Thursday, June 2, 2011

Beware, Fear Itself #3 spoilers ahead!!!

Okay, if you're still reading this post, that means you've read Fear Itself #3 and/or don't care about reading spoilers... Or you're just confused... Anyway, this is your last chance if you don't want the big, “shocking” event from Fear Itself spoiled for you......... Alright, you've been suitably warned... Fear Itself #3(you can check out my full thoughts on that comic here) ends with Captain America(Bucky Barnes) having his metal arm torn off by the Red Skull's daughter, Sin, followed by Bucky being impaled through the chest by Sin's war hammer. Bucky's allies, Black Widow and the Falcon, arrive at Bucky's body, where Bucky tries to warn them that Sin was working for the Serpent before Bucky and the comic fades to white. So upon first glance, Marvel just killed Bucky off, which in a perverse way makes sense, since we all knew Steve Rogers would be taking back the Captain America mantle to coincide with the upcoming Captain America movie. Hell, anywhere you go, people are treating this issue as if Bucky was dead... It says so on Wikipedia, and if it's on Wikipedia, it HAS to be true, right?!? To that I say not so fast, my friend!

You see, Bucky has morphed into one of my favorite comic book characters, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that thinking. I mean the Captain America series is one of Marvel's better selling titles and Bucky's been the star of that book for a few years now, so it's safe to say he's been enjoying a good, popular second chance at life. Was he ever going to replace Steve Rogers in the hearts and minds of comic fans everywhere and become Captain America? Of course not! Hell, whenever I type up a review with Steve Rogers in it, I have to fight the urge to type “Cap” instead of Steve every time! So Bucky was always going to be a temporary Captain America and Steve was bound to take up the shield again, that's something we all knew. But does that mean Bucky had to die for Steve to decide to become Cap again? While it does make some sense that Steve would become Cap now that Bucky was dead as a way to honor his dead friend, I don't believe that's the case... I say with Bucky near dead from his injuries, Steve can take up the Cap mantle come Fear Itself #4 and take the battle to Sin and the Serpent. Buoyed by the return of the “real” Captain America, Earth's heroes make a comeback and by Fear Itself #7, the Serpent is defeated. From there, Bucky tells Cap that he needs to remain Captain America because the heroes are inspired by Steve as Cap. Bucky goes back to the Winter Soldier costume and calls himself Bucky or Nomad(my personal favorite) and boom, done.

Will Marvel go that route though? It would be WAY easier to just say, “Oh no, Bucky died... We need a Captain America! Oh good, there's Steve Rogers, he'll do it!” While that seems to be the popular thought online from what I read, I'm going to present 3 reasons why I don't think Bucky is dead... These are the three things I'm hanging ALL of my hope on... 1) In Captain America Reborn #6, when Steve Rogers was traveling through time, he sees a glimpse of a dystopian future where he was Cap and Bucky was dressed in his Winter Soldier clothes, meaning Bucky has to survive Fear Itself to set up whatever future Marvel event Steve saw(I'm guessing the Ultron Wars/whatever the Ultron related event Bendis is setting up is called). With Bucky having been outed as the Winter Soldier by Baron Zemo, he could easily go back to the Winter Soldier outfit to try to wash the blood off of it. All he'd need to do is take a different name...(Nomad!) 2) A new Captain America series is starting in July(to coincide with the movie), while the current Cap series is getting renamed Captain America and Bucky... A strange thing to call it if Bucky's dead... After reading the solicitation for the first Cap/Bucky comic, it looks like a flashback to WWII as seen through Bucky's eyes. Of course they could permanently make it a “flashback to WWII series”, but that seems to have a pretty limited shelf life. 3) The solicitation for Fear Itself #3 specifically states, "A major Marvel hero will FALL..." Not die, "FALL"... It seems that if Bucky WAS really dead, Marvel would go out of their way to scream from the rooftops, "Buy this issue, a MAJOR CHARACTER DIES!!!!!" The word "fall" seems kind of like a red herring, you know? If Captain America died in this one, why would Marvel play coy little word games about it? They've never been shy about screaming the word “DIES!!!” out before to try to grab some mainstream press.

