Eitan איתן משולם חייא, he/him/his אתה/הוא/שלו, please call me Eitan not Magneto, Magneto is just my URL redbubble: redbubble.com/people/EinsteinEitan/shop?asc=u patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MagnificentEitanArt kofi: https://ko-fi.com/eitanenlightened
Okay, so I've gotten a ton of new followers lately, and I think I should reintroduce myself.
Hi, I'm Eitan Meshullam Chiyya, but you can call me Eitan.
I'm a Jewish trans man and my pronouns are he/him/his.
I post a lot about what interests me at the moment on this blog, be it Judaism, fandom, activism, history, dentistry, or really anything.
Recently a lot of my blog has shifted more towards talking about Judaism and antisemitism, and I welcome respectful questions because I believe education is key in fighting the less-obvious aspects of antisemitism. Please don't be afraid to ask questions, I'd rather you ask questions than come to wrong conclusions. But please be respectful, and if it's a question about a specific post of mine, please first check the notes to see if I already answered it, because it's very likely I already did.
Here is a post I made with a bunch of resources for learning more about Judaism, as well.
Some other big informative posts:
The Six Sexes in Judaism
About hostility towards tweens
Fake News Checklist
About supercessionist ideology among antitheists
Debunking misinformation about circumcision
Common Jewish stereotypes
I tag things both for myself and others, so here are a few of my tag categories:
#fandom negative : For when I criticize certain aspects of fandom culture. It could be a specific fandom, or fandom in general.
#judaism : pretty self explanatory. For when I post about Judaism.
#my art : also pretty self explanatory. For when I post my art.
#goodomens : I find that the Good Omens fandom is pretty toxic, so I don't tag my posts or fanworks about Good Omens with the popular 'Good Omens' tag for that reason. I still need a way to sort my post though, so that's why the tag has no space in between the words.
#marvel : posts about anything having to do with Marvel.
#if jew know jew know : a tag for posts that are targetted specifically at my Jewish followers, or contain references or jokes only Jews will probably understand, or discuss intracommunity issues for Jews only to discuss. Basically, if you see a post with this tag, I'm not excluding gentiles, but it's a post that gentiles might not understand and that's okay.
#dentistry : If you don't know, dentistry is my passion, and I'm on my long journey to eventually becoming a dentist.
#trans : self explanatory. I'm trans, I post a lot about being trans.
#disability : I'm disabled, sometimes I post about it or about issues related to disability rights.
#history : For posts about history. Posts about Jewish history are also tagged as 'Jewish history' in addition.
I have a lot of tags, but these are just a few of my most popular ones.
Anyway, thanks for visiting my blog, I hope you enjoy your stay.
If you'd like to leave a tip, I have a Kofi. If you'd like to get access to unposted art, I have a patreon.
imagine if after 9/11 americans got into the habit of ritually blowing up an effigy of osama bin laden and did it for so long that eventually the effigies just became known as osamas and then osama became a way to say "man you look like you just got blown up, you look rough" and then it just became a way to generically refer to any person and now in the year 2607 it's standard to refer to any group of people as osamas and also, due to 9/11, every eleventh of september americans got together to set off fireworks and eat hot dogs in cold damp fields
because this is what happened in england with november 5
Yeah except 9/11 was actually successful. A better example would be if after January 6th, 2021, Americans started blowing up effigies of Donald Trump for so long that eventually the effigies became known as trumps and then "trump" became a way to say "man you look like you just got blown up, you look rough" and then it just became a way to generically refer to any person and then centuries later it was standard to refer to a group of people as trumps and also, due to January 6th, every 6th of January Americans get together to set off fireworks and eat hot dogs in cold, damp fields.
....and I just got a glimpse of a beautiful alternate reality where justice was actually meted out in this world. Sob
It's wild to me that we're supposed to read Dino Manelli as the team heartthrob and Nick Fury as the team badass when Izzy Cohen is right there setting fuses and blowing shit up while looking hot as hell doing it.
