Rick Remender heats up the Cold War with an untold tale of lost S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and the Winter Soldier’s past.
Bucky Barnes made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II but Captain America’s sidekick would be rescued and resurrected as the ultimate killing machine.
The Captain America writer goes back to the 1960s in Winter Soldier: The Bitter March. Remender tells Marvel.com why he’s revisiting Bucky’s dark past.
“I think that, for me, that was when the character was the most interesting and it’s not entirely explored. I think that when you get into where Ed [Brubaker] picked up the character, he had obviously already laid this very intricate and interesting backstory down. But then we moved right into his becoming Captain America and then his current status in the Marvel Universe, which I am picking up in the pages of Captain America . This is a look at who he was [over] many decades during the Cold War as well as establishing what a proficient and terrifying spy/assassin he was and is, and at the same time, to set up a lot of what I’m going to be doing in Captain America with him.
So as I was developing this, the tone that I kept seeing was very 1960’s James Bond/Jim Steranko kind of spy stuff and the more I developed the CAPTAIN AMERICA story and this in tandem, there’s a character named Ran Shen who is destined to become the Iron Nail, who we’ve seen some of through flashbacks in CAPTAIN AMERICA. And I had this big story for Ran Shen in the WINTER SOLDIER that was planned for [CAPTAIN AMERICA] and this was a really great place to flesh that out. So this is really setting up a lot of what’s going to be taking place in CAPTAIN AMERICA with the Iron Nail and what he’s going to be doing to Steve Rogers and completely changing Captain America and his future. And at the same time, to really get a chance to show Winter Soldier when he was a, pardon my French, I guess I can’t say [expletive]. Back when he was a proficient machine of murder and in that it’s fun to approach him as if he’s a predator. We get into his head and there’s definitely a story arc and some character development here for Bucky but in a lot of ways this is “Alien” or this is “Predator” and he is the force that is chasing some of our heroes.
Here’s more of Remender’s Cold War story. When S.H.I.E.L.D. sends an undercover operative to retrieve two Nazi scientists, the Soviet Union sends in their ruthless agent – Winter Soldier to capture the scientists and kill anyone who gets in his way.
Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort tells Marvel how this blast from the past ties into the new super villain Steve Rogers is battling in Captain America.
“In the late 1960’s, a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission gone wrong begat the creation of the Iron Nail, the foe whose schemes and strategies are bedeviling Captain America in the present in his own series,” tells Brevoort Marvel.com. “WINTER SOLDIER: THE BITTER MARCH tells the story of that fateful mission, and the events that set S.H.I.E.L.D. operative Ran Shen onto the path that would result in him becoming the dreaded Iron Nail.”
Winter Soldier: The Bitter March #1 by Remender and artist Roland Boschi arrives Wednesday.
Bucky Barnes sits at the top of our 14 characters to watch in 2014.
You can see Bucky and Steve along with Namor and the original Human Torch in the All-New Invaders #1 and 2 in stores now.
Sebastian Stan reprises his role as Bucky in Captain America: The Winter Soldier on April 4, 2014.
By Editor