There's also one more reason I refuse to believe this comic heralded the end of Bucky... It wasn't written by Ed Brubaker... Brubaker was the man who brought Bucky back from the dead, to the shock of... Well, pretty much EVERY comic fan, he's the man who made Bucky into the Winter Soldier, and he's the man who turned Bucky into Captain America. After putting THAT much work into the character, I just can't imagine a different writer killing Bucky off... Granted, Brubaker and Matt Fraction must have a good working relationship, I know they co-wrote a few comics together(Immortal Iron Fist immediately springs to mind), but still, I just can't see Bucky dying in a comic book without Brubaker's name on the cover... So there you have it, my reasons for Bucky living beyond Fear Itself #3. Will I be proven right in a month's time? I sure hope so, because if this really was the end for Bucky, a rather meaningless death in the grand scheme of super-hero deaths, I'm going to be one angry comic fan this summer! Until next time, X out.

34 comments:

  1. Excellent points dude, and you're definitely right about the fall, not dead thing because they wasted NO time telling everyone "Spider-Man will die, Ultimate Spidey will die, blah blah blah, over and over" but here It's fall. So I believe that and that gives me more doubt than I had upon hearing the news, here's hoping Bucky takes back his Winter Soldier gear, gives Jack Monroe some respect by taking up the NOMAD name, and continues to be awesome in a series of his own I can't start collecting. Also, NOMAD/Venom team up anyone?

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  2. Why thank ya, JT! That's the exact thing... When Marvel wants people to know somebody is dying, they make DAMN sure EVERYBODY and their mother knows about it! That use of the word "fall" seems like the piece of the puzzle everybody is missing... Or at least I hope it is... Because if I lose REBELS, ALL of the DCU and Bucky over the course of the past(and next) few months, I'll go literally insane. Like Joker in Arkham crazy... And nobody really wants to see that...

    Hell, how about a Nomad/Jason Todd team-up?! I still wish DC would have gone the same route Marvel went with Bucky with Jason. I mean really, the circumstances weren't that different, DC could have done the same thing and right now JASON could have been in Dick's place as Batman...

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  3. ok heres the thing in that alternate future vison steve had at the end of cap reborn there was someone weilding a hammer with green lighting flowing from it and i pretty sure thats sin/skadi now
    so i thank that bucky was gonna die in this series wether or not steve had gone back to being cap back then or not
    that said there was also those big war of the world tripods in the back ground that where in the avengers when reality and time got switched around so i just dont know

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  4. It DOES look like someone is wearing a hammer, but we also see electricity... I still think it COULD be Ultron... The figure was kind of obscured and the scene seemed more like New York than DC. Yeah, I literally JUST pulled that comic out between sentences and gave it a look. It looks like the figure is holding something, but it's hard to make out what. Plus we really can't even make out if the figure is male or female.

    The tripod things and the scene being NYC and not DC(there are NO DC landmarks shown in that scene) leads me to think that those events weren't the events of Fear Itself, and still leaves me with some hope that Bucky'll pull through this event... Hopefully...

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  5. "Hell, how about a Nomad/Jason Todd team-up?! I still wish DC would have gone the same route Marvel went with Bucky with Jason. I mean really, the circumstances weren't that different, DC could have done the same thing and right now JASON could have been in Dick's place as Batman... "

    I was trying not to bring it up because this is Bucky's post but you KNOW I was thinking that. I mean, they came back around the same time and could've easily had the same path. I think more people like Bucky than they did Jason and probably still do to be honest, even though Jason does have a lot of fans, but I would've loved to see Jason and Bucky have similar paths, to the fallen sidekick taking up the mantle of their hero turned enemy turned fallen companion.

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  6. Well that's the thing, they're SUPER similar! I mean they both "died" as heroes, returned as villains(although for Bucky it wasn't by choice), both could have reformed(Bucky was freed from his brainwashing, while Jason could have "seen the light") and both could have taken up the place of their mentors... It's too bad really...

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  7. did anyone see the teasers for fear itself 4 that came out today. they basically show bucky laid out as if hes dead. i hate to say it but it might be the end. what a crappy comic week. bucky who is one of my favorite charactes dies in a book while still staring in his own book and i learn that dc is going to reboot everything.

