This feature spotlights moments, exchanges, etc. from older comics that take on a brand new light when read in concert with later comic books. Here is the archive of previous installments.

Today, based on a suggestion by reader Chardin C., we look at a 1986 Captain America story where Cap makes a guarantee that he later fails to back up.

In 1986's Captain America Annual #8 by Mark Gruenwald, Mike Zeck and John Beatty, Captain America and Wolverine team-up together to take down some bad guy who is trying to avert World War III in a problematic fashion...







Pretty definitive response by Cap, right?

(By the way, Since the bad guy did not actually die, Cap probably only cried for, like, a day MAX).

Fast forward nearly two decades to 2005's New Avengers #6 (by Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch and Danny Miki). Cap, Iron Man and a disparate group of heroes (including Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Spider-Woman and then, later on in the story, Wolverine) get tangled up in a conspiracy involving a super-villain prison break, a secret weapons project in the Savage Land and a possible anti-superhero faction within SHIELD. Cap vows to get to the bottom of things and decides to re-form the Avengers, who had disbanded following Avengers Disassembled (when one of their own, the Scarlet Witch, went nuts and destroyed the team from within). The team's membership was a bit surprising...





Wolverine has been an Avenger ever since.