I think it would be so funny if Steve Rogers knew Dino Manelli from his films before he entered the war and had a huge celebrity crush on him, and then he met him when as Captain America he did a mission with the Howling Commandos, and was absolutely starstruck but couldn't show it (and also the crush fizzled out once he realized that Dino was woefully straight). Nobody knows about the crush except Bucky Barnes because Bucky knows everything and 100% teases him about it in private.
That said, I have seen people call Izzy the first explicitly Jewish Marvel hero, and while he's one of the first, he's not the first. That title goes to Tubby Tinkle/Hank Tinkelbaum from the Young Allies, who first appeared in 1941. Though I suppose it was still Timely Comics then, but y'know. If Captain America, Bucky, Namor, and Human Torch get to be called Marvel characters, so does everyone else.
Izzy is one of the first, but he's not the first. I would say that he's the first to be given complexity and personality beyond being a total laughing stock, though.
Izzy deserves so much better, nevertheless. As does Tubby. And everyone else.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (Marvel Comics 1963-1981), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gabe Jones & Isadore "Izzy" Cohen
Characters: Isadore "Izzy" Cohen, Gabe Jones
Additional Tags: World War II, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Hurt/Comfort, Period Typical Attitudes, Antisemitism, Canon Jewish Character, Friendship, Trauma, Howling Commandos Members as Family (Marvel)
Summary:
A short fic exploring some of the fallout of Izzy's ordeal being mind-controlled by the Nazis in Sgt. Fury #32 (because G-d knows the comics never deal with the emotional ramifications of all that trauma).
I really need a comic or fic or something exploring how other people thought Bucky Barnes had come back, because it is canon that people knew Bucky was back before they knew that he was the Winter Soldier. Like Clint knew the new Cap was Bucky- he didn't know that Bucky was the Winter Soldier. Like it says a lot about the universe that people just ..... didn't really question all that much that a guy who was dead for sixty years was suddenly back. But I'd like to know what they were thinking. Did they think it was a Steve Rogers situation and he was frozen in the Arctic the whole time? Did they think he was resurrected by magic? Did they think he never actually died and was secretly immortal the whole time like Logan??? What did they thinkkkkk
I really need a comic or fic or something exploring how other people thought Bucky Barnes had come back, because it is canon that people knew Bucky was back before they knew that he was the Winter Soldier. Like Clint knew the new Cap was Bucky- he didn't know that Bucky was the Winter Soldier. Like it says a lot about the universe that people just ..... didn't really question all that much that a guy who was dead for sixty years was suddenly back. But I'd like to know what they were thinking. Did they think it was a Steve Rogers situation and he was frozen in the Arctic the whole time? Did they think he was resurrected by magic? Did they think he never actually died and was secretly immortal the whole time like Logan??? What did they thinkkkkk
I really need a comic or fic or something exploring how other people thought Bucky Barnes had come back, because it is canon that people knew Bucky was back before they knew that he was the Winter Soldier. Like Clint knew the new Cap was Bucky- he didn't know that Bucky was the Winter Soldier. Like it says a lot about the universe that people just ..... didn't really question all that much that a guy who was dead for sixty years was suddenly back. But I'd like to know what they were thinking. Did they think it was a Steve Rogers situation and he was frozen in the Arctic the whole time? Did they think he was resurrected by magic? Did they think he never actually died and was secretly immortal the whole time like Logan??? What did they thinkkkkk
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Marvel Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jeffrey Mace/Arnie Roth, Steve Rogers & Arnie Roth, Jeffrey Mace & Jack Casey
Characters: Jeffrey Mace (Marvel Comics), Arnie Roth
Additional Tags: 1940s, Hook-Up, Intercrural Sex, Hand Jobs, Period Typical Attitudes, Queer Themes, Bittersweet, Grief/Mourning, Identity Porn, Mentioned Other Marvel Characters
Summary:
Arnie had been in the midst of a game when he saw him for the first time. Arnie Roth practically lived in the club, he spent so much time there, so he knew every man, woman, and fairy who passed through. It wasn’t often that they got wholly new faces in the bar– there’d be plenty of characters who drifted in and out, never risking being too regular, and since the war ended and people more or less stopped migrating as much as they did before, most of the patrons of the club tended to be regulars. It was enough of a rarity when a new face showed up that the room erupted into head-turns and whispers, and that night was no different. Distracted, Arnie looked up from his hand.
