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.

Stealing My Dreams: Winter Soldier #2 Review

Okay: we’re two issues into Winter Soldier now, and I’m getting a better sense of what Ed Brubaker’s going for here: some old-school, Steranko-style, 60s-S.H.I.E.L.D. sci-fi super spy stuff that doesn’t necessarily need to make any logical, real-world sense beyond a James Bond film with a 200 million dollar budget. All of which takes some of the edge off the fact that what initially appeared to be a modern, Marvel-based espianoge story suddenly spun, by the end of the first issue, into a scene of a screaming gorilla with a machine gun…

…and none of which makes it any easier to see that same gorilla with a jetpack at the beginning of this issue. That Goddamned gorilla is living every dream I’ve had since I was nine years old. By the third issue he’s gonna be throwing the meat to Heather Thomas, and by the fifth that fucker’ll be chucking feces at The New Kids On The Block.

Monkey With A Machine Gun: Winter Soldier #1 Review

EDITORS’ NOTE: This review, should you choose to accept it, contains spoilers. If read, the Web site will disavow any knowledge of how we fucked up the book for you. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Assuming your browser has been hijacked by a virus. Get that looked at.

Dammit.

I was really looking forward to Winter Soldier by Ed Brubaker with Butch Guice on art. This is the team that brought us the aftermath of the Death of Captain America arc back in 2008, which, gimmick death doomed to reboot or not, hooked me into Captain America for the first time since I was a kid. And it kept me hooked in because it was damn good comics: interesting characters with a darker turn than many superhero comics – almost a spy story set in the Marvel Universe, although with 72% fewer Howling Commandos than most Marvel spy stories (Seriously: if a kid hides a porno mag in a Marvel book, you can count on Nick Fury and Dum Dum Dugan skulking in his closet to pick up the dead drop).

So I was psyched about Winter Soldier, because it put the creative band back together, in a story about a couple of powered-up secret agents working on the fringes of the 616. But ultimately, I found this first issue disappointing. Not enough to give up on it, but for a book produced by A-List talent that promised to live in the shadows, it has two things terribly wrong with it:

• Butch Guice’s storytelling, and:
• Gorilla with a machine gun.

Avenge Me: Marvel’s February Solicitations

Last week, DC Comics announced their solicitations for their upcoming releases for February, and there was a… disturbing trend of books with covers that made the heroes’ thighs look like something that would make Johnny Wadd Holmes weep with bitter, envious frustration.

But surely the repeating nature of DC’s offerings was just a coincidence. One would think that Marvel, who just released their own February solicitations, would never fall into the trap of repeating themselves in the space of a single month!

So let’s take a look at what is sure to be the widely varied and diverse offerings that Marvel has for us in February! (Rob: Tone down the pissy sarcasm and show the nice people the books. -Amanda)

Do-Over: Fear Itself #7.1: Captain America Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s Wednesday, so let’s slip one more review in before the comic stores open with this week’s books. And this review contains spoilers. But it’s no big deal, because the spoilers in this review have already been spoiled. And sacked. Oh wait, I’m American – I meant teabagged. Whatever. Anyway…

Life Model Decoys are android body doubles that are sold to S.H.I.E.L.D. by Stark Enterprises. Which is owned by Tony Stark. Who is Iron Man. And would presumably recognize one of his products. Particularly when wearing his Iron Man armor, which is all sensory and shit.

So when expert spymaster Nick Fury decided to hide the fact that Bucky Barnes was not actually killed in Fear Itself #3 but instead was apparently just resting, he chose to replace him with a Life Model Decoy. And make Tony Stark, while wearing the aforementioned sensory-and-shit Iron Man armor, the first person to whom he showed said decoy in service of this fraud.

With logic like that at hand, it’s a shame that Fear Itself #7.1 writer Ed Brubaker isn’t writing issue 7.2, so we could see Fury trying to convince Thor that Mjolnir is a buttplug.

I Love You, The Check’s In The Mail, and a Marvel Character is Dead: Bucky’s New Book

We’ve talked a lot here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives about the formula of event comics: new costumes, giant battles, and the death of at least one character. Some creator boasting that the event is so big it will “change everything” and will “break the Internet in half” remains optional. For now. Rob Liefeld still has to submissively piddle at the end of each event. Rumor is it’s in his contract, along with the whole “coprophagia” clause. But this is no time to be making up stories about Liefeld, this is serious business. We’re talking about death here.

One of the two big deaths in Marvel’s Fear Itself event was the death of Bucky, Captain America’s old World War II sidekick who took over Cap’s mantle after Steve Rogers was killed in (say it with me!) a big crossover event in 2007. Bucky, who was also killed during World War II, was the victim of the new Red Skull, who tore his arm off… probably at the direct order of Joe Quesada, who figured out that it would probably be a bad idea to have a different guy as Captain America in the comics than in the multi-million dollar blockbuster movie of the same name. He apparently realized this several months after the movie was released, and several years after most of us understood that “Bucky Cap” sounds like euphemism for some kind of French Tickler-type device, but that’s not important right now.

What’s important is that Bucky is dead. He is bereft of life. He rests in peace. His metabolic processes are now history. He’s kicked the bucket. He is an ex-Bucky. And he’s been an ex-Bucky twice. That’s pretty final. Right?

Sure it is. This is Marvel we’re talking about: