Winter Soldier #6:
Summary: Bucky manages to track down the hidden base that was holding the third sleeper and is disturbed to find the lab in disarray. Bucky reasons that the sleeper had been woken up during an earthquake, which means he wasn't administered the proper mental conditioning and drugs upon waking up, and was therefore insane. Sure enough, the third sleeper IS insane! We learn the sleeper is a man named Leo Novokov, who had learned that he was a sleeper after 12 years or so of living life as a amnesiac bum, and that upon meeting the man who was supposed to be his hander, he murders the man, an action that no other sleeper had ever done before. After watching Steve Rogers eulogy for Bucky(after Bucky's “death” following Fear Itself), Leo feels Bucky isn't dead and decides to draw Bucky out... To that end he hunts down and murders Fred Davis(!!!), who was the second Bucky. That action does indeed draw Bucky out, who, along with Black Widow and SHIELD, investigate the crime scene. From a distance, Leo smugly watches, content that now HE could kill Bucky for real.
Thoughts: First off, I can't believe Fred Davis died here! He JUST starred in a storyline in the Captain America and Bucky series a few months ago, so he's a character who was still fresh on my mind. I never expected him to get offed like that. With that said, this comic? It was awesome. Ed Brubaker took Leo and made him into an ULTRA dangerous threat to Bucky. If given a good villain name, I can't see why Leo can't become Bucky's own personal Red Skull/arch-nemesis type of character. With Fred's murder and Bucky training Leo back in the day, it's already personal between the two, plus Leo is crazy and crazy people make for great foes! This was the prologue to the next Bucky storyline, and if it's half as good as this issue was, we're in for a treat!
Score: 9 out of 10.
No, not Fred!!
The Fred Davis part was brilliant. I mean, I've got to assume that Brubaker has been planning this arc for months, which is why he re-introduced Davis in "Captain America and..." If he hadn't, I would've been like, "Fred who?" Instead, when Natasha said, "I'm sorry," I was like, "NO! NOT FRED!" Awesome. He and Dan Slott are just so good at setting up these stories, where you feel like everything from the past stays in play. Also, totally agree about Leo becoming Bucky's archnemesis. It didn't dawn on me until you mentioned it, but it makes sense that Brubaker would introduce the other two to set the stage, but save the third for his own personna. Awesome. Amazing issue.
ReplyDeleteAgreed on everything you said there, JW. Fred Davis dying SHOCKED me! It's exactly like you put, if Brubaker hadn't used Fred in Cap and Bucky(was that is last arc on that series? I think he still may be a advisor for the series) his death wouldn't have meant much besides, "Oh, that old Bucky nobody knows anything about died... Meh." For my money NOBODY can set stories up like Brubaker. That's why even though this series started off a bit slow-ish, I knew it would be awesome by issue 5 or 6, and sure enough, that's what's happened. I also like that we both exclaimed, "No, not Fred!" Poor Fred... Here's hoping Leo has a long shelf-life as Bucky's arch-nemesis.
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