The man had his back turned to him. He was tall, with broad– though slumped– shoulders and short blond hair. He was struck by a pang of familiarity and hope followed immediately by sadness.
“Stevie,” he said under his breath.
Arnie Roth and Jeff Mace meet one night at a bar in April, 1948.
The ending of the Winter Soldier arc is better than it gets credit for.
I've seen a lot of (frankly undue) criticism towards the conclusion of the Winter Soldier arc, particularly in direct comparison to its MCU counterpart. The most common thing I see is that people will call the employment of the Cosmic Cube to restore Bucky's memories a deus ex machina, or that it doesn't carry the emotional weight that the movie version does, or that it just wasn't grounded. People seem to misunderstand the comic climax as a one-stop quick-fix, and that's not what it is at all.
(HOWEVER, that's not to say I think the Winter Soldier arc is undeserving of criticism. It's *extremely* patchy in a *lot* of areas- the cruel and frankly unnecessary murder of Jack Monroe for one, odd characterization choices made regarding any characters that weren't Bucky for another, and more beyond just those two things- but the ending is one of its strengths.)
First, the Cosmic Cube, because that's what I see people critique the most. The line usually goes that "Steve uses magic to restore Bucky's personality, and it's a deus ex machina for that reason." The first part is (not entirely but I'll get to that) true, and the second part is completely wrong. We all know what a deus ex machina is: it's a sudden plot device brought in to solve all of the unsolvable problems set up by the narrative.
Let me remind you, this is the fifth page of the first issue.
The Cosmic Cube is the catalyst for all of the conflict in the arc. Bucky, as the Winter Soldier, is reactivated after decades of inactivity (due to being decommissioned in 1987) as a long-con for Aleksander Lukin to acquire the Cosmic Cube and restore the USSR to its former power and beyond. Without the Cosmic Cube, there would be no Winter Soldier arc, and Bucky would remain indefinitely in storage, so it's not a sudden plot device. Have some more examples of how important the cube is:
(For this last one in particular, Lukin has the Winter Soldier blow up a residential building in Philadelphia for the sake of recharging the Cosmic Cube's power. This is where the infamous "who the hell is Bucky?" line comes from.)
Also, not only is it extremely relevant to this arc in particular, this thing is *everywhere* in the Marvel universe. It's a particular favorite of the Red Skull's, and originated in a Cap comic (more specifically, his half of the original Tales of Suspense). It just won't go away.
And, as for the "unsolvable" part, the matter of the Winter Soldier is a problem so solvable that it has literally solved itself over the years- or so is the implication, at least.
According to issue #11, Bucky slowly regains pieces of his memory and grows aggressive and rebellious because of it. This results in the scientists of Department X putting him through memory removal+implantation every time he is brought out from cryogenic stasis to keep him compliant and malleable.
(Also, I'm trying to keep images sparse so I'll stick to examples from the Brubaker run where I can, but there is an *entire comic* about Bucky regaining his memories and rebelling against his conditioning as the Winter Soldier. Go read Winter Soldier: The Bitter March! It takes place in the 1960s.)
The fact that the MCU takes an entirely different approach is testament to just how solvable the problem of the Winter Soldier is. So, no, the Cosmic Cube's involvement is not a deus ex machina. In fact, if Brubaker hadn't somehow involved the Cosmic Cube in the climax, it would have been incomplete and fallen flat.