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  8. Who know Bucky would become such an important character? He reminds me a lot of Robin\Nightwing in the Batman universe, but only with a harder edge.

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  9. Question: will u be geting the new ghost rider series?
    the first issue ties in to fear itself as the new female ghost rider takes on Sin
    EPIC bitches (lol)
    i wish they would team up and crack lord summers diamond floozy

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  10. I'm still holding out hope, Anonymous. They did show Bucky laid out on a table(or something), but maybe(and I'm definitely grasping at straws), he was on an operating table or something... As a die-hard Bucky fan, I am REALLY hoping Marvel does the right thing here... There's NO reason Bucky needs to go in order for Steve to take back the Cap mantle.

    Agreed, Maurice. Add the fact that they both debuted around the same time, and both wound up taking over the mantle of their mentors(even after their mentors returned), and you can see tons of similarities. It's thanks to Ed Brubaker's hard work that Bucky went from one of those characters you'd never expect to see alive in the Marvel U, to a major force with his own loyal fan base.

    There's a new female GR now?! That could be interesting... And since I plan on getting like EVERY Fear Itself tie-in, I'd say it's almost certain that I'll be getting at least the first few issues of that new series. GR vs Sin sounds pretty awesome!

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  11. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=8862

    http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=32598

    i totaly hate the whole dc revamp (dosent evreyone lol) but that hawkman cover looks damn cool

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  12. HA! It seems like everybody hates the DC revamp! Yeah, that cover looks pretty good, but I couldn't be any less interested in anything DC does come September... It's sad but true...

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  13. It does look like Bucky has died in Fear #3 but the tagline for the issue was a hero will "fall". I'm actually hoping that this is referring to a "fall from grace" as in Ben Grimm, The Thing, picking up one of the hammers and becoming a bad guy. It would really suck if Bucky was dead again.

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  14. Hmm, that's a good one too, Simon... I never even thought that the "fall" from the solicits might have been Thing falling from grace... I just immediately assumed that it meant Bucky. But in retrospect, it definitely could have been a reference to Thing's turn. I'm still holding onto the slim hope that Marvel hasn't used the words "killed" "died" or "dead" when they put the solicitation out for Fear Itself #3, because Bucky dying here would be an unbelievable waste of a fantastic character.

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  15. i agree i would hate to see bucky go. ive heard of things coming up for him to so i hang on to hope to that hes either not dead or will come back from the dead quickly this time. they teased him dying in cap reborn later on than fear itself and ive also heard of a daken bucky fight brewing now that daken knows the winter soldier killed his mother. but i read fear itself 3 last night and the teasers for 4 and it just seems like hes definitely got to be dead. the page faded to white and he had a gaping hole in his chest.

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  16. @x-man75 Yeah, I'm hoping this is a big swerve by Marvel and Bucky isn't really dead. Fingers crossed.

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  17. That's another great point, Anonymous! The Daken/Bucky confrontation! I was REALLY looking forward to that, as Daken and Bucky are two of my favorites, and with Daken setting up shop in Los Angeles now, it seemed like it was getting closer to becoming a reality... No matter how bad it looked for Bucky though, so long as he wasn't decapitated, I'm still holding out hope!

    One thing I've noticed, Simon, is that the mainstream news sites haven't picked up on the story(that I've seen), which may be a good thing. If Bucky was really dead, you'd think Marvel would be telling as many sources from the media that he was in order to build interest for Fear Itself #3 and 4. I'm just looking for ANY little piece of good news by this point!

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  18. i hear you im holding out home too. comic book resources and ign have barely even mentioned it and thats where i get most of my comic news. guess well have to wait a month to see what happens in issue 4 and then who knows beyond that.

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  19. As far as I'm concerned, the lack of attention Bucky's "death" is getting is a good thing! But yeah, like you said, we'll get a better idea of what happens next come Fear Itself #4... It's gonna be a LONG month!

