Captain America #131 (1970)

A masked schemer sets a trap for Captain America by betting everything on one emotional weak point: Bucky Barnes. The villain believes that if Cap sees evidence Bucky might still be alive, he will walk straight into danger alone. Meanwhile, Steve Rogers is trying to enjoy a normal day riding into San Francisco, but a diner news bulletin about Bucky being found alive jolts him into action. Cap tracks the lead to an athletic club and then to a secluded house, where he’s funneled through alarms, blackout traps, and hidden passages into an underground confrontation. There, the mastermind is revealed as Baron Strucker, who claims he has turned Bucky into a hypnotized pawn repeating his own name in a trance. What follows is a brutal close-quarters duel: Strucker uses chained weapons, a mace, and a crossbow while Cap fights to protect both himself and the confused young man he hopes is really Bucky. Strucker’s true plan is to pin Captain America to a giant clock mechanism so he’ll be publicly destroyed at the stroke of midnight, but Cap keeps appealing to Bucky’s identity and memory instead of giving up. At the last second, Bucky breaks through the conditioning, triggers the release, and helps turn the fight. Strucker is defeated, and although the issue ends with uncertainty about exactly who this “Bucky” is, the emotional core lands hard: Cap’s faith in his partner helps shatter the trap that was designed to break him.