As for the characterization, the Winter Soldier arc is a very character-driven work. There's more going on with the conflict than just the Cosmic Cube, even if the Cosmic Cube is the driving force. Obviously, the emotional side of the conflict is to do with Bucky and all the angst surrounding him (from just about every party involved).
There's a *lot* of setup and buildup behind the emotional pieces going on. The two comics I'd like to point to specifically are issues #5 and #11 of the arc. These two issues are the heaviest in exposition and context, being almost entirely expository from start to finish. Issue #5 introduces the character of Vasily Karpov as well as his motivations behind essentially directing the Winter Soldier project (even if we don't know about the Winter Soldier project yet; in fact, issue 5 is where we first learn the name "Winter Soldier," even if we don't learn who the Winter Soldier is until the next issue). Issue #11, meanwhile, is an overview of the Winter Soldier's origins in file format, starting in 1945 (with Bucky's death+revival) and ending in 1987 (with the decommissioning of the Winter Soldier).
Even the Winter Soldier project itself is extremely character-driven; both of these issues establish that the Winter Soldier exists almost entirely because of a very personal, ego-driven grudge against Captain America. Bucky is the Winter Soldier because Karpov wanted to stick it to Captain America because he had been "embarrassed" by him. Not even because of anything Bucky had done himself, hardly even because of his skills (which were initially accredited to a Super Soldier Serum he never achieved) even if they were a major justification/selling point of the Winter Soldier Project to Karpov's peers and superiors.
With that in mind, I'll need to pivot towards a few key characteristic that Brubaker writes into his version of Bucky:
Bucky is a people-pleaser. More than that, he's a people-pleaser with tremendous anger management issues, and this is a huge source of conflict for him. He's always getting into fights without thinking about it, and his impulsivity always bites him in the ass later. He has struggled with guilt his whole life (no doubt thanks to his origin as a military brat instilling certain values in him, teaching him that he has to behave a certain way to be valuable, and that he, as is any ordinary soldier, is cannon fodder), and he generally struggles to manage his emotions in a healthy capacity. Most importantly to the Winter Soldier arc, Bucky cannot handle disappointment from the people he cares about, and this has been a flaw of his since childhood.
I'm only touching briefly on this now because, again, I want to make a separate post about it later, but first-time readers tend to be surprised at how much more emotive the Winter Soldier is in the comics versus the movies, and they mistake it for agency that he does not have (even if he himself might falsely think he has/had that agency). As the Winter Soldier, Bucky doesn't have agency or autonomy, even if he is an individual with a distinct personality. In fact, him having a distinct personality is critical to the Winter Soldier arc, and it's an intentional choice.
Before I talk about the ending, here's one panel I'd like to share for the sake of contrast.
This is the twist reveal that Bucky is the Winter Soldier. There are two particular things of note here: one, the Winter Soldier is clinical, collected, and professional. He's following orders; while he might have suggested to deviate from the plan provided to him, he only does so because it is *what seems practical in the moment, without context,* and does not follow through with the deviation/is obedient. Two, Lukin projects the concept of "personal feelings" onto the Winter Soldier, which is because he knows about the context of Bucky. But there are no personal feelings on the matter... except, there are. Just not here.
One of the things that issue #11 establishes is that Bucky could not recall any memories of his life when he was extracted from the sea and revived, but he did have his "sense memories." Languages, reflexes, behaviors, and fight patterns. I'm not a neuroscientist by any means, but from the basics as I understand them, this implies that it was primarily Bucky's hippocampus (encoding memories and retrograde amnesia) that sustained trauma in the drone plane explosion that killed him, while things like the cerebellum in particular stayed relatively intact. This means that, even if he doesn't know at all who they are, his feelings towards people he knew before the trauma exist.
So, in issue #14, he comes face-to-face with Steve in the final showdown.