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  20. I havent read all of the comments, so I dont know if anyone has already mentioned it...butI agree that Bucky is NOT dead. All the signs are there, Steve becomes Cap again, and more. Captain America becomes Captain America and Bucky and chronicles their early adventures. Matt Fraction stated in an interview that Fear Itself #3 takes place right after the "Gulag" storyline and that both issues were supposed to ship together. Quote:
    "[CAPTAIN AMERICA writer] Ed Brubaker graciously let us conclude Bucky’s story [as Cap] here rather than at the end of “Gulag” as was his original plan. Ultimately this is meant to say this threat is big, and it means something to our heroes that is sweeping and real."

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  21. Thanks for that quote, because I hadn't seen that one yet. That's actually really interesting... So Brubaker intended on ending Bucky's run as Cap at the end of the current Gulag storyline... Regardless of whether Bucky's dead or not as of the end of Fear Itself #3(and we both seem to think he's not going to die), I'm curious as to how Brubaker originally planned to end Bucky-Cap. I can't imagine that Brubaker was planning on killing Bucky at the end of Gulag(it would have been such a random storyline to kill him in), which means Brubaker must have some future plans for Bucky. But once again, I'm grasping at ANYTHING I can that'll give me the hope that Bucky didn't really bite the bullet in Fear Itself #3.

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  22. this is from an interview with fraction. looks like hes really dead folks. sorty to be the bearer of the bad news. i hate it too!!!

    The floor opened for questions fairly quickly, leading off with a fan who asked about the fate of Bucky at the end of "Fear Itself" #3, the destruction of Yancy Street and the controversy of those moments. “By the time this is done, I promise you, you will be amazed what I had available," Fraction said, adding that there was only one scene he was asked to change significantly. "I had one firm ‘No’ because it ultimately complicates too many other people’s lives. There’s a hero who’s eventually going to leave the battlefield and there’s a scene where he’s talking to somebody and says, ‘We’re all going to die. I’m going to go be with my mom.’ It’s great, but this isn’t the superhero talking, this is the guy and as he’s talking, he was going to take his mask off.” The unmasking was left on the cutting room floor, but Fraction said that the story beat was otherwise intact.

    Fraction went on to explain his reasoning behind Bucky’s fate, and his continuing belief that the Red Skull should be the one to ultimately kill Bucky again, and that "Captain America" writer Ed Brubaker, who was responsible for bringing Bucky back from the dead, agreed with this thinking when they spoke about the event at an editorial retreat. “When all of this ends, you have to have the Red Skull kill Bucky. That’s how it has to end, and people would look at me like I was dumb.” At the next Marvel retreat, while Fraction laid out his story for "Fear Itself’s" "Blitzkrieg USA" issue, Brubaker asked if this was where the Red Skull killed Bucky. “I went yes! No take-backs! You could see he regretted it as soon as he said it, but sometimes you know when the story is right. He gave me the end to his Bucky piece to do in 'Fear Itself.'”

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  23. Yeah, I was actually linked that same interview last night... I'll just cut and paste what I said then here! Hmmmmm....... I still don't want to believe it... There's a part of me that's screaming that Fraction was BSing the crowd. He just seemed TOO keen on giving that information out. I mean he goes out of his way to avoid talking about some things(like Thing's involvement), but he was giving away a whole MESS of info on the Cap thing. Plus it wasn't actually the Red Skull who did the deed, just a fake Red Skull wannabe with cosmic powers... I still don't want to believe that Brubaker would allow this... It just doesn't make sense...

    Here's hoping this is just Fraction stirring up some controversy...

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  24. hopefully your right. on to another topic what do you think of dc's plans for batman going fw with the sept relaunch. im kinda upset i have not seen any mention of tim drake. i wonder if hes gonna be killed off or just cease to exist in this new dc universe. it sucks the comics i read are pissing me off lately the dc reboot and bucky dead. wtf.

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  25. Tim has been around for over a decade and had a successfully running book for all of that time so I can't see him going away. Mind you I'm not sure how they can fit him into the grand scheme of things. Same problem with Stephanie and Cassandra Cain.

