Screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus have suggested for a while now that they might return to World War II in the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger. While the setting worked incredibly well in the first movie, it seems unlikely that Marvel would make a point of bringing the Sentinel of Liberty into the present day, with all of its other cinematic heroes, only to have him revisit the past in his next solo outing.

A flashback or two, sure. But the bulk of the movie? Eh, don't bet on it.

McFeely and Markus seem to acknowledge as much in a new interview with NBC Miami's PopcornBiz blog in which they point out that The First Avenger skips over a few months here and there, leaving room for "unseen adventures" that could be explored later, say, in a sequel. "We certainly want at least a portion of the '40s, I think,” Markus says. But, they concede, a contemporary story has much to offer.

“It might be doing a disservice not to address the present day Cap, particularly because so much of the comic book run right now is present-day Cap – that ‘man out of time’ is the icon,” Markus says. “The Captain America that most people know is really from kind of the reboot, when Stan Lee brought him back in '63 and '64, frozen from a block of ice. So his biggest personality trait is that he's this man out of time, and for us, we didn't have the opportunity [to explore that]. This was a guy in the right time.”

They also confess a desire to get their hands on some of Captain America's modern-day supporting cast -- namely, his longtime partner the Falcon, and his occasional girlfriend Sharon Carter (a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative and niece of Peggy Carter).

“I want both of them!” Markus exclaims. “Sharon is meaty, almost to a point where you get a little uncomfortable because her relation to Peggy has shifted over the years, as time has passed. She's the sister, she's the cousin, she's the niece. You have to walk a fine line there because it does seem like you're dating your girlfriend's daughter. Falcon is awesome. We can't play with time so much to have Cap go back to Harlem in the '70s and clean up the streets, but it would be awesome to go straight-up, like, Shaft with Cap and the Falcon.”