Don’t Know What You’ve Got Til It’s Gone: Winter Soldier #14 Review

I’ve been reading, and to varying degrees, enjoying, the books of the Marvel Now relaunch (but not a reboot! Because Marvel doesn’t reboot! And there have always been enough readers who give a tinker’s shit about Havok to put him on an Avengers team!), but the more I read, the more I am beginning to believe that we have just come off the back side of one hell of an era of Marvel comics. I mean, look back to, say, Civil War. Since then, and up until the Marvel Now books, we had Spider-Man’s Brand New Day and Dan Slott’s run of stories on that title. We’ve had Bendis’s Avengers and New Avengers arcs. Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man, and Christos Gage’s Avengers Academy. And while not all of the crossover events have been great shakes (everyone gets a hammer? Really?), you gotta admit that Marvel, in general, put out one hell of a run of comics in that period between 2006 and 2011.

And through it all has been Ed Brubaker on the Captain America titles. From the reincarnation of Bucky to the death of Captain America to his rebirth to the launch of Winter Soldier, Brubaker has delivered some damn good action / espionage stories through the years, and have singlehandedly put Captain America on my pull list for the first time, well, ever.

Well, Brubaker is already off of Captain America in favor of Rick Remender, but he has remained on Winter Soldier… until now. Brubaker says goodbye to Bucky and Captain America, at least for now, with Winter Soldier #14. And while I had some issues with the early issues of the title (somewhere along the line, we went from Captain America being martyred in the aftermath of Civil War to a filthy Commie monkey with a machine gun), as a swan song for Brubaker’s run in Cap and Bucky’s world, it is true to form, a fitting conclusion for his work with the character… and a reminder that we are in a whole new world with Marvel Now… for good or ill.

Winter Soldier #14 concludes the storyline where Bucky’s former Russian Winter Solder comrade, Novokov, has kidnapped and brainwashed Black Widow and put her into play against Bucky and the Avengers. Bucky gets a lead on where they might be going, and manages to track them down thanks to his intimate knowledge of Novokov’s methods and the fact that this is the last issue. Then there is fighting, (and no small amount of Bucky mooning over The Widow and trying to prevent his thoughts from derailing him in the battle… or at least prevent an uncomfortable and hard-to-explain boner) and Novokov is subdued… but that leaves the question as to whether what he did to Natasha can be reversed, and if it can, what that will cost.

Where I had some issues with some of the super science weirdness that reared its head in the earlier issues of Winter Soldier, this issue is simply balls-out action and character. Through the use of internal monologue captions, Brubaker demonstrates how driven Bucky is through the manhunt – to the point of dangerous distraction – and how affecting Widow is on him and his nerves. Brubaker is really effective at showing the depth of emotions that Bucky has for the Widow… you know, beyond the obvious fact that she’s a hot redhead, and his bionic arm isn’t the only “erection” he has on his body, if you get my drift. And sure, it’s easy to make fun of a situation like this, but Brubaker’s characterization of Bucky and his motivations help elevate what could be a simple superhero rescue story into something a lot more emotional and affecting.

And then there’s the extended battle sequence. Now, it would have been easy to turn this into a simple super-spy battle for the sake of it, but for two very important plot points: Novokov is an insane douchebag, and he has been banging Bucky’s woman. Brubaker uses these points to make Novokov truly reprehensible, and help jack up the emotional empathy we feel for Bucky during the fight. All in all, Brubaker makes this an emotional and affecting issue, where the stakes feel relatable to any guy… well, minus the whole super spy, my-posse-is-The-Avengers part of the deal.

But then there’s the ending. Brubaker sets things up so that the next guy doesn’t need to worry about Widow and her relationship with Bucky, and so that she’s free and clear to be used in, well, half the Avengers books out there without any conflict with Winter Soldier, but it feels like yet another book where the creator is putting all the toys back where he found them so that the next guy can use them the way he always wanted. We saw it with Avengers when Bendis left, and this is another example… and it is, bar none, the weakest part of any of these “legacy” books being handed off for the Marvel Now initiative. So on one hand, this ending gives Brubaker’s conclusion as certain amount of emotional heft by allowing Bucky to make a personal sacrifice, it also felt like a Man Behind The Curtain move, where I could see the hand of editorial pulling strings and whispering, “Make sure to clear the decks on this whole Widow / Bucky relationship so she’s clean for Secret Avengers.” Don’t get me wrong, the ending fits… but it also feels like it’s there to help the whole reboot thing as much as it is for any story purposes.

Butch Guice’s art is exactly what I would have wanted from the final Brubaker Winter Soldier. Guice had a presence throughout Brubaker’s work on both Captain America and Winter Soldier, so seeing his work here feels like a good swan song for the end of that era. His work here is in a generally medium and simple line, with simple, realistic figures and a lot of shadows to jack up the mood. His storytelling is clear and easy to follow, and the fight choreography is impeccable, to the point where he uses the lines of anatomy in combat to draw the reader’s eye around the page to help with the flow and pacing. But most important: Guice was the guy who drew some of the most iconic stories in Brubaker’s work on Cap and Winter Soldier, including Captain America: Reborn. The look hearkens back to some of the best of Brubaker’s stories, and just feels, and looks, like the right way to close things up.

Winter Soldier #14 is a solid and fitting conclusion to Ed Brubaker’s work in the Captain America books… but it’s also kind of a stark reminder that Marvel Now is, regardless of what they say, a reboot. And that means putting almost everything back into an easily recognizable condition (The Superior Spider-Man notwithstanding) for the next team. And while it’s early to tell how that will wind up playing out across the 616, it’s also a reminder that the last five years of stories are well and truly on the way out… and here’s hoping we don’t look back and bemoan just how good we generally had it.