Right away, he's pretty mouthy and, notably, a lot less clinical than he's been in all of his other appearances. Even if he's been talkative, the Winter Soldier has never shown this level of sass before now and always acquiesced. Of course, his interactions were with his direct superior/handler, Lukin, but one would presume that the Winter Soldier on a mission would be more serious than this (his missions in the late 50s excluded, but that is because he was, again, regaining his identity slowly/rebelling because of it and Department X promptly curbed that issue). And, in fact, in later flashbacks by Brubaker, he is: see issues #45-48 of this run.
But more than that:
An unprofessional, completely non-clinical emotional outburst spurred on by Captain America expressing disappointment in him. He has nothing to say for himself except for telling Cap to shut up, and charges forward to fight without a second thought.
Doesn't that align with Brubaker's characterization of a pre-Winter Soldier Bucky?
Here he is over-compensating for his behavior, trying to readjust himself into a position of power two pages later. And, notably, he has plenty of time to shoot Steve. Three panels and a slow zoom-in on his face is a *lot* of time when it comes to pacing. And though he does shoot, he only does so when Sam and Sharon enter the scene.
(Also, the shot goes wide, and it also sort of looks like he's shooting at or even over Steve's shoulder. I can't be certain if that was the intention though, since you have to always take comic book art with a grain of salt. Still, Bucky is a highly-trained assassin and Brubaker in particular likes to flaunt how good of a marksman he was, even as a kid.)
The point of all this, plus issue #11/its fallout, is that *Bucky is still in there.* Steve explicitly says so himself when Sharon suggests otherwise.
And then, with all of that buildup in mind, there's the climax itself. Steve takes the Cosmic Cube from the Winter Soldier in the middle of the fight, and what does he do with it?
I want to make a *very* specific note of Steve's wording here. "Remember who you are." It's concise, it's specific, and (most importantly) it's simple. There's nothing said about the Winter Soldier's programming or Bucky's personality. No, the only thing that Steve's wish does is return Bucky's memories, and that's it.
Even the comics tend to get that wrong sometimes, like this bit from Devil's Reign: Winter Soldier.
Now, one could argue that this is an instance of an unreliable narrator, because Bucky is the self-flagellating type and wants to give himself as little credit as possible, but since it's so easy to look too far into Steve's wish with the Cosmic Cube and assume it did more than it actually did (because it's so simple), I doubt that that's the case. Besides, this comic depends entirely on the idea that Bucky doesn't remember most of his time as the Winter Soldier when Steve's wish with the Cosmic Cube gave him *all* of his memories back, Winter Soldier years included, so while it would be neat for this to be a depiction of Bucky as an unreliable narrator, it's not.
(Here's the spread of Bucky getting his memories back. The bottom right implies that the Winter Soldier years were included in the matter. Not just an artistic choice, either. Karpov's dialogue here is not featured *anywhere* else, meaning that the Winter Soldier years were a deliberate involvement in the scene.)
More than that, it becomes an explicit plot point later that the Cosmic Cube did nothing to undo Bucky's programming. The Red Skull is able to use a "shutdown code" (no doubt the inspiration for the MCU's activation words) to disable and capture him in issue #30, a whole 16 issues after the Winter Soldier arc concludes.
Bucky does eventually get his programming undone, but that's an active choice he makes *because* of the shutdown code incident.
The thing is, Bucky *did* give himself a second chance at life. It seems sort of obvious to say (because, knowing his established characterization, why would he do anything else), but it was his choice to no longer defer to Lukin/anyone else after this. The Cosmic Cube didn't undo anything or take anything away, all it did was add. If it was what he really wanted, he could have remained the puppet he had been. But, as established earlier, Bucky is still in there, and he has always rebelled against his situation at the first sign of his memory returning to him.
All of this is foreshadowed and set up long in advance. It's very much a full-circle sort of thing. This ending does not come out of nowhere and it wasn't done cheaply. More than that, even if it hinges on a magic cube, this is the ending that allows Bucky the most personal autonomy- again, Bucky makes the active choice to no longer be Karpov's/Lukin's Winter Soldier anymore. Claiming that the Cosmic Cube was a quick-fix for the Winter Soldier problem discredits what autonomy he did have in both this particular situation and the full extent of the Winter Soldier years.
