This is "Look Back," a feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2020 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

Today, as a special fifth week (every time a month has five weekends in it, we do an extra one based on either 20, 30, 40, 60, 70 or 80 years ago!), we go back to August 1990 to see the conclusion of the Captain America "Streets of Poison" storyline, where Captain America makes a bold sacrifice to say "no" to drugs.

The concept of the "Streets of Poison" storyline by Mark Gruenwald, Ron Lim and Danny Bulanadi, is that there is a new drug on the streets called Ice that both the Kingpin and the Red Skull want to sell. So they try to fight against each other through their intermediaries, Crossbones and Bullseye (we got to see Captain America take on Bullseye and Daredevil take on Crossbones). However, during one of the fights, Captain America was accidentally exposed to Ice and the drug combined with the Super Soldier Serum in Captain America's blood that gave him his super powers and it caused Captain America to basically go insane.

He was erratic and his friends Black Widow and Diamondback had to team up to take Cap down and bring him back to Avengers headquarters where Hank Pym was forced to remove all of Captain America's blood and replace it with normal blood while Hank will weed the Ice out of his Super Soldier Serum-enhanced blood.

Meanwhile, Kingpin and Red Skull decide to end things between each other by having a one-on-one fight with each other...in their underwear, because, well, why not?

While they are fighting, Captain America recovers from the procedure and is now in his right mind. However, while Hank is weeding out the Ice from his blood, Cap is just a normal, very athletic and trained person. He feels like he has to head to the stadium where the fight is taking place and do what he can to stop the bad guys. However, as soon as he gets there, he encounters Crossbones, who had managed to do well against in fights while Cap still had his Super Soldier Serum!

You see, early in the storyline, the reason why Captain America (who is not exactly plugged into "the street") discovered that Ice was around is because one of the Avengers' support staff was hooked on Ice. Cap helped him beat it, but he then asked Cap, "But what about the Super Soldier Serum? Don't you owe your powers to a DRUG?" And Cap is all, like, "Oh man, I guess he's right. Am I better than the people who do drugs like steroids?" It is a very silly concept, as, well, come the heck on. It is like saying "I won't use Penicillin - it's a DRUG!" It is way too silly.

However, whatever, Cap proves to himself that he doesn't need the Super Soldier Serum to defeat Crossbones, even though Cap had to exert himself unlike he normally would (and he kind of sort of cheats to win the fight. Not CHEAT, exactly, but it is not like Cap beats him in a straight fight)...

Kingpin defeats the Red Skull and the Skull hilariously is, like, "Ah, whatever, who cares?" It is too funny of a solution to the whole SEVEN-ISSUE arc. Ron Lim and Danny Bulanadi do a good job on art, or as well as you can when you're drawing Red Skull and Kingpin in their underwear fighting each other.

Anyhow, Hank Pym shows up at the Stadium with Cap's other friends, as they're all worried about him. Hank lets Cap know that he has successfully gotten rid of the Ice in Cap's blood and he can restore the Super Soldier Serum in Cap to give him his enhanced abilities back. Cap then tell him no, as the Super Soldier Serum is a drug and if Cap can't say "No" to drugs, then who can?

Of course, that makes no sense and his powers come back in the next issue (and they were confirmed to have never actually gone anywhere in another six issues or so), but in the moment, at least, it was a big dramatic sacrifice by Cap that was very timely for the 1990s. It was very silly, but very timely, at least! You could tell that obviously Mark Gruenwald's heart was in the right place with the story. he meant well, it just, you know, was kind of silly.

If you folks have any suggestions for September (or any other later months) 2010, 1995, 1970 and 1945 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.

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CBR Senior Writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over a dozen years now at CBR (primarily with his Comics Should Be Good series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed.Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!

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Captain America Made a BIZARRE Sacrifice In the War on Drugs - CBR - Comic Book Resources