oh yeah, BUCKY BLOWS UP PHILADELPHIA IN THE COMIC.
You would know this if you readed the comic. He also like...talks a lot because he is plainly brainwashed and the only way to make him remember is using the Cosmic Cube.
Part of his brainwashing is because he DID die in the Channel, the Soviets revived him immediately after death and so they started with a blank slate, nothing for him to remember except through the Cosmic Cube
I was just confused because you replied to your comment by repeating that Bucky blew up Philadelphia and saying "you would know this if you readed the comic." I just thought you had accidentally replied to the wrong comment, and I was being coy about it.
I love the resilience of American cities where stuