Over the course of nearly a century of heroism, Captain America has seen his fair share of crazy comic adventures. Steve Rogers has ‘died’ several times, he’s battled with Nazi Transformers, and he even dabbled with Marvel’s version of crystal meth. But in the pages of 1989’s Captain America #366, readers see Cap in a truly infamous panel following what may be his strangest – or at the very least most poorly phrased – orders to date, when he’s seemingly commanded to… wank?
So what exactly leads up to Captain America’s notorious WANK? The story comes from Marvel’s Acts of Vengeance event, which saw many of the universe’s villains uniting to coordinate attacks against one another’s arch-rivals to surprise the heroes with unfamiliar foes and hopefully take them down for good. The effort is being spearheaded by the likes of Kingpin, The Mandarin, Wizard, Doctor Doom, Magneto and Red Skull – though Loki might also be pulling some strings behind the scenes.
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All this leads to the likes of Crossbones, The Voice, and The Controller – who’s actually being controlled by The Voice (it’s complicated) uniting and heading to a meetup with Red Skull. It’s on their way to this meeting that Steve Rogers spots the crew’s jet taking off while on patrol and pursues. Still using his power to order others to do his bidding, The Voice compels The Controller to attack Cap once he boards the plane and a brawl ensues.
The fight is about to tear the plane apart when The Voice tries to make the pair to stop, but the rush of wind through the open hatch is so loud neither can hear. Amid all the chaos, Voice exclaims, “Captain America! I command you to -” just as the hero’s shield smashes into The Controller’s face with the resounding WANK that would go on to permeate internet history. Timing is everything. And funnily enough, that wasn’t even the only WANK to take place during the battle.
Eventually, Cap and The Controller both end up plummeting from the plane to continue their standoff and additional adventures ensue. But, that’s the story of Captain America’s infamous WANK. It was nothing more than the cosmic synchronicity between on-page dialogue and sound effects that nobody at the time probably gave a second glance. But thanks to that synchronicity in Captain America #366, Cap’s WANK will last forever.
