Fabian Nicieza vs Ed Brubaker
Who do you think would win if Nicieza and Brubaker had to write a comic for Bucky Barnes and Jack Monroe respectively? Let's say, the winner gets $1 000 000, so there is an incentive to write well for their respective characters. Both authors aren't allowed to opt out of the challenge. Both must write a 10 issue series and aren't allowed to maliciously frame the characters they are writing. They must focus on the character themselves and take place during the character's current status quo (if a character is dead, they must be revived and consolidated in the current 616 universe). Then, fans of the characters will judge it. Who do you think would manage to write a better comic? I know this will never happen which is why I am curious what other people think. Bonus challenge: they must write a crossover with the two characters meeting in some event tie-in with the same rules applied. how well would that go?
thanks for ur time
Oooooooh that's a good one.
On the one hand, Fabian Nicieza has written Bucky Barnes before, and dare I say he wrote him well. He wrote him so well that subsequent stories with WWII-era Bucky pulled from Nicieza's characterization of him in The Adventures of Captain America (including Ed Brubaker, I would argue). But during the character's current status quo? I mean I do think he'd be able to do it, he's pretty good at writing brooding male anti-heroes.....but also so much of Bucky's current status quo (long hair, leather, broodiness, anti-hero) wouldn't exist without ripping from Nicieza's characterization of Jack Monroe in the Nomad comics in my opinion.
As for Ed Brubaker.... he's written Jack Monroe before. Briefly, in like 1.5 issues, but he has done it. And I think he at least had enough of a grasp of Jack Monroe as a character to not write him terribly, even if he did unfortunately kill him off. Like I actually think that on its own, Captain America Vol 5 #7 is a pretty decent Jack Monroe story. And since Jack Monroe is currently dead and would need to be revived for this scenario, well, Brubaker has revived dead characters before and did it well, so I do think he'd figure out a way to do it and make it make sense.
So....damn this is a tough one.
I think, because I really really enjoyed Bucky in The Adventures of Captain America and think that Nicieza already has a decent grasp of his character and has been writing him for longer than Brubaker has been writing Jack, Nicieza would win, but probably only by a small margin. Especially since Nicieza has a tendency to either consciously or unconsciously give the characters he writes at least a sprinkle of queerness, which I think fans would enjoy with Bucky given how many in his fandom are queer (not that Brubaker's writing can't also be read in a queer lens, I've done it, and there's a lot to work with, but with Nicieza it's even more).
As for writing a crossover...... technically Brubaker's already written a crossover between Bucky Barnes and Jack Monroe and we saw how that ended 💀
But in all seriousness I actually think Brubaker would write the crossover tie-in better because he's done it before and therefore would be able to handle the emotional implications of them meeting again better. Thematically, as well, having the guy who wrote Bucky killing Jack write Bucky and Jack meeting again would go over well with fans, in my opinion.
Thanks for the ask! This was fun to think about haha
