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Thanks to Marvel’sCaptain Americafilm serial publication , the world now knows " Bucky " Barnes as well as Steve Rogers himself . InThe First Avenger , he was introduce as Captain America ’s closest friend , and a fellow soldier during World War II . What watch over gave audiences a condense version of the decades - long story : his presumed expiry helping Cap push the Red Skull , his transformation into a retentivity - wiped assassin , and his mission to vote down Captain America as the mysteriousWinter Soldier .
play his old Quaker regenerate Bucky ’s memories , and he helped Cap beat his former HYDRA masters before evaporate again . All of which is based on the originalCaptain Americacomics , especially Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting ’s 2005 storyThe Winter Soldier . But what turned out to be a small crook in the movie for fans ( specially viewers who already knew Bucky survived , or had that spoiled for them ) was an absolutely enormous one in the funnies . The MCU motion picture may have remove the wide points of Steve and Bucky ’s friendship , but they departed from the original comics in key ways .
How Bucky Barnes Joined Captain America
For starter , the original Bucky was n’t a beefcake like Sebastian Stan ( not at first , any agency ) , but one of the wave of tike sidekicks that invaded funnies on the success ofBatman ’s iconic sidekick , Robin . This original version of James Buchanan Barnes was the adolescent mascot of Steve Rogers ’s platoon . AfterBucky caught Steve changing clothesand watch he was really Captain America , Cap decide to let him bring together his escapade . The comics have tweaked this over the years , make Bucky a highly trained and carefully selected sidekick , but the distich ended up fighting together until the series cease in 1949 .
There was a legal brief , Cold War - themed revival meeting in 1955 , but Captain America did n’t really make his retort pin until Stan Lee and Jack Kirby lend him onto The Avengers . Possibly realizing what an anachronism a rah - rah patriotic grinder was in the geological era of protest against American racialism and war , they reinvented him as a literal valet out of fourth dimension . Near the remnant of the war , he had been frozen in suspended animation after falling off an experimental “ golem plane ” fly over the Atlantic . As for his young sidekick Bucky ? Well …
The Death of Bucky Barnes
Stan Lee famously detest fry sidekicks , so he deal the chance to publish Bucky out by let out the airplane ’s creator , Baron Zemo , had rig it to irrupt . Captain America survived , but Bucky expire in the fire . This turned out to be a brilliant decisiveness , since it meant Captain America was no longer the one - dimensional do - gooder he ’d been during the state of war . Now he had to dish out with the sort of guilt and intimate upheaval that had defined Lee ’s other heroes , like Spider - Man and the Hulk .
Where the movie version of Bucky was scarcely mentioned between his death and return , Bucky ’s death would continue to specify Captain America in the comic for most of his existence . Fans like to say that he , Batman ’s parent , andSpider - Man ’s Uncle Benwere the only characters you could always number on to stay bushed . Just a few years before Bucky returned , he even appeared in Alan Moore and Gene Ha’sTop Tenas a panhandler with a mark that said,“Really dead , please help!”It stay that way until Ed Brubaker ’s very first page of his very first issue onCaptain America , when he set the stagecoach to unwrap … Bucky was n’t really dead at all .
Bucky Becomes The Winter Soldier
The comic book variation was n’t revived bythe fictional HYDRA , but by the very real supervillains of the KGB . Even though the Soviet Union had fallen , one factor , Aleksander Lukin , still had access code to some of their most unsafe weapon system , which he was hoping to betray to the Red Skull . face at a metallic arm that has since become familiar to millions of motion-picture fan , the Skull gasps,“This ca n’t be what I think it is?”But the issue reveal that arm isexactlywhat he think , as the Winter Soldier get in to dash him on the final pageboy .
Over the next yr Captain America ( and readers ) would begin to pick together this mystery man ’s identity , with Brubaker and Epting overleap several hints before finally bring out the secret . In one flashback , the circumstance of Bucky ’s other appearances was completely change to bring him more in linewith the ruthless Winter Soldier . It turned out his origin was only a concealment story . In realness , he was n’t an innocent child , but a cold - full-blood assassin who could creep behind foeman lines to do the dirty work Captain America could never be catch doing . But that reveal was nothing next to the one which postdate . It turn out Bucky had also survived the explosion of the robot plane , fall into suspend animation himself – so that when a Soviet excursion went look for Captain America ’s dead body years afterward , they found him rather .
Replacing his lost arm with a mechanical one , the Soviets rub out Bucky ’s computer memory and turn him into the USSR ’s Winter Soldier . Cryogenically freeze between mission , in the preceding sixty yr he had only aged ten . As in the film , Cap start out to suspect the truth after insure his unmasked aspect . Butunlikethe movie , insure Cap was n’t enough to restore Bucky ’s memories . alternatively it tookall the business leader of the Cosmic Cube , but not the disguised Infinity Stone of the MCU . The original Cosmic Cube , with the ability to do nearly anything the user can imagine . ChannelingThe Lion KingCaptain America state Bucky to“Remember who you are . ”
Bucky ruin the Cube and disappears in the backwash , but over the next year , readers would see him conciliate his old life-time as a hero with his newfangled career as an assassin . Much like the movie version , Bucky ’s return finally ceased to be a shocking alteration to the canon , finally being accepted as a modern part of it . And when Steve was evidently kill following Marvel’sCivil War , Bucky even became Captain Americahimself . That may not have been his destiny in the movies , but with Bucky and Falcon obtain their own TV series , James Barnes is choke to keep redefining theWinter Soldierrole for a long , long clip .
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