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  26. hopefully he will at least be in the new teen titans book. i dont really like the idea of a batman and robin book with bruce and damien either. i think they are too similar and wont work good together. i liked him with dick grayson. they played well off eachother. i think your gonna lose that. also the idea of like 5 different batman books all with bruce wayne is just not all that appealing to me. i like how it is now with a couple with bruce and a couple with dick. we dont need 5 books about bruce wayne.

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  27. I was mentioning the strange lack of Tim to somebody else yesterday actually... Tim is one of my 5 favorite DC characters, so if he's gone, I'm gonna be ALL kinds of pissed. The thing that's disturbing to me is that they're supposedly trying to make Bats seem younger, right? But we already know that Dick, Jason and Damian have served as Robins... Adding Tim would make Bruce seem just as old as he was in the current DCU in the new DCU... Maybe they'll try to set Tim apart from Batman somehow? Maybe he'll never have been Robin? Maybe he'll just be Red Robin, some kid who's worshiped Bats? I mean the Red Robin comics are selling pretty well, Red Robin #22 was the 49th best selling comic in April, out selling the likes of Superboy, Wonder Woman, Gen Lost, Gotham City Sirens, Batgirl, Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, etc, and many of those comics(Gen Lost, Teen Titans, Batgirl) have already been confirmed, so it would seem REALLY dumb not to give Tim a series since he obviously has a strong fan base that has been supporting his book. I still say Tim HAS to have a spot in the DC Reboot, but with Chairman Johns' obsession with characters who were created before the 1990's, who knows... :(

    EXACTLY, Anonymous!!! I was thinking the same thing about Damian and Bruce! That's why Dick and Damian worked so well! It was backwards, with Dick playing the Robin role and Damian playing the Batman role, but it worked so well! Are they really going to go with two Batman-types in one comic?! Or are they going to mutilate Damian's character and make him a bubbly little Robin to counter Bruce's stand-offish behavior? I sure hope not, because I've grown to really enjoy Damian as of late...

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  28. yeah plus like i said do we really need 5 comics dedicated to bruce wayne? the 4 or 5 bat titles they have now are ok because they are split between dick and bruce but they are gonna have batman, detective comics, batman inc, batman and robin, and dark knight all focused on bruce and not to mention jla and jli as well. i do like the announcement of a scott snyder written swamp thing book though.

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  29. We probably don't need 4 or 5 Batman books but they sell so what are you gonna do.

    All of the announced "magic" books today are very promising.

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  30. i guess im just upset that its 4 or 5 batman books all about bruce wayne. god and they say wolverine is in too many books.

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  31. Wow, 5 Bruce Wayne Bat books is going to be overkill... I don't even think they had that many Bat books out in the 90's! It's going to be one of those deals where people will only buy the book with their favorite writer, leading to one or two really good selling Bat books and 3 horrible sellig ones that'll probably be canned within a year. Maybe Batman & Robin can just star Damian? That would work.

    I actually haven't seen any of the magic books yet... I'll have to go searching from 'em now.

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  32. x-man try comic book resources or ign they have a list of all the announced dc books so far and who the creative teams are for them. the problem with the 5 batman books is they all have good writers so they will probably all sell good. scott snyder is doing batman, tony daniel on detective, peter j tomasi on batman and robin. the in my opinion highly overrated grant morrison on batman inc and the cant get a monthly book out on time david finch on batman dark knight. some new books show promise though. jeff lemaire on animal man and scott snyder on swampthing.

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  33. our tim drake prayers were answered this looks pretty sweet!!

    http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=32682

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  34. Yeah, I'm terrible at going around finding info out... Usually people will come to the blog and be like, "X, did you see/hear about this?!" And then I'll be asking for links! :P But I'll definitely check out IGN, I get most of my video game info from them already, so I'll just hop over to their comics site. Maybe once DC releases info on all the new books, I'll do a thumbs up/thumbs down type post on all the new books.

    And a friend of mine actually e-mailed me the Tim Drake info(knowing what a HUGE fan of Tim I was) and needless to say, I was PSYCHED when I saw it! So it LOOKS like Tim isn't gonna be a part of the Bat-family anymore. I'm also wondering who the Kid Flash is... I'm hoping it's Bart, but I'm worried it's Wally...

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