Damage Control

Following Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk’s first rampage through Manhattan, Anne Marie Hoag’s Damage Control becomes the foremost construction firm that repairs destruction caused by superhumans and their battles. Employing dozens of workers, they are the No. 1 clean-up crew.

Building a Business

Early on in the modern age of heroes, businesswoman Anne Marie Hoag sees a vacuum and fills it with her company Damage Control (DC). A combination engineering and construction operation headquartered in Manhattan's Flatiron Building, DC offers customers ways to fix their property up after the inevitable Super Hero battles lead to destruction. Hoag starts the business with money from both Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, and Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, when the Hulk smashes his way through property belonging to both of them. The clientele grows to include the Avengers, Fantastic Four and even the city itself. 

Super-Construction

Thanks to the scientific efforts of employees like former S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer Eugene Strausser, Damage Control utilizes technological advancements to make repairs. Reed Richards, AKA Mister Fantastic grants them the use of some of his ideas and inventions to streamline the process. Those machines and techniques are put to use in the field by Lenny Ballinger and his team. The firm also hires super-powered individuals like Heracles, AKA Hercules, Eric O'Grady, AKA Ant-Man, and Tom Foster to put their skills to a different kind of use.

Hostile Takeovers

John Porter's Chaos Reductions company is a bit of a rival to Damage Control. His business model revolves around working to hero-proof buildings in areas with a great deal of super-powered activity. Hoag offers him a job he could not refuse as DC's account executive. The company also deals with ne'er-do-well interjectors from full-on villains like Carlton Co. Vice President Michael Souris and Walter Declun, who were both dealt with. 

Building a Better Tomorrow

With Damage Control established in New York City, the company had plenty of work. In addition to Hoag, Ballinger, Porter, Strausser, the company also employed Vice President of Marketing Henry Ackerdson, Traffic Manager Robin Chapel, Comptroller Albert Cleary, Account Executive Marie Leahy, Executive Assistant Anne and Intern Bart Rozum. The company fixed the Four Freedoms Plaza property after the main building was shot into space and also fixed Hell's Kitchen after Frank Simpson, AKA Nuke's first attack. Public relations have also been rough for a while. Ackerdson attempted to fix that by hiring the Hulk during his gray phase, but wound up stuffed into a roulette wheel. 

The company had a variety of existing clients. From the Traffic Central hub, the Traffic Manager watches over everything going on in the city, alerts others to problems and dispatches teams when needed. When Porter was hired as an Account Executive, Chapel was not happy with him because she wanted the job. 

On Porter's first day, he figured out a way to get a giant Tinkerer robot to transform itself down the much more manageable size and shape of a car. Not long after Comptroller Cleary went to the Latverian embassy and got Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom to pay his bill. Doom had been a longtime client and was displeased with his people for not making good on their agreement. 

In conjunction with Stark Enterprises, the Damage Control employees had to wear Super Hero style costumes as part of an Image Enhancement Program. The policy was not well-liked and did not last long. Shortly after, a Damage Control team was sent to fix up Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X's mansion. In doing so, they accidentally activated the Danger Room and discovered that it was the secret home of the X-Men, so Xavier wiped the memories from their minds after they finished up and sent them on their way. Around this same time, the company firmly established Fluppy the Fix-Up Pup as its official mascot.

Later, Hoag decided to accept the President's offer as part of his Commission on Superhuman Activities, but promoted Chapel to Chief of Operations before leaving. This led to both Stark and Fisk selling off their interest in the company to Carlton Co. At the same time, a group of super villains had come together to carry out their own acts of vengeance which meant that Damage Control was working overtime to keep up with all the destruction. Between the stress and the cuts made by Carlton Co. Vice President Michael Souris, morale at the company sunk to an all-time low leading to a strike.

When Chapel hired Bart as her assistant, he brought in Robbie Baldwin, AKA Speedball, as the new intern. Lawyer Jennfier Walters, AKA She-Hulk, also came in to lend a hand during this period, establishing a long-standing relationship between her and the company. She-Hulk also helped deal with Strausser, who attacked Damage Control in an armor he built after being laid off. Meanwhile, Hoag called on her old friend Nick Fury to help buy DC out, which Souris agreed to because he had borrowed money from Fisk and was already missing payments. Not wanting any trouble with the Kingpin, he sold and Hoag took control once more.

Looking to once more boost Damage Control's image after one of their teams accidentally dropped Avengers Mansion in the river, Ackerdson set up "Damage Control: The Movie" with director A.J. Lociciero and star Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man. The employees did not appreciate how the film made them look.

Meanwhile, former employee Rex Randolph—who was granted cosmic powers by a green orb found on a job site—tried using his future-seeing abilities to tell DC when things were going to happen. Going by Edifice Rex, his activities drew suspicion from Lt. Steve Sure, who wondered if Damage Control was actually setting up the battles to drum up business for itself. 

Damage Control carried on from there with relatively little in the way of bad PR. The company worked with Danny Ketch, AKA Ghost Rider, the New Warriors and also helped clean up the annihilated Fantastic Four pier headquarters. That last operation was overseen by the new Vice President Kathleen O'Meara. The agreement between Damage Control and the Fantastic Four also led to the team briefly setting up shop in the Flatiron Building. The FF soon moved into their newly built building not long after. 

At some point, the company also established a contract with Goodman, Kurtzberg, Lieber and Holliway, a law firm dedicated to super power related cases that employed She-Hulk. She wound up setting Hercules up with work for Damage Control to pay off his own legal debts. The demigod was still employed there when Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing, contracted Damage Control to help build a youth center.

When a recession hit, Hoag took Damage Control public and a man named Walter Declun bought a controlling share of the stock and he became the CEO. After Robert Hunter, AKA Nitro, exploded in Stamford and killed all of those people, James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, began looking into the matter. He discovered that Declun had given Mutant Growth Hormone to Nitro and also secured the contract to clean up after the disaster. When Logan confronted the CEO, he panicked, took MGH himself and fought the hero only to die during the ensuing fight. Afterwards, Hoag resumed control of the company and reinstalled Chapel as CEO. 

Not long after, Damage Control began to employ super-powered individuals to perform search and rescue operations. Monstro, Visioneer and Eric O'Grady were hired. The irredeemable Ant-Man (O-Grady) had changed his codename to Slaying Mantis to avoid problems with S.H.I.E.L.D. His time there ended after O'Grady attempted to stop the Hulk when he attacked the Illuminati and New York City. Tony Stark, then the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., hired Damage Control to clean up Manhattan after it was significantly smashed.

The new deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. led to Strausser being released from jail to help rebuild the Big Apple and the hiring of Tom Foster, the nephew of murdered hero Bill Foster, AKA Goliath. The company also allowed registered heroes to volunteer to help afterwards. This led to a confrontation with the Thunderbolts, who then employed former DC employee Robbie Baldwin, then going by Penance. 

Even though it still had the Avengers and FF as clients, Damage Control began to have financial problems, partially because they agreed to do a number of pro-bono cases for the city. Making matters worse, their equipment was being devoured by Trull the Unhuman, a sentient steam shovel. The company made him an offer, though, and Trull not only joined the Damage Control team, but starred in the commercial.

One of Damage Control's employees, Gloria Clark, became a liaison between the company, S.H.I.E.L.D. and Kei Kawade, AKA Kid Kaiju, after he developed the ability to create giant, potentially destructive monsters. The company also won the contract to rebuild the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach when it was relocated to New York City's Central Park. 

The operation always collected or examined objects found during clean-up. More recently, with Tony Stark and Reed Richards being classified as dead, much of their lost or old tech wound up in Damage Control's Contested Storage facility, which heldobjects like that, those without any specific ownership or chain of custody. Raven Darkhölme, AKA Mystique, Victor Creed, AKA Sabretooth, and Mortimer Toynbee, AKA Toad, broke into one such facility to acquire information during the early days of Krakoa, the sovereign mutant nation-state.

Damage Control recently found themselves with their hands full after the War of the Realms once more tore through New York City. That coincided with Cain Marko, AKA Juggernaut, looking to make up for some of the havoc he had brought to the world, so he started working for the company under Maria Menklin and Niket Prasad. Regardless of who works for Damage Control, you can expect them to be there to rebuild after the next major super powered blow-out.