In TtA Hulk, Rick hears of the Hulk's capture, flies to New Mexico, and tells Bruce he felt guilty for leaving him and joining Cap. Then, a week later (as per "Earth-Prime time"), he's not only back in New York but fighting with Cap in ToS and even pressuring Cap to vote for his official membership in The Avengers. So although the Marvel stories were meant to be interconnected with crossovers and such, apparently Stan didn't care that his loyal readers would be damn confused by Rick's split-personality comings and goings.

Of course, one possible reading suggested by the timing of the publication of Avengers and Tales to Astonish is that Rick is massively conflicted, and even after telling Bruce how bad he felt joining Cap, he then goes right back to New York to try for membership in the Avengers after Bruce is officially cleared of wrongdoing at the end of TtA 62. Rick doesn't actually do anything in TtA 62 other than rejoining the storyline, and isn't even seen after page 4.

My suspicion is that Rick will appear in TtA 63 and thus confuse the sequence of events even further, forcing us to conclude that Lee simply botched it.

I thought of building a case that the Rick Jones seen this month in Avengers and Tales of Suspense is actually the Chameleon, trying to infiltrate the Avengers after studying Rick on the plane, but this hypothesis is destroyed by Jones's aside on page 6 of the Avengers, not to mention his demonstrated fighting prowess as taught by Cap.


"Now we're getting off focus." - the Elder Son of Storytime