So, in Captain America, which we just saw, there was this ridiculous scene where Red Skull has Captain America strapped to a missile, about to be launched at the White House. This is a pretty goofy premise in the first place, but then Captain America grabs Red Skull's wrist -- and it's too late to stop the launch! So Red Skull does what anyone would do, and chops off his own hand.

This raises some obvious questions about Red Skull's judgment, and as we pondered those questions, I was reminded of a comic book from the turn of the millennium...one that nobody else seems to remember, actually (at least not in the multiple stores I visited seeking out this particular back-issue). It was called Marvels Comics Presents: Captain America, and it was part of one of Marvel's fun, weird fifth-week events.

I don't know if this is a thing the comics companies still do. Back then, comics were published on a monthly basis and came out on the Wednesday of some specific week each month. (For example, Amazing Spider-Man came out on the second Tuesday of the month, a fact that was once so important to me that I still remember it after twelve years of not being a regular comic book reader.) But then on the fifth week, there was nothing to put out...and this is when they'd get creative.

They usually had a couple of quarterly, giant-size comics, but the idea was to come up with some regular-priced one-shots that could be marketed as a special event. This particular event, Marvels Comics, was comprised of six one-shots:
* Captain America (Guardian of Freedom!)
* Fantastic Four (The World's Only 100% Authorized Comic!)
* Spider-Man (He Lives! He Prowls!)
* Beware the Daredevil
* Call Him Thor
* Codename: X-Men

The gimmick: these are the comics that people inside the Marvel Universe read, and they're considered non-fiction there. To help it make more sense, there was a seventh magazine put out that month called The History of Marvels: Six Fabulous Decades of the World's Most Accurate Comics, which might be the highlight of the bunch. It's made to look like a straightforward history of comics -- mostly text with a few old-style illustrations and captions thrown in -- but it presents an alternate history in which comics were a kind of superhero reporting. It talks about how hard it was to publish Captain America's true adventures due to red tape; how they had to replace Johnny Storm with a silly robot when Johnny failed to sign a contract; and how the company's credibility took a hit when the Thunderbolts turned out to be the Masters of Evil in disguise, contrary to what the comics had said.

(The concept of Marvels Comics was later used, to great effect, in Dan Slott's She-Hulk, when it's revealed that the Comics Code Authority is a government body, and that comics approved by the CCA are admissible in court.)

The Captain America issue, actually written by generally-fantastic longtime-Hulk writer Peter David, is credited to serial sidekick Rick Jones, who presumably traded off his friendships with superheros to become some kind of respected expert in the comics writing field. His "work" is characteristically self-aggrandizing, presented as part 5 in a multi-issue arc called "Time Rip," in which Rick is careening through the time stream having amazing adventures. (It has something to do with his great-granddaughter, Hydra, and a plan to wipe out all superheroes using Doctor Doom's time platform, per some hasty exposition.) In this particular issue ("World War: II People: 0") Rick finds himself in 1940s Germany, where he encounters Cap and the original Bucky. Pretty soon, they find themselves in a situation very similar to the one we saw in the Albert Pyun film. (Check out our comparison of the film and comic scene at Tumblr.)