This article contains spoilers for Damage Control #2 (by Adam F. Goldberg, Hans Rodionoff, Will Robson, Ruth Redmond, and VC's Clayton Cowles), available now from Marvel Comics.
The protagonist of the latest Damage Control mini-series is an incompetent office worker. Gus can only try his best to navigate the world of superheroes and supervillains that is the Marvel universe. In the latest issue, Gus mistakes superhero for supervilllian: failing to recognize the heroism of Burr Dalen / Kljt-Man, the microscopic hero suited up by Nadia Van Dyne / The Unstoppable Wasp when Scott Lang / Ant-Man got the two of them lost in the microverse.
At the start of issue #2, Gus, having just been fired from his job in the department's mail room, is transferred to a job at Consumer Affairs. In his new position, it is his job to hear out complaints about superhero-related damages and decide whether they should be escalated to the claims department, where affected persons could be awarded money. Gus begins listening to the stories and, foolishly, believes every single one of them, regardless of their outlandishness.
Reprimanded by his boss for believing blatant lies, a more cynical Gus returns to the job, where he greets the newest client D'Andre DeAngelo. D'Andre reports that his family has been shrunk down by stray pym particles used by Ant-Man during a fight with the Scarlet Beetle and that he now carries them around in a cardboard box. Gus responds by asking to hold the box, which he crushes in his hands, laughing at D'Andre's story and his dramatic reaction to the box being crushed.
Unfortunately for Gus, it turns out that D'Andre is not lying and that his story had been making national headlines, to which Gus had not been paying attention. D'Andre and the DeAngelo family are rushed to G.I.R.L. Laboratories, where Nadia van Dyne is able to unshrink the family. In the process, however, she also unshrinks their protector, revealed to be the one and only Burr Dalen / Kljt-Man. After Gus screams about Burr's appearance and insists he must be a monster, he is fired from his job at Consumer Affairs -- though it looks like he will receive a third chance in a new position.
However, Burr Dalen is not a new character made up for the series. He made his debut back in the Ant-Man and the Wasp mini-series, which focused on Nadia and Scott as they navigated the microverse together. Burr Dalen encountered and helped Scott and Nadia despite most members of his society viewing them as scary outsiders and as threats. At the end of the series, Nadia created an Ant-Man-style suit for Burr as a thank you for all the help he provided them.
While this may seem like a mere joke, this story does actually tie into Nadia's backstory and her central mantra: the belief that anyone can be a hero, regardless of circumstances. As a former resident of the Red Room, the assassin training camp most famous for training Black Widow and the Winter Solider, Nadia is very aware of how easy it is to do bad things without being a wholly bad person. Her willingness to look at anyone as a potential hero, even microbes, reflects this self-awareness.
Within this context, it is especially ironic that Gus is unable to see Kljt-Man for the hero he is. Kljt-Man was able to see that Scott and Nadia were not threats, in spite of him living in a culture that viewed them as such, but Gus is not able to extend the same courtesy back to him. Readers will be able to look forward to whatever mistakes Gus makes next when the next issue of Damage Control arrives later this year.