The Domination Factor miniseries featured the Avengers and the Fantastic Four on parallel old-school adventures that revisited past eras in each team’s history before converging at the end. Technically it consisted of two four-issue miniseries, one for each team, with the number after the decimal point indicating the order in the overall story; it started with Domination Factor: Fantastic Four #1.1, followed by Domination Factor: Avengers #1.2, then DF:FF #2.3 and DF: Av #2.4, DF:FF #3.5 and DF: Av #3.6, and concluding with DF:FF #4.7 and DF: Av #4.8.
In this post we’ll cover the Avengers issues—written and penciled by Jerry Ordway, recently seen doing the same on Avengers #16-18—as well as the fourth Fantastic Four issue, written and penciled by Dan Jurgens, who starts on the current run of Captain America with issue #25. (I love how the middle cover above, with its floating heads shocked at the action below, is reminiscent of All-Star Squadron #20, also by Ordway.)
As the story begins in Domination Factor: Fantastic Four #1.1—which will be covered eventually in my new Fantastic Four blog, Here’s the Thing…—Marvel’s first family works with Iron Man to fight hijackers attacking Air Force One to obtain a Golden Apple of Odunn, which gives Asgardians their power and immortality and which the Norwegian government gave the US president as a gift. The apple is destroyed, much to the consternation of the hijackers’ boss, a mysterious and elderly Ms. Queen, and soon afterwards, the Four face a wooden Asgardian giant amidst a disruption to the timestream. As if that weren’t enough, Doctor Strange arrives in his astral form to send them all into the past (as their astral selves) to bring back slices of the Golden Apple and prevent the Everlasting Winter (for which the wooden giant is a Harbinger).
At the same time, in Domination Factor: Avengers #1.2, Tony is telling his teammates about the attack on Air Force One, which triggers Cap’s concern about the commander-in-chief.
Tony explains about dem apples (or dat apple) and Cap expresses confidence in the Vision before the time disruption hits…
…and the Mighty Avengers meet another Harbinger of the Everlasting Winter, whom Thor seems to recognize from high school.
Iron Man and Thor makes little headway above water, so Cap feels obligated to take a shot from below, albeit with similar results.
Eventually, Strange’s astral self also appears to them and sends them on the same mission into the past, with Cap unsatisfied with the mission briefing offered.
In Domination Factor: Avengers #2.4, we see where Cap’s astral self was sent, courtesy of a reminiscence on the part of Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, of an infiltration of a Nazi installation in France during World War II.
Here we get another version of Nick’s realization that Captain America and Bucky were not just a promotional stunt.
Eventually we see Cap’s astral self arrive and take over his body (unbeknownst to Fury, aside from the Golden Apple talk).
Cap finds himself torn in two ways: having to continue the mission at hand rather than looking for the Golden Apple, and working alongside Bucky while he knows the boy does not have long to live.
Our hero shows off some impressive shieldwork—perhaps better than he could have done back then—before familiar flames appear from overhead…
…which herald the appearance of a character who wasn’t in the script as Cap remembers it.
Domination Factor: Avengers #3.6 opens with Cap narrating his and Bucky’s confrontation with a Torch with an uncertain agenda. The unexpected intrusion makes Cap wonder again if he made the right choice not deviating from the history he remembers to seek out the Golden Apple to save the world in his own time—but he ultimately decides the fate of the free world right now is more important. (Tough call either way.)
Once Bucky is temporary subdued, the Torch can reveal his true identity—which Cap had already deduced, and which makes perfect sense (given the convoluted revised history from Avengers Forever #8).
Cap sticks to his guns regarding his priorities even though Vision disagrees, but continues to wonder if he made the right choice. (It would seem that Vision’s appearance, and his ability to look for the apple himself, would ease Cap’s mind.)
His thought continues, “I pray the Vision succeeded,” which he does (after he helps a Frenchman recover a locket with his wife’s picture that the Nazis stole from him). Immediately, the two Avengers’ astral forms return to 1999 and the narration tells the sad conclusion of Captain America and Bucky’s World War II adventures (while Cap dismisses a little shrapnel in the leg while he treads water in chain-mail and with a heavy shield on his back).
In the astral plane, the Avengers give their apple slices to Doctor Strange, who has already collected the Fantastic Four’s, but suddenly Thor disappears and Cap becomes suspicious of the good doctor.
The Avengers fail to reclaim their bodies and instead find themselves shunted into an alternate reality where Queen’s company Praxis has taken over much of Manhattan, but Cap urges his teammates not to lose hope.
They reconnect with Fantastic Four and compare notes, during which Tony invokes a particularly self-defeating version of the predestination paradox regarding time travel (apparently derived from a Star Trek: Voyager episode). More importantly, no one seems to remember the God of Thunder…
…which is a good hint as to who is behind this entire mess: Loki, who manipulated events to acquire the Golden Apple to return Ms. Queen to her true form of Knorda, queen of the mountain giants who was banished to Earth by Odin in 1964’s Journey into Mystery #109, and to recreate a world without superheroes (including his half-brother Thor).
In Domination Factor: Fantastic Four #4.7, Cap continues to act as the heroes’ morale officer.
Having decided collectively to possess their bodies in this reality to gain intel, Cap finds himself in a nursing home with Bucky, lamenting his age, when the spirit and resolve of a younger man puts a new spring in his step.
(Can’t help but think of this spry young fella!)
When he rejoins his fellow heroes, Cap is unsure of his value to them, but Ben knows better.
The final words above come from Doctor Strange, whom Reed has by now deduced was actually Loki all along. As the trickster gloats in the beginning of the final issue, Domination Factor: Avengers #4.8, the heroes’ memories of their past lives begins to fade…
…but Cap’s art skills remain intact (even if his memories of Thor are based on actual Norse myth, not “Goldilocks,” as Janet always called him).
When Ben is attacked by a surveillance drone, Cap’s muscle memory kicks in, although the exertion is almost too much for him.
Eventually, the heroes find a way to bring Thor back, who starts the process of reversing Loki’s manipulation of the timestream, and the story flips back to the Air Force One flight that opened the story (with the Golden Apple replaced by a golden statue of Knorda). The issue ends with some prognostication from Mr. Ordway that hits a little too close to home in 2025.
ISSUE DETAILS
Domination Factor: Avengers #1.2, November 1999: Jerry Ordway (writer and pencils), Dennis Janke (inks), Tom Smith (colors), John Costanza (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
Domination Factor: Avengers #2.4, December 1999: Jerry Ordway (writer and pencils), Dennis Janke (inks), Tom Smith (colors), John Costanza (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
Domination Factor: Avengers #3.6, January 2000: Jerry Ordway (writer and pencils), Dennis Janke (inks), Tom Smith (colors), John Costanza (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
Domination Factor: Fantastic Four #4.7, February 2000: Dan Jurgens (writer and pencils), Don McLeod (inks), Mark Bernardo (colors), John Costanza (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
Domination Factor: Avengers #4.8, February 2000: Jerry Ordway (writer and pencils), Dennis Janke (inks), Tom Smith (colors), John Costanza (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
NOTE: Ordway and Jurgens listed each other as “co-conspirator,” so technically you could consider them both co-writers on all issues.
Not yet collected.
THE VIRTUES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA 
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