Okay first off this.

ThIs!

FUCKING THIS, ELSA!

The way The Most POWERFUL Overlord is broken down like this here. Reverting back to trying to find a safe place, French coming out. Showing how much this affects him, it's just incredible! And Rosie, his owner, friend? who he serves, can't do anything to help him. I love LOVE their relationship especially in this comic. Ugh I'm just biased and just love RadioRose so much!

Next up!

This whole fucking sequence!

Woooo, it's a lot.

Alright first page. The reveal of how this whole deal has affected him, how much weight this deal has placed on his shoulders. It's the first time he's realized it himself. He's seen how not okay he truly is. This deal is the only thing that's ever made him drop his smile.

I'll be honest the first time I read through this chapter, I didn't notice it. I didn't notice it was gone, dropped, disappeared, no where to be found. I think this is a great reminder of how yes, his smile is something to be expected and is practically a subconscious thing he's forced into the back of his mind. But! With so much weight, so much pain and hurt that Alastor has experienced, ESPECIALLY from the previous chapter, this is something I think a lot of people look forward to in the show to show that he's not the invincible Radio Demon he has built himself up to be.

Alright second page here, he's fighting with himself, trying to find that determination to keep fighting, keep showing everyone, especially himself, that he's just as fine as he's always been, unaffected, nothing can change him. 50 years, and his composure is torn apart. Ugghhh! His eyelashes here, they're more pretty than mine! ;n;

Page 3...

Yeah that's a losing battle... My poor sweet baby who's never harmed a fly. Ugh, the feelings he is feeling in these panels. I'm so sorry my sweet boy. I mean what else is there to say? He found a way to continue smiling. Also just wanting to point out his ears/hair here. They are just pinned to his head. Also the use of shadows over the eyes in this entire comic, it just puts that much more of an emphasis on his broken? smile.

Page 4

Just like his little puppets, he is also sewn. Creepy magic time, "healing" himself. Everything should go back to normal after this right? Right?

Ahh page 5

He's beyond broken, this man is shaking like a leaf. "But it's only once a year!" Yeah but that's one time waaaayyyy too much. Vox is such a heartless, merciless, vile thing. Ugh the marks all over him, it hurts me. ;n;

I also think him seeing these deep marks across his body that haven't healed yet, kinda helped drive him to understand this. Seeing how much he has gone through, how much he has suffered.

(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 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.