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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
That's what's sometimes called "Event Based Storytelling". It's been in the comics for decades. Marvel usually had 1 event per year which they could build up to in the different books but nowadays there are more and more events closer together. A book like Loki: Agent Of Asgard can have maybe 3 or 4 issues before it has to take part in another event nowadays.
So yesterday I watched The Dark World and The Winter Soldier. Overall I liked them both.
I don't remember much of the first Thor, but in Dark World I noticed I really like Jane Foster as a character. She's funny and cool. I think that's the reason I never had as big of an issue with Jane and Thor's romance being a big part of the movies; I really like them both a lot, and I like seeing them talk and do stuff together.
And Loki still holds a solid place as second favorite Marvel villain, after Ultron. Lots of great Loki moments in that movie.
Winter Soldier has not only doubled my pre-existing desire for a Black Widow movie, but has also created my desire for a Falcon movie. Sam Wilson is great and I adore the Falcon suit.
And if you ignore the whole "let's make a really interesting and dynamic discussion of freedom vs. security and then make one side literal fascist dictators," I do think the story was pretty good.
I have a question, though: is Bucky Barnes being the Winter Soldier a thing in the comics?
"We're home, Chewie."Bucky shows up as a brainwashed secret weapon/agent for the old Russia that's been found in stasis by a ex-russian general. The general has him kill the Red Skull(who transfers his mind into the general's body using a Cosmic Cube to survive as pretty much a split personality and then fights Steve and a bunch of stuff happens.
Bucky is one of the people who trained Nat in the comics since he's been in and out of stasis a bunch of times as part of his backstory as the Winter Soldier. He and Nat were a pretty popular pairing for a while.
He was also the guy who took up the shield after Cap died in Civil War.
In the comics Bucky's "death" was him flying off on a missile trying to get it to explode in the air IIRC.
Edit: Yep pretty much that.
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edited 24th May '15 8:20:48 AM by LordofLore
The Winter Soldier being revealed as Bucky was a huge twist in the comics, because he had been dead for decades (both in real time and comic book time), and one of the unwritten rules of the Marvel universe used to be that any dead character can (and often does) come back to life, except Uncle Ben and Bucky. I'm not sure how big twist his identity was supposed to be in the movie? (Obviously the twist was already spoiled for comic book readers like me the moment they announced the sequel would be called The Winter Soldier.) Given that they revealed it immediately in the movie following Bucky's death (not decades later, like in the comics), and that Bucky died under ambiguous circumstances, and that The Winter Soldier featured a mysterious masked assassin with brown hair, I guess even those viewers not familiar with the comics could've guessed who the guy behind the mask was?
edited 24th May '15 9:08:13 AM by Tuomas
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The other thing that made it shocking was that Bucky was DEFINITELY dead in the comics. There was an Avengers story where Steve, Clint, T'Challa and Hank went back in time to WW 2 to see if he could've survived, and upon witnessing the actual explosion (which the audience thankfully didn't see) came to the conclusion that he was definitely killed instantly and that there was no way he survived what they saw.
And then another story had his spirit briefly resurrected by a bad guy who assembled a bunch of dead heroes to fight the Avengers.
So he was deader than disco before they came up with the retcon that he'd somehow survived and been rescued by the Russians.
edited 24th May '15 9:44:11 AM by comicwriter
Actually, Earth's Mightiest Heroes had a pretty good explanation for that when they did the Winter Soldier arc: in an earlier arc, everyone was trying to get ahold of the Cosmic Cube and finally, Captain America picked it up. And, unconsciously, it granted his biggest wish: it brought Bucky back to life.
Being definitely, absolutely, for certain dead hasn't stopped Marvel from resurrecting characters though... I mean, after Captain America "died", his ghost appeared to Thor, but later on it was revealed he was never dead to begin with. And I think Mockingbird's ghost appeared in at least two different stories after her death, until we found out the person who died was actually a Skrull impersonating her. In both of those cases, I don't think it's ever been explained who those ghosts were supposed to have been, since Cap and Mockingbird were alive the whole time.
Basically, I think the main reasons why no one at Marvel had thought of resurrecting Bucky in the decades after her death, were that, A) he provided a similar kind of motivational tragedy for Cap that Uncle Ben did for Spidey, and, B) he represented the sort of a character archetype (kid sidekick) Marvel wasn't particularly fond of, at least compared to DC.
edited 24th May '15 9:55:47 AM by Tuomas
It doesn't, but at the time most of the reversed deaths in comics tended to be Disney Deaths. The way the Avengers talked, they made it sound like they'd seen some deep fried Bucky chunks flying out over the ocean after the explosion.
WRT the ghost thing, they ran into the same problem with the Wasp too. There was a really good Hercules arc where he and Amadeus Cho when to the Greek Underworld, and there was a brief moment where they met Wasp's spirit despite her not being dead.
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Yeah, I liked the way EMH handled it.
Nobody stays dead in comics except for Gwen Stacy
, Jason Todd
, and Bucky Barnes
.
Introducing alternate universe versions of characters is one of the classic methods of resurrecting a character. For instance, Nightcrawler was replaced by the Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler for a while before being officially revived.
Spider-Gwen was introduced during the Spider-Verse event, got her own ongoing in her universe, and now is back to play in the major events again in Secret Wars.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I think Uncle Ben remains the one major superhero comic character who's never been brought back in any shape or form, not even as an alternate universe version? Of course it helps that he's a Death by Origin Story type of character who's also not a superhero, so reviving him wouldn't really serve any narrative purpose, plus it would totally derail Spidey's hero motivation.
Mockingbird showed up in the special purgatory for Great Lakes Avengers members.
I take this to mean that Skrull Mockingbird was a true Great Lakes Avenger through and through. Or she really liked playing cards.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersSo far, Uncle Ben Spider-Man has done the courtesy of staying to the event he was relevant for. Spider-Gwen, however, isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Another example: Jean Grey, the definitive resurrection queen. Seriously, even her tombstone reads "She will rise again." Since her death, in addition to multiple resurrections, she's been cloned, she's been replaced by an alternate universe Replacement Goldfish in the form of her Bad Future daughter, Rachel. Then she was reincarnated as Hope Summers, thereby preventing any further resurrections. And then after that, Jean and the other four founding X-Men were brought as a teenager into the present by Beast.
Resurrection isn't always as simple as "X was dead. Now they aren't." There are a lot of tools in a writer's toolbox to put a dead character back into the story without officially reviving them.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

I suddenly realized something about Marvel's slate...they are really clever about it, aren't they? They basically alternate the "big" properties with a "lesser" ones. This year we get "Age of Ultron" and "Ant man". Next year it is "Civil War" and "Dr. Strange". Then we got "Got G" and "Thor" (and I think it is quite notable that it would have been originally the other way around, but Got G was such a success that they decided to change the date) and finally what originally was supposed to be Black Panther but is now Spider-man. After that it is back to the "big" property Infinity War I, followed by two new ones and then Infinity War 2.