To me, the biggest problem with the Winter Soldier arc's ending is how easily it can be misunderstood and how many of the finer details can be overlooked. It's easy to boil it down to "Bucky gets his autonomy back because of a magic macguffin," but simplifications never make a good work sound as good as it actually is. In my opinion, with a story (and a character) that depends so thoroughly on the theme of personal autonomy, these instances of personal autonomy being exercised need to be highlighted, but instead I see them constantly overlooked or misconstrued, even by later comics.
So as cool as the Winter Soldier twist is, everyone knows who the hell Bucky is by now. Maybe it's not exactly the same level as telling someone that Darth Vader is Luke's father, but it's similar. So I'd say that the Winter Soldier arc gets better and more tragic on a re-read, personally.
100000000000000000000 times this. This is what I keep saying. Also it's comics, and the Cosmic Cube notably continues to be important. In fact, Bucky shattering the Cosmic Cube once he gets swamped with all his memories is an important point that doesn't get forgotten by Marvel (surprising, honestly, given comics' ability to frequently forget about important plot points). The shattered Cosmic Cube becomes the driving catalyst of the eventual Secret Empire arc: the shattered Cosmic Cube winds up in the hands of SHIELD, who do what SHIELD does best and try to meddle with it, and find that it's turned into a little girl– Kobik– who they use to change minds and reality. Kobik, importantly, is a character who, as a child, imprints very quickly, and she imprints on Red Skull.....and Bucky Barnes. She is the reason for the universe being rewritten so that Steve Rogers had always been Hydra, and she did this because she was manipulated by Red Skull and Hydra, because she was an impressionable little girl. But notably, she also has a very strong emotional connection to Bucky, who, not knowing that she's already changed Steve's reality, takes her away from SHIELD because he knows what it's like to be a prisoner who is so manipulated that they don't fully realize they're a prisoner. Direct comparisons are made between Kobik and Bucky. And the Secret Empire arc is resolved because Bucky is able to get through to Kobik and Steve (who are trapped inside the re-formed Cosmic Cube) and bring them out. I think the ending of the Winter Soldier arc would be more hollow if the Cosmic Cube stopped being important afterwards, but it continued to be important, and continued to be important specifically to Red Skull, Captain America (it is also really important when talking about Sam Wilson), and Bucky Barnes.
And the wording of "remember who you are" was extremely deliberate on Ed Brubaker's part. "Remember that you're Bucky Barnes" or "Return to bring Bucky Barnes" would not have worked, because people would have been able to suggest that the Winter Soldier wasn't actually Bucky Barnes (I think people also forget that there had been a very long string of Bucky imposters and "Bucky's back!" fake-outs in the decades since Bucky was retconned as being dead. When Captain America Vol. 5 came out, it had been forty years since the retcon that established Bucky as having died in 1945) and was a Russian agent or an LMD or something, and for Bucky's return to even be reversed by another writer at Marvel after Brubaker's departure. He had to cover all his bases– after all, he brought Bucky back due to a plot hole, the plot hole being that there was never ever a body of Bucky that was found, and his precise mode of death was never shown beyond Steve having seen the plane he was on explode. If Bucky could be brought back thanks to a plot hole, he had to be careful that Bucky couldn't be taken away again thanks to another one.
There's an interview he gave on Newsrama shortly after the final issue of the Winter Soldier arc was released and he explained it pretty well:
NEWSRAMA: You’d mentioned before when we spoke about “The Winter Soldier” that you didn’t feel that Bucky’s death was an iconic, transformative event in Cap’s life to the extent that it was untouchable…why not?
Ed Brubaker: Bucky's death was Stan Lee making Captain America more of the traditional Marvel hero. He needs a tragedy in his past, or he's not a Marvel character. But Stan was smart, because when he wrote the book, he always said when Bucky supposedly died, and talked about how his body was never found, etc. And he brought him back a few times, though he always revealed it to be a trick, a robot, or brainwashing Cap, stuff like that. But he always left that thread dangling out there. And I always asked myself why. Now I know that a hell of a lot of other people did, too, apparently.
