Following the end of the second world war, the Strategic Scientific Reserve continued
to operate, dealing with threats to America.
After grieving for the loss of Captain America, Peggy Carter wished to continue serving the
agency, and so went to work for in the New York office, where, as a women in a largely
male dominated industry, she struggled to be taken seriously.
Even her time working with Captain America was dismissed, as many ignorantly believed
she was merely his girlfriend, and not a significant member of the team that did so much during
the war.
Frustrated by the attitude of her male co-workers, Peggy went off entirely on her own to track
down and defeat a group of criminals who were in possession of a powerful liquid weapon
known as the Zodiac.
Yet even after successfully returning the item to the Agency, Peggy was scolded for
not respecting procedure.
Yet others in the government knew how value Peggy Carter truly was, as did Howard Stark,
and so she soon learned she was to be promoted to the leadership of SHIELD, a new agency
being established that would absorb the SSR.
Unfortunately, those plans were put on hold when Stark Industry weapons ended up in the
hands of the Soviet Union, forcing Howard Stark to appear before the United States congress
to answer questions about treason.
And while he denied the accusations, he fled the country and was absent from the third
day of hearings.
Working with his trusted butler Edwin Jarvis, Stark then enlisted the aid of his old friend
Peggy Carter, swearing his innocence and explaining that this was all as a result of someone breaking
into one of his mansions to steal weapons and experimental technology.
Stark then warned her that some of what was stolen could prove incredibly dangerous; enlisting
her to track down the formula for Molecular Nitrimene, which in the wrong hands might
cause mass devastation.
Though she was still employed by the SSR, she worked on the case without their knowledge
and played a vital role in ending the threat.
With Howard Stark now a fugitive from the law, his property was seized by the SSR, and
so Stark once again reached out to Peggy Carter, asking her to retrieve a device he called
the Blitzkreig Button, claiming it had the power to cause a city wide blackout.
However Peggy soon discovered that the device was actually a container, storing a vial of
Steve Rogers’s blood.
Stark tried to explain that it was his last sample and could potentially produce a number
of medical breakthroughs, but Peggy was furious he had concealed the truth, and suspected
he simply wanted to profit off Steve`s blood, and so she emptied the vial into the ocean
to keep it from exploitation.
In 1947 Peggy Carter reunited with the Howling Commandos, on a covert operation in Belarus
to investigate the Red Room Academy, which they discovered to be a Soviet Training facility
raising little girls to become expert assassins.
Although they lost two of their agents in the mission, they successfully rescued Viktor
Ivchenko who claimed to be an enemy of Leviathan, the Soviet deep science and espionage agency
behind the creation of the Red Room.
But in truth, the man was really Johann Ivchenko, former leader of Leviathan who was working
with the master assassin Dottie Underwood to infiltrate the SSR, using the secret tech
hidden in his ring to hypnotize their Agents, using them to do his bidding.
But after kidnapping Howard Stark, his plans quickly fell apart, thanks to Peggy Carter
and her allies, who freed Stark and captured Ivchenko, though Dottie Underwood managed
to escape.
While incarcerated, Ivchenko met Arnim Zola, and together they made plans for the future
of Hydra.
Continuing to work for the SSR, Peggy Carter was soon involved in yet another important
investigation, this time looking into Zero Matter, also known as the darkforce, a powerful
cosmic radiation with untold potential which was being studied by a member of the Council
of Nine.
However the substance was unstable and caused great harm, breaking from its containment
to enter the body of Whitney Frost who would murder her enemies in the Council of Nine
and usurp power within the formerly all-male group.
Her exposure to Zero Matter slowly drove her mad until eventually shot by Howard Stark
with a Gamma Canon, removing the substance from her body so it could be taken into protective
custody by the SSR.
The following year, the Chinese government filmed a mysterious video, which would become
highly classified, in which an unarmed warrior defeated a group of soldiers with weapons.
Decades later it would be discovered that this man was the legendary Iron Fist, who
was protecting the hidden path to the city of K’un Lun.
In 1949, having finally overcome the initial delay, Peggy Carter joined Howard Stark and
Chester Phillips in founding the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics
Division, which absorbed the SSR to become a subdivision of SHIELD, devoted to research
and development.
As part of Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought in to work for
the American government, Arnim Zola was freed from prison and recruited by SHIELD, where
he and other former HYDRA agents began rebuilding their organization.
During this time they started experimenting on Bucky Barns who had been kept cryogenically
frozen, until able to control his mind so he might serve them as the deadly assassin
Winter Soldier.
In 1952, the Roxxon Corporation acquired Isodyne Energy.
In 1953 HYDRA orchestrated the ascension of Nikita Khrushchev, becoming the First Secretary
of the Central Committee for the Soviet Union in an attempt to destabilize the world.
For years Hydra continued their work of manipulating world events, responsible for the Vietnam
War and Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 In 1963 the Soviet Scientist Anton Vanko defected
to the United States and began working with Howard Stark on the Unity Project, which studied
Arc Reactor technology and it’s potential as a new source of energy.
Later that year, under orders from HYDRA, the Winter Soldier assassinated US president
John F Kennedy.
In 1967 Anton Vanko was deported back to the Soviet Union on charges of espionage, and
once there was sent in exile to Siberia for two decades.
Howard Stark then went on to claim full credit for the developments in Arc technology.
In this same year, Stark Industries returned to the profitable industry of weapons development.
In 1969 HYDRA assisted in placing Muammar Gaddafi as the authoritarian ruler of Libya.