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Credits
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Credits
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Captain America and the Falcon are closing on the bunker containing the Winter Soldier and the Cosmic Cube, unaware that the Winter Soldier has them in his sniper scope sights. The Winter Soldier take aim at the Falcon, and fires... at an empty branch? He moves to his secondary target, Captain America - only to see the Shield already moving towards him, smashing his sniper rifle. Leaping down to head deeper into the bunker, he calls his own reinforcements - squads of mercenary soldiers.
Moments before the Winter Soldier had fired the shot, his presence and location had been revealed to the Falcon by Redwing, and Falcon had told Cap. Now Cap busts through the soldiers to follow the Winter Soldier and the Cosmuc Cube, leaving the Falcon to take care of dozens of guards.
Once Cap heads in, he gets a call from Sharon Carter, who is leading a SHIELD detachment towards the site to assist. She reminds Cap of the stakes - if the Winter Soldier and the Cosmic Cube make it too far into the bunker, there are too many tunnels and exits to prevent them from escaping. Cap confirms that one way or another, he'll stop the Winter Soldier.
Captain America is sucker-punched by the Winter Soldier, and their showdown begins.
Meanwhile, up top, Falcon has disposed of the first wave of ex-Spetsnaz guards, when another contingent shows up... but before he can take action, they're gunned down by Sharon and her SHIELD tactical squad, who move to secure the entrance and begin sweeping the interior. Sharon and Falcon head inside, to find Captain America - given his emotional involvement, Sharon is worried about him, and the emotional damage he might sustain if he has to kill the Winter Soldier.
Back to Captain America and his fight with the Winter Soldier. Cap is clearly holding back, trying to reach the part of Bucky he believes lives inside the reanimated form. Ultimately, Cap gives him a clean shot; so that he can see, at the final remove, if the man who was once Bucky Barnes can take the shot.
He can. Naturally, he misses, and Cap dodges, tossing his shield just as Sharon and the Falcon catch up to them. The shield rebounds, taking the Winter Soldier from behind, and spilling the Cosmic Cube at Cap's feet. Cap picks it up, and stays "Remember who you are".
And terribly enough, the Winter Soldier does. His life as Bucky is completely restored, as are his memories of everything he has done under Karpov and Lukin's control. He lashes out and his cybernetic hand crushes the Cosmic Cube, in a strange energy explosion. When the dust clears, the Winter Soldier is gone. Sharon believes that he used the Cosmic Cube to commit suicide, but Cap doesn't believe that for a moment...
And rightly so. Bucky has teleported himself to a de-commissioned and deserted Camp Lehigh, where his partnership with Cap began.
Lukin is staring out of the window, and talking to himself... or rather, to the disembodied voice from earlier issues. The voice is chastizing him for losing the Cosmic Cube, but Lukin believes that anything done with the Cosmic Cube is cursed, and ultimately rebounds on the user in some fashion - they never get what they want. The voice argues... and the reflection in the window pane is that of the Red Skull. When the Red Skull was shot, he used the weak power of the Cosmic Cube to transfer his mind into Lukin's body before death, but it didn't have enough power to destroy Lukin's mind - rather, both Lukin and the Red Skull are now trapped in Lukin's body... at least, for now.
Once again, a stunning job turned in by the creative team, with Epting's rendering and storytelling skills showing why he deserves to be considered one of the best artists working in comics today. There are so many nuances to his work it make so many others - who do decent work - look like... hacks. His realism and attention to detail is meticulous. His faces are distinct and expressive. His command of the flow of action is seemingly effortless. Dammit, Epting, quit being so relentlessly perfect - give me something else to do than wax enthusiastic every damn month! How many times can I write the same praises?
When Stan Lee brought Captain America back, he invented the "Cap was frozen in the ice, and Bucky died in the explosion" bit, but pretty much confirmed the rest, that Bucky had stumbled on Steve Rogers changing into his Cap outfit, and had defacto become his partner. Bucky's death was used as the typical Stan Lee tactic of interjecting tragedy into his heroes - Cap became a man out of time, lost in a future he never made, and agonized over the - to him - fresh death of his closest companion. For Cap, that wasn't 20 years ago - it was yesterday.
There would be various "returns" of Bucky, each one used to prod Cap's angst into freshness, to open the newly-made scars. Bucky robots, Rick Jones putting on the costume, etc. Bucky - his Golden Age appearances notwithstanding - had no character, just a sort of post-mortem reverence from Cap fans.
Until Roy Thomas created the Invaders. In the 41-ish run of the Invaders (plus Giant Sized #1, the Annual, the later LS, the Marvel Premiere Liberty Legion cross-over, etc), Bucky was in many ways one of the focal points of the book. In the brilliant Fabien Nicieza LS "Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty" we get another look at Bucky - far from being the innocent of the Invaders run, this interpretation was significantly more of a streetwise fellow, taking the self-assigned role of guarding Cap from his own guilelessness. Finally, we had the beautiful Bucky story done by Mark Waid in SOL #12.
In the process of reviving Bucky as the Winter Soldier, Brubaker has done little to contradict the established history - rather, he has added to it. Bucky becoming Captain America's partner has become something planned rather than something accidental - which was far more plausable. That all of the Invaders killed during wartime is problematic - the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby flashbacks with Bucky included Bucky using grenades, machine guns, and floating a stack of explosives back to the Nazi u-boat from which it came. Brubaker has given Bucky some teeth, and made the character more plausable for the modern era. The only emotional wrinkle - at least for me - is that the "accidental discovery" has been regulated to the trash heap (or perhaps, that was merely the "public story" about how Bucky became Cap's partner). It's certainly more in-line with the Bucky who, when left behind by the Red Skull as unimportant, rallied more heroes into the Liberty Legion to rescue the Invaders.
The most important part to the Bucky ressurection, however, is the updating of the Bucky component to be of more relevance to Captain America's character. Before the story, Bucky has been - more or less - trotted out as a saint, but Cap's been long over the issue, given that he's had a decade or so to mourn and come to grips with it. With this storyline, however, Brubaker tears the emotional scars wide open for Cap, and updated them - the tragedy of what Bucky has become has a new chapter, with a plethora of storyline possibilities.
I can't wait to see what Brubaker springs on us next!
