question about elapsed time in a single story

[HalP]

I plan on analyzing some Golden Age comics soon, and I noticed a Captain America story in which a caption says "six months later", a few pages in. Aside from taking place during WWII, nothing places the story before or after anything else. This is just one example; I've seen other stories that include a large gap like that and have no other references.

Is there any particular way to handle that? Seems like either the first part would show up in publication order and the second part would get arbitrarily pushed back, or the second part would show up in publication order and the first part would arbitrarily move forward. Are there guidelines about which part gets moved, or how far it gets moved?

There are also plenty of stories with far smaller gaps (i.e. a couple of days later). Any guidelines about inserting other stories into those gaps when there's no particular reason to?

[JephYork]

If there's "no particular reason to", why do it?

For a six-month gap, though, I'd think it would be pretty much unavoidable. Which half "moves" probably depends on any references made in either half to current events, other comics, etc.

-Jeph!

[HalP]

I guess the only reason would be to avoid a period of inactivity. If a character's in a bunch of interchangeable one-off stories (i.e. most of the Golden Age), and there's a "two days later" caption, we're assuming this character didn't do anything of note during that two-day period, which could just as easily encompass some other single-day story. But yeah, that's not a big deal. Six months is a big deal.