When I can’t sleep I try to read. Looking at comics on my small iPhone screen forces me to squint, and that’s like half the battle of sleeping anyway. Lately I’ve been reading the Captain America run by Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting, Mike Perkins, and Michael Lark (among others) for the first time since it came out way back in 2005. I love it just as much now as I did back then, even if the story starts out slower than I remember.
It’s an espionage thriller that’s a love letter to the classic Kirby, Lee, Steranko, and Gruenwald comics with modern twists that catapult Cap firmly into the 21st century. It was a story that nobody thought should be done. It existed in the back of comic book creatives minds, and it was hinted at, but never executed. Until Bru, Epting, and a few other artists did the unthinkable and brought Bucky back. It’s hard to imagine since it’s so beloved now, but this story was met with a lot of backlash from fans. According to diehard comic readers, there are a few people that can never come back.
Uncle Ben.
Thomas and Martha Wayne.
And Bucky.
When the rumors lit up the message boards and industry press, they were hated for it. When readers finally read the story, they remained skeptical. Years later, it’s considered by many as the best Captain America story of all time.
This poor bastard lives to die
If you don’t read comics and you only watch the movies though, that’s pretty much the only Captain America story. It’s the through-line of his entire filmic presence. The First Avenger is about losing Bucky, The Winter Soldier is about getting Bucky back, and Civil War is about saving Bucky. Fans had to wait three years to find out Bucky was alive, comic fans had to wait 42. Time moves differently in comics, it has to, but there were hundreds of stories (thousands?) told without Bucky, where his disappearance and apparent death was what drove Cap. While hundreds of comic characters had seemingly died just to come back a few issues or years later, Bucky was always off the table. (Strangely enough, the closest thing we see to that in the movies is Cap’s regret about not spending a lifetime with Peggy Carter, but that’s another essay for another day.)
That’s where the mythology of it all becomes really interesting to me. I’d guess that four out of five people you ask can recite what happened in the movies, so, is that what’s real? If that’s what everyone thinks happened, does it matter that it’s not?
Hold on, things are about to get stupid. You should probably grab a drink.
In the comics…
It was the Russians who found Bucky and reprogrammed him to be an assassin known as the Winter Soldier. He committed acts of terror and murder meant to stymie western efforts during the Cold War, going into cryo-sleep when not on a mission. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he passed hands until he was reawakened by Aleksander Lukin, a billionaire energy entrepreneur who was the student of Soviet mastermind general Vasiliy Karpov. When Lukin sells the Red Skull a fractured Cosmic Cube, a powerful device that can grant the user anything it wishes, he uses the Winter Soldier to kill the Skull and take back the Cube. However after that, Lukin begins exacting Karpov’s revenge on Cap, a one-time war ally. Things get personal, and he uses the Winter Soldier and the Cube to mess with Cap’s life, making him see ghosts of his past and causing massive amounts of destruction and death in the process. While in possession of the Cube, the Winter Soldier is ambushed by Cap. The Cube is tossed from its container during the fight and Cap picks it up, and uses its power to make Bucky remember who he is. In shame of everything he’s done against his will, he disappears, so Cap and his allies set out to try and find him. Lukin drinks champagne and celebrates the Cube’s destruction since it caused so many problems when he tried to use it, and it’s revealed that before the Red Skull died, he used the diminished power to save his mind by wishing it into Lukin’s body all along.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
That story rules. It’s also complicated. One thing the MCU doesn’t get enough credit for is simplifying the convoluted history that 22+ pages a month, every month, for 50 years inevitably finds itself in. Two and a half hours every three years is simply more manageable.
Beyond the neatness of the films, their box office numbers demonstrate their ubiquity among casual moviegoers. So many more people have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier than ever have, or likely ever will, read Captain America Vol. 5, issues 1-9, 11-14, the source material for the film. Yeah, I wrote that as nerdy as possible to help illustrate my point, but it’s my blog and I get to do what I want to here since no one reads it.
If people don’t know that Aleksander Lukin was responsible for the Winter Soldier’s reintroduction to the modern world, that Jack Monroe, a former associate of Cap, was framed for the destruction that powered the Cosmic Cube, that the Cosmic Cube was then used to restore Bucky’s personality and memory… does it matter? I don’t think it does. I’ve been reading comics for 25 years and I genuinely don’t think it matters at all.
Marvel has “if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it” their entire comic publishing catalogue.
The MCU has re-written comic book history and that’s ok. Comics are good at a lot of things, but keeping a story straight is infrequently one of them. Excited as I am for new issues of Batman or X-Men to roll out, there’s a different kind of eagerness for a new episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. No one asks me what I thought of the latest issue of Avengers. A majority of my friends ask me what I thought about whichever Disney+ show premiered that Friday.
They’ve got more chemistry than a high school report card
The MCU exists not quite entirely on its own, it obviously borrows liberally from the comics they’re based on. What makes the shows and movies great isn’t just what they take from the source material, but more importantly what they leave behind. They trim the fat that give comics some of their most delicious bites and in doing so they’ve completely replaced the works they’re based on. Essentially, the movies are “what really happened”, an alternate timeline that has completely eclipsed the one that birthed it.
The MCU is not how these stories happened, but anyone you ask will tell you that they’re exactly how it happened. So, does it matter?
I don’t think it does. And that’s ok.