The Winter Soldier vol. 1: The Longest Winter

I’ve been down on Ed Brubaker’s “Captain America” for quite some time now, but this is a step in the right direction.  Things kick off with an epilogue from “Fear Itself” which explains that Bucky wasn’t pointlessly killed off during the crossover and is now going to use his “deceased” status to take care of some unfinished business.  Specifically, the business of the other three Winter Soldier sleeper agents that he trained when he was working for the KGB.  This leads him and the Black Widow into the dirty underbelly of the Marvel Universe and straight into a conspiracy to frame Doctor Doom for an attack on the United Nations and start a war between the U.S. and Latveria.

Digging into this seedier side of the Marvel Universe plays Brubaker’s style a lot better than the public heroics of “Captain America.”  No matter how well he wrote the series and the character in the past, the writer will always be someone who does his best work in a setting that allows humanity’s worst impulses to thrive.  Of course, this is still a superhero comic so the good guys will have to triumph at the end.  Though that has proved the stumbling point in Brubaker’s last few volumes featuring Bucky, because he had to shift gears and show that Bucky suddenly wasn’t cut out to be Captain America after they had spent so much time trying to sell him in the role.  So our hero had to lose and keep being beaten down until he “died” and got into a position where he could be useable again.  Fun times indeed.

Now that Bucky is effectively off the grid we see him put through a tightly constructed espionage story that also makes good use of its setting.  Machine-gun wielding gorillas, rogue Doombots, crazy cyborgs, nuclear annihilation, it’s all here and yet it doesn’t clash with the tone which is never less than “grim.”  Still, it’s fun seeing Bucky and Natasha give chase against the powers who plan to use the sleeper agents for their own schemes, and to team up with Doctor Doom.  Though the great Von Doom is ostensibly working with the good guys this time, Brubaker plays up his ego to great effect, making him come off as if the situation is always going his way even if it isn’t.

Bucky also gets to come off as much more heroic here, and there are a couple good scenes in the last issue where he demonstrates some quick tactical thinking and gets some long-deserved revenge as well.  His adventures, though, have a distinctly retro look to them courtesy of artist Butch Guice.  The man’s style isn’t quite as old-school specific as Daniel Acuna’s, but the entire book has the look of a 60’s spy thriller, even with the ultramodern tech on display.  Guice’s relentlessly dark and gritty style may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it fits the tone of the story perfectly.

“The Longest Winter” was a refreshing read for me as it showed that Brubaker still had some good stories to tell with the character he brought back into circulation.  It doesn’t really make up for the stories I had to endure to get to this point, but it’s a start.