All month long we will feature brand-new Cool Avengers and X-Men Comic Book Moments in celebration of their fiftieth anniversaries this month. Here is an archive of all the past cool comic moments that I've featured so far over the years.

We look at the sacrifice of the Red Guardian in Avengers #44 by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Vince Colletta....

This issue is the culmination of a long-running subplot involving the Black Widow pretending to defect as a double agent working for SHIELD. She goes to work for a Red Chinese General who is working on a joint Chinese/Russian secret plan. Her mission is to destroy their new device, the Psychotron (a machine that can feed off of your greatest fears). However, before she can succeed in her mission, she discovers that her thought-to-be-dead husband is actually alive and has been brainwashed and trained into becoming the Communist version of Captain America - the Red Guardian! Her boyfriend, Hawkeye, can't believe that she really defected so he and Hercules head to Asia to rescue her and they are captured (she also convinces the Chinese General that she is loyal to Communism - Hawkeye still believes she is lying). The rest of the Avengers track them down and a melee ensues.

Captain America and Red Guardian have an epic standoff which ends with Cap winning the day...

Later, Cap reflects upon what just happened...

Very cool way to depict a Communist villain by Thomas.