Marvel’s Mission: Impossible Prequel Comic Answers a Major Question From 30 Years Ago

[Warning: This article contains Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning spoilers.] “As always, should you or any member of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions,” says the briefing that offers an IMF Agent their mission (should they choose to accept it). In 1996’s Mission: Impossible, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is disavowed after his team — mission leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and his wife Claire (Emmanuelle Béart), hacker Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez), surveillance operative Hannah Williams (Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė), and an undercover Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas) — are all killed during a mission to retrieve the mate of the stolen CIA NOC (non-official cover) list, a record of deep-cover agents working in Eastern Europe.

When it turns out that the operation is part of a two-year mole hunt to flush out a rogue agent, and that IMF Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) suspects Ethan to be colluding with arms dealer Max Mitsopolis (Vanessa Redgrave) to get the NOC list, he’s forced to go on the run in order to root out the real mole. It also turns out that the disc the mole sold Max is fake, and so Ethan cuts a deal with Max: he delivers her both parts of the NOC list, she hands over the mole.

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To infiltrate the IMF mainframe within CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and steal the NOC list, Ethan recruits two disavowed IMF agents: knives-wielding helicopter pilot Franz Krieger (Jean Reno) and cyber ops hacker Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), A.K.A. Phineas Freak, “The only man alive who actually hacked NATO Ghost Com.” “There was never any physical evidence that I had anything to do with that,” Luthor replies of “that exceptional piece of work.”

By the film’s end, it’s revealed that Krieger is working with the mole: Phelps. Disillusioned, under paid, and “obsolete,” he planned to steal the NOC list and sell it to buyer Max for $6 million before Ethan exposed him to Kittridge (with Luther’s help).

Once off the disavowed list, Luther tells Ethan, “I’m gonna miss being disreputable.” To that, Ethan responds, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll always think of you that way.” (Warning: Final Reckoning spoilers follow!)

30 years later, Luther dies disarming a plutonium core device planted by Ethan’s nemesis Gabriel (Esai Morales) in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. The eighth and final Mission: Impossible film contains several callbacks, cameos, and flashbacks to the seven previous installments — including the return of William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the NOC list-watching CIA analyst that Kittridge had sent to Alaska in the first movie, and a reveal that Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) is actually Jim Phelps Jr. — but we never did find out why Luther was disavowed by the Impossible Mission Force by the time the first Mission takes place.

While Mission: Impossible suggests that it was Luther hacking NATO that led to him being disavowed by the IMF, Marvel’s Mission: Impossible prequel comic details Luther’s own mission just before the events of the original film. The 48-page comic was published by Marvel Comics and released to coincide with the film on May 22, 1996.

A six-page backup story, titled “Should Any of Your Agents…” from writer Marv Wolfman (the co-creator of Marvel’s Blade) and artist Rob Liefeld (co-creator of Marvel’s Deadpool), begins in medias res with IMF Agent Luther Stickell in Santa Delvado, South America, as he steals a computer disk from President Filipo’s palace on Kittridge’s orders. Without any backup, Kittridge tells Luther, “You’re on your own.”

Luther uploads the info on the computer disk to IMF email, which reveals intel on how the president of the fictional Santa Delvado is being paid to smuggle high-tech weaponry to militia terrorists in the United States. According to Kittridge, an Araqistani code-named the “White Eagle” is behind the deal, but Filipo’s forces have scrambled Luther’s transmission. The U.S. intends to threaten Filipo with an “unfriendly nation’s embargo” over the deal, so they need proof he’s allied with the Araqistani mafia — they need the computer disk.

Kittridge, reaching Luther over comms, reports that the IMF detected a “glitch” in NATO’s Ghost Com. “Have you been attempting to hack into it?” Kittridge asks.

“You know Ghost Com’s impenetrable,” Luther responds. “I’d never dream of it.”

As Luther escapes to the docks to rendezvous with his submarine transport, Kittridge tells him he’s contacted another agent in Araqistan to follow up on Luther’s lead. But before he can make his escape, Luther is apprehended by President Filipo and his army of soldiers.

Filipo has Luther imprisoned in order to leverage him against the U.S. government, and so the story switches to the agent in Asimar, Araqistan: disavowed IMF Agent Franz Krieger, who Kittridge busted for an unspecified “cargo run” before hiring him as a mercenary. He goes after the “White Eagle” and fails to obtain the evidence Kittridge requires, but blows up a weapons shipment intended for the United States. Krieger then tells Kittridge to wire his money to a Swiss account.

Speaking to the IMF Secretary, Kittridge reports that Krieger remains disavowed. “As for Stickell, the CIA has just uncovered traces of involvement with nuclear weapon launch code tampering,” Kittridge tells the Secretary. “They want him out. A disavowed status will get him off both our backs.”

And so that’s how Luther Stickell, A.K.A. Phineas Freak, became disreputable.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning — starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Mariela Garriga,
Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman,
Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Angela Bassett — is now playing only in theaters.