USA Today premiered some details on the new Rick Remender/Roland Boschi miniseries Winter Soldier: The Bitter March, which is due to come out in time for the character’s cinematic debut in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Remender is the current writer of Captain America, and while The Bitter March takes place back in 1966, it will set up a backstory for events that he says will shatter Steve Rogers in his own book. It will pit the Winter Soldier – who in those days was a brainwashed super-soldier working for the Soviet government – against Nick Fury (the original) and Ran Shen in a race to get their hands on a secret Nazi formula that could win the Cold War. Remender describes it as “a love letter to (early-period) 007 and Jim Steranko S.H.I.E.L.D. comics.”
Given that the Winter Soldier is the mysterious bad guy the new film, it makes sense to have a book where he’s a full-on bad guy in the height of his mind-controlled dirty deed doing. That said, Remender notes “he was a tool who had very little control of his own mind, but I will be exploring how Bucky Barnes is underneath all of it still. Even back then, there was a piece of him trying to stand back up.”
Some of us can still remember a time when the rule was “Only Bucky stays dead.” His resurrection has not only been a surprise, but it’s managed to be really, really good. We have Ed Brubaker to thank for that. Remender, however, has shown a desire to move as far afield from Brubaker’s work as he can. Will his Winter Soldier do the same?
