Every day we celebrate Captain America's 75 anniversary by looking deep into the Marvel Unlimited archives and going through some of Steve Rogers' most thrilling adventures. Happy diamond anniversary Sentinel of Liberty!
Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting kicked off the 2004-launching volume of CAPTAIN AMERICA with one of the biggest bangs in the hero’s long history. The first issue ended with someone shooting Red Skull through the heart and that would prove just the tip of the iceberg. In issues #1-6, #8-9 and #11-14, Cap, Nick Fury, and Agent 13 attempt to figure out who murdered the Skull and also what they plan to do with the cobbled-together Cosmic Cube.
The man behind the plan turns out to be General Aleksander Lukin, a protégé of Russia’s Vasily Karpov, the man who discovered Bucky Barnes’ body in the ice after he sacrificed himself to stop a drone bomb. At the same time, Steve Rogers fell into the water and became frozen in suspended animation only to resurface in AVENGERS #4. Unfortunately, Bucky proved far less lucky.
Instead, the one-time military mascot found himself brainwashed and made to murder targets at the direction of Karpov and his people as the Winter Soldier, thawed out from time to time to do their dirty work with the help of a cybernetic arm to replace the one blown off in the drone accident. In the modern day, Lukin unleashed Barnes, but the results did not quite fit with the General's plans.
Once S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury informed Steve Rogers of the Winter Soldier’s true identity, Cap dedicated himself to saving his friend instead of killing him. Thanks to the help of Iron Man and Falcon, Captain America finds himself in direct conflict with the Winter Soldier as he attempts to follow Lukin’s orders of burying the Cube deep below ground because of its mind-altering side effects.
The two trade super-powered blows in an epic battle, but Cap seems to fail at breaking through to the man formerly known as Bucky. Still, when he offers his opponent the chance to shoot him dead-to-rights, Captain America lives as the Winter Soldier’s shot goes wide. Thanks to some fancy shield work, Cap grabs the Cube, says “Remember who you are” and the rest is history.
Not only did these first two arcs of Brubaker’s CAPTAIN AMERICA kick off one of the most important runs in the character’s history, but they also brought Bucky back into the fold and re-established Cap’s relationships with Sharon Carter and Falcon. Most of all, though, these issues show how far Steve Rogers will go, and how much he’s willing to sacrifice, to defend his longtime friends.
Cap Declassified
Though decades of wisdom labeled Bucky as one of the few characters in comics who would remain dead, Brubaker realized one important fact: Bucky never perished on the page. The original run of CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS ran until #78 in 1954 which had nothing about anyone getting frozen in the water. The idea of Cap and Bucky trying to stop a drone came into being when Cap thawed out in AVENGERS #4. He remembered both of them leaping onto the plane, himself falling to his icy stasis, and Bucky staying on until it exploded. Over the years, different flashbacks came to light, but they all operated under the assumption that Bucky died without any actual proof or witnesses.
As the Winter Soldier storyline explains how Bucky came to be thawed out in modern times so does next time’s AVENGERS #4 show exactly what brought Captain America into the age of heroes!
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