But my other reasoning was fairly geeky, I suppose, but Bucky never actually died on panel. There was no "in continuity" issue of Captain America that you could buy where Bucky dies and Cap gets trapped in a block of ice. I bought the issue of Spider-Man where the Green Goblin kills Gwen Stacy. I've read the issue where Uncle Ben dies. But with Bucky it was a retcon. So, to me, that always made it a bit more okay to tell another story around that.
Also, though, I went to pains to make sure our story didn't conflict with any of the previous Cap continuity, at the same time. I altered some of the events surrounding Cap and Bucky's last mission in WW2, to make it work better and make more sense than the various versions told over the years, and I rewrote Bucky's meeting with Cap to make his role as his partner and fellow Invader make more sense, to explain how a sixteen year old kid in 1942 got teamed up with a super-soldier, two guys who can fly while on fire, and the king of Atlantis, but other than mild tweaks to the Cap tapestry, nothing we did changes these stories.
....
NEWSRAMA: When Cap did get the Cube, and told Bucky to remember, did Bucky get everything back?
Ed Brubaker: Yeah. He remembers his whole life, including all the Winter Soldier parts. If Cap had thought about it harder, he might have asked to have those parts wiped out of his memory, really.
NEWSRAMA: But playing devil’s advocate - asking the Cosmic Cube to help you is very “monkey’s paw” at best…any repercussions coming? I mean – The Winter Soldier could have been, in reality, someone named Comrade Pitor Nikoli, created just to demoralize Cap, but with him wishing it to be so with the Cube, couldn’t Cap just have willed the Winter Soldier to be Bucky, and so he was?
Ed Brubaker: That wasn't how I looked at it. Look at what he said -- Remember who you are. He didn't say -- become who I think you are. Or -- be Bucky. It was very straightforward. Which is more the tragedy, since Bucky immediately has this immense guilt for everything he did as the Winter Soldier.
NEWSRAMA: Speaking of that guilt, Bucky grabs the Cube and what…did he make a wish?
Ed Brubaker: No - Bucky didn't make a wish. He just destroyed the cube. My feeling was at that last moment, he just wanted to be anywhere than where he was right then, full of grief, having just tried to kill his best friend. He just wanted to go home. So when he disappeared, that's where he went. The only real home he ever had. Which is now a ghost town, like many old military bases are around the country. I found that a real haunting image, the way Steve drew it.
Oh, and a sidebar moment -- Steve Epting is a comic book drawing genius. He killed on every issue of this book he drew, and his covers are probably the best in comics right now. If he doesn't get nominated for at least Best Cover Artist in the Eisners, it's a crime. And Frank D'Armata, our colorist, deserves mucho praise as well. Frank is so great.
NEWSRAMA: So – either from your 100% honest point of view, or your teasiest point of view – where is Bucky’s head at the end of #14? Is he recovered?
Ed Brubaker: I think he's got his memories, and ten times the self-hate and guilt than any Marvel character this side of Wolverine has ever had. He's a mass-murderer. He worked for the enemy. And now he knows it. And like Steve, he's a man out of time. The world he grew up in is gone. My hope is that Bucky Barnes, as the Winter Soldier, is a character in the classic Marvel model. Conflicted, a bit tortured, but a great guy at heart
There’s a quality that certain books/movies/TV shows have that leads me to say, “Yeah, I can see people making fanfiction of that.” It’s something to do, I think, with how tight the story is, how much feels open-ended or like it could be elaborated on.
Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.
And sometimes you’ll read or watch something and you’ll say, “Ah, low squiggability,” and then you’ll open tumblr and find out that everyone else seem to think its squiggability was very high indeed.
Leverage is a fun one because in my head it has pretty low squiggibility but nearly endless squiggibility when you add any other property to it and make a crossover
