Cap turns 65 while, in his main book, Ed Brubaker is preparing him for the biggest change of his career.
Thankfully, this one-shot is written by Brubaker–so it matches tone and continuity with the main book.
The issue weaves a line between Captain America’s current conflict with General Lukin back to his days in WWII.
We see Bucky playing cards with Fury’s Howling Commandoes and having a talent for bluffing, which signals his double identity in the future.
While fighting in Germany, we learn that Red Skull got his first Sleeper Robot from a village scientist–and Cap destroyed it and buried it under rubble.
The story is quite Bucky-centric.
This is cool, because no writers in the past have ever spent much time developing the character so it’s pretty much an open field for Brubaker–even though the character is 65 years old.
In a closing sequence that takes place in the present day, we see Red Skull heading to the site of that WWII battle, and we see that Doctor Doom is written into the historical map of the area.
As I interpret it, this is intended to mean that Doom went back in time to get the Sleeper tech? Or maybe he brought it there? I’m not sure, and I don’t think it’s ever revealed in later comics. So, it’s just a nice Easter Egg and you can decide for yourself what it means. I’m good with that.
Regarding the last point, there’s a scene in Captain America v5 #23 in which Lukin/Skull and Doom meet up, and it’s established that the whole ‘Baron of Iron’ thing was actually Doctor Doom time-traveling to the past and building the giant robot back then… but for current-day Doom, that hasn’t happened yet.
Doom is quite appreciate for evidence of his future actions, and trades this information for a one-time use of his time machine technology, which is what Skull later uses during the ‘Death of Captain America’ arc to unmoor Steve from time. So it’s actually pretty significant!
Yes…But also you can gather all that from the regular series and not read this one-shot. Your point is a good one, though–it gives you a deeper explanation.