Following up on the post below, i do want to open up a question about how verb pluralization should be affected by phrases in parenthesis.

For example:

Captain America (and Rick Jones, as we'll learn later) follows the Mad Thinker into the bowling alley.

Or:

Captain America (and Rick Jones, as we'll learn later) follow the Mad Thinker into the bowling alley.

In other words, does the additional person mentioned in the parens affect the verb?

I'm usually not happy either way so i wind up rephrasing the sentence like:

Captain America follows the Mad Thinker into the bowling alley (and we'll learn later learn that Rick Jones follows as well).

But that just makes the sentence longer than it needs to be.

i pick the first. the sentence should read properly without the phrase within the parentheses.