstairs. The second floor is a decrepit crypt with drab walls of moss green, dilapidated wooden shelving, drooping plaster, drizzling dust, dripping dirty water, and general debris such as hanging lights that dropped and shattered long ago. Cap. Kaufmann marches through the mice leavings of the dump to a stout sliding barn door.
The door's rusty, decorative plate reads 1920. That is the year that it was installed here in Bellis labs. Laughing a little, Karl considers how he was already about two years dead when this ingress was installed. Amused a bit more, apparition Eagle understands that it has endured physically far longer than he did, dying in his twenties and all.
Oh well. Phantom Eagle walks right through the solid, sustained bulwark into the storage and receiving area beyond. In the wide room's corner, a rickety rolltop remains on its last legs. Herr Kaufmann roams to said desk and raps a huge hole in its rotten side. Stooping, he reaches within the desk's darkness while wishing for a lantern. However, Eagle needs not the auxiliary illumination, for his hand fatefully finds his want right away.
The ghost's glove withdraws a girthsome tome grievously degraded by silverfish and time, and he brings it before his goggles. Anthony Bellis' primary record book almost glows like a grail before Karl's piqued eyes. Intent Phantom Eagle dares crack the grimy pages, stuck together, causing brittle glue to crumble from the cracking spine. The spirit smiles upon spotting what he seeks. Sure enough, certain moldering letters sit pressed between leaves of cursive scrawl left by fountain pen. The cursive is, of course, Boss Bellis'. The epistles, of course, originate in Germany.
Phantom Eagle fetches the folio this night before something foul this way comes. Forsooth, Cap. Karl Kaufmann came out Eternity's ether to execute this extraction operation.
Old soldier Kaufmann about-faces to look at the large, unwieldy barn door. To the naked eye, invisible digits undo the gate's internal latch, and incredible powers slide the rusted resistant slab screeching aside. Phantom Eagle walks into the west toward the waning sunlight shining through the ruin's dirty cobwebbed windows. The ethereal aviator pulls the prized ledger into the astral plane with him and prances proudly outside above Main Street, an ace ever exhibiting a devil-may-care attitude. Standing erect in mid-air, smirking Karl eyes Oshkosh evening traffic one story beneath his boots. A high wraith watches cars wend south over a bridge above the Fox River and north toward his old home of Nordheim, and an antique American is amused at what the automobile has all become. The ardent patriot admires his country's endless innovation.
Angling soles southwest, the centenarian sentry soul ambles toward other admirable fruit of the Industrial Age along Sawdust City's outskirts.
In no time, Phantom Eagle alights outside the EAA Museum four miles yon. EAA stands for "Experimental Aircraft Association", and the organization's base of operations does house newfangled flyers. However, the museum also has vintage vertical conveyances such as space program craft, retired combat "copters", an authentic Millenium Falcon model, a faux Fantasti-Car, a quasi-Quinjet, ersatz Iron Man armor, pre-1903 plane prototypes, WWII warbrids, and—oh yeah—a certain Bristol F.2B biplane from WWI. Famously, the Phantom Eagle, local icon, flew it until his untimely death an age ago.
Six o'clock reads the clock hanging on the exhibit hangar wall. The museum has been closed for an hour, and straggling site staff are few. Seemingly, a poltergeist and pilot has the whole place to himself so that he may pop into his plane and depart. Thus, Phantom Eagle does so. He salutes cut-outs of fellow local champions and native sons Quasar and Aviore on the way out.
Sans fuel, the Bristol starts—silently with propellers making not a sound. Sans substance, the eerie airplane accelerates for the hall's walls and windows, but it unnaturally shatters neither. Outside, Eagle takes off for the October sky while invisible to any I-41 traffic or nature trail trekkers passing by. And, he takes Heinrich Zemo's letters with him.
Hours later, the latest Baron Zemo sits in an auto behind a certain forsaken pharmacy in an underlit and unmaintained parking lot off State Street, just east of Oshkosh's Main. He eyes the building's graffitied steel backdoor in its grimy brick façade. Some hooligans have tagged it. Laser pistol on one hip and long dagger on the other, Helmut Zemo doubts that he need worry about them or the police if he encounters such.
But, fortunately for thug or cop, the Master of Evil is unlikely to meet them at all. This spot in downtown Oshkosh has mostly but abandoned buildings. A newspaper's shuttered HQ and a closed textile factory occupy four idle acres. In the vicinity, other businesses have closed just for the night. Atop taverns, a few "humble" apartments overlook the parking lot, but those "humble" folks are likely humble and wise enough to ignore an 11 p.m. break-in.
Helmut hops-out and hastily heads across worn asphalt. Beside the backdoor, there sits a recess and an open dumpster with an open bottom rusted through by age. Baron Zemo hopes that nothing spooky—such as alley cat or rabid rat—springs from the blackness. Although, he has habitually battled Captain America, has consistently associated with every monster from vampires to giants, has conned the Commission on Superhuman Activities, has audaciously outwitted the Elders of the Universe, has enthralled Arnim Zola and minions with alacrity, has usurped Bagalia Island from Max Fury and maleficent Father, and has dared irk the entire Avengers. So, Helmut is not actually too afraid and anxious. Antsy to enter though, Zemo examines the backdoor and finds it bereft of a knob. For added security, the closed pharmacy postern only unlocks from the inside.
Or the outside if one knows the Fixer, as Zemo does well.
A marvy magnetic widget opens the rusted wicket on its squeaky, creaky hinges. And, stagnant, scuzzy stench hits Helmut's exposed nostrils. His masked features crinkle slightly beneath the latex laid-over his disfigured visage. Sometimes, a magenta mask and golden headband do not serve the subtly of a secret mission. His garb this night also makes the Baron look common instead of like a costumed villain, for he wants to be incognito should a person encounter or a camera capture. Although, this property's security cameras are long out-of-use, although the warning signs are still up. Baron Zemo sniffs contemptuously and slinks into the stinking establishment.
The Thirteenth Baron of Zeulniz could make a fortune reselling the truck tucked in the back room. It towers high and threatens to topple. There is seemingly every kind of collectible from goofy-gold LPs to Big Little Books to Shogun toys. There is seemingly every kind of antique from the earliest cash registers to late '60s dining sets. And, above the stained shag carpeting, there is a crap-ton of unsecured drugs and chemicals. However, the infamous Baron Zemo is not here to pursue junk dealing instead of world domination. Rather, like any Nietzschean superman, the supervillain has things to accomplish. So, he hastens through the maze of memorabilia, so representative of Oshkosh, a town that peaked a sesquicentury prior and became purgatorial ever since.
Stepping on unstable stairs, the burglar Baron skulks toward the building's second story like a specter. Strangely enough, the site has two second stories, exclusive from each other. The most recent upper level is from a department store built in 1931. The less recent than that is the one to which Zemo goes. It houses the lab and business of long-gone Anthony Bellis, with whom Helmut's sire Heinrich corresponded. Baron Zemo is here to retrieve some family heritage that should be kept in the hearth area or behind the heraldic escutcheon at his Saxony home. The epistles of Hohenzollern aristocracy should not be rotting in a standing hole a whole ocean and continent from the Fatherland!
Baron Helmut attains the second story, his story similar to Phantom Eagle's, two stories separated but by time. The bad guy dons his night-vision goggles and incidentally follows Karl's footsteps. The bogey left no bootprints in the dust.
At the sliding portal, Zemo purses his lips, for the barn door is open. But, Helmut is not too suspicious. Someone could have left it open ages ago in this unkempt setting. As they used to say, "you have your barn door open". Back when, the phrase informed a man that his pants fly was unzipped. This Schlamperei, sloppiness, could be much the same.
The supervillain sashays into Bellis Chemical's main chamber and proceeds to the main desk. Zemo frowns. Someone has fractured the furniture wide open as with a fist. The frown promptly proceeds to a scowl when Zemo's sight finds a volume missing from Bellis' filthy, mildewed ledgers. The scowl leads to a snarl and apoplectic shaking as the absence incites a goon's great ire.
Suddenly, in undignified display, the Baron of Zeulniz tears forth the desk contents like an enraged ape. But, he spots not his desired prize. Then, the roiled royal wild-ass ransacks hanging cabinets and floating shelves to the floor but accomplishes nothing besides disturbing the deleterious silt and spore of the Bellis bower. Bellowing, Helmut huffs, hisses, howls, hawks, spits, and spins like a bananas baboon upon the bad, bucking, bowing floorboards. Bratty stomps echo off the brick surroundings.
Then, psychopath Zemo calms completely. He contemplates. Who could have purloined his property? Who else would have an interest? Adhesive X only catches certain attentions. Obviously, Helmut and Heinrich have a stake. They would appreciate the origin of the marvelous super-glue, brilliantly invented by a Zemo. A genius further supposes that Captain America may want to secure the adhesive archives. Otherwise, Hank Pym had a passing interest in the stuff (see Avengers #54). Or, Red Skull is a rival who might rob a fellow Nazi to rhubarb him. Once, a naïve New Jersey juvenile delinquent pinched some X to fence (see SHIELD v.3 #2) and paid the criminal price (so, incarcerated Grayson Blair isn't a suspect). Far further up the food chain, Wingless Wizard wields Adhesive X upon his anti-gravity discs and other items. However, Bentley "Wizard" Wittman acquired the wonder fixative from his fellow mad scientist and partner-in-crime Peter "Trapster" Petruski.
Paste-Pot Pete is the only plausible culprit that Zemo can particularly think of. Years ago, Trapster took Adhesive X and actually improved upon it. He uses it all the time for his signature restraints. So, sordid scholar Petruski may yen knowledge of Adhesive X at every stage.
Fortunately, Baron Zemo fiendishly surveils Trapster regularly. Most every felonious faction, such as the Masters of Evil, assiduously espies all others. The Masters of Evil monitor the Frightful Four, and Wizard's rogues snoop right back, and both groups gawk in on odious others while those others watch them.
Plucked from a parachute pants pocket, the AI of Zemo's smart device places Paste-Pot in Cass County, Minnesota, this midnight. Peeved and miffed, the Baron ponders, pissed-off to no end, motoring the 450 miles, like a bat out of Purgatory, to ambush Trapster at daybreak. Or, a criminal mastermind and kingpin could always dispatch an asset, a loon (or two), already in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. Either scenario satisfies narcissistic noble scum.