His motivations for accompanying Captain America were less to do with hero worship and more about having the right shooter in the right place. The World War II Bucky becomes a more forceful, proactive and self-reliant character, with a continuity implant revealing him as a crack shot from distance. Along the way he takes a well-considered look at the naïve idea of the teenage sidekick, an awkward 1940s marketing device to give younger readers a character to identify with in the days when comics weren’t supposed to be based in a real world. Brubaker constructs a feasible scenario, at least in superhero comics terms, as to how Bucky Barnes joins his one-time mentor in surviving the decades without having aged considerably, setting him up as a credible menace, then ally. It’s pleasing therefore that Winter Soldier works. Whatever the faith people might have had in Ed Brubaker’s writing talents, the precedents for the return of dead icons weren’t beacons of quality for the most part. So, what better way for a new writer to stamp a statement than by upsetting the status quo? The first is Spider-Man’s one time girlfriend Gwen Stacy, and the other is Captain America’s World War II teenage sidekick Bucky Barnes. As far as the veil beyond is concerned there have been two permanent inhabitants never to be returned. Many have died, only to return later under improbable circumstances. Throughout the Marvel Age from the early 1960s characters have come and gone. Review by Frank Plowright Spoilers in review
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