In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] if you have a suggestion for a future installment!

Reader Elizabeth N. wrote in to note that people often make fun of Hawkeye for the fact that he very likely slept with a robot version of the Scarlet Witch that Doctor Doom had created (note that it has never been confirmed to be a Doom-bot, as there was a slight window where Hawkeye might have been able to sleep with the real Scarlet Witch, but to be frank, it’s almost certainly for the best if he did NOT sleep with her while she had amnesia, as that was a bit disturbing). “Hawkeye slept with a Doom-bot!” is an often-used joke. However, Elizabeth pointed out, no one gives Captain America any guff for doing essentially the same thing.

In Captain America (the 2002 series) #29, Robert Kirkman, Scot Eaton and Drew Geraci took over for a short storyline that would end with Captain America #32, at which point the new Captain America series by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting would begin. However, they couldn’t just outright say that that was what was going to happen. At the time, it was just a tie-in to Avengers Disassembled.

Kirkman is a well-known fan of the old school Mark Gruenwald 1980s Captain America run. So he made his run a bit of a tribute to that run, by having Diamondback come back into Cap’s life and they end up sleeping together…

We then learn that Diamondback is working for the Red Skull and a rogue group of SHIELD agents. In an amusing twist, right when they were about to be captured by the Skull and his forces, the Serpent Society (also from Gruenwald’s run) show up and capture them instead. They break free and Cap and Diamonback have a great moment. So great, in fact, that Diamondback decides not to work with Skull anymore. When he finds out, he is not pleased…

When Cap shows up for dinner, the Skull attacks and they have a big ol’ fight and in the end, Diamondback turns out to be alive! Well…sort of..

Once the Skull was defeated, the real SHIELD shows up and Nick Fury explains that Diamondback was a special LMD…

Cap meets back up with the real Diamondback, who was still alive, and the issue ends with them having a cute moment together…

All told, this was a really fun, under-rated run in Captain America’s history. Very much a tribute to Mark Gruenwald and Roger Stern/John Byrne’s Cap run. I’d recommend it.

But yes, as Elizabeth notes, it is funny how no one ever mentions that Cap slept with a robot for a few weeks even, without knowing.

Thanks for the suggestion, Elizabeth! If anyone else has a future idea for I Love Ya But You’re Strange, drop me a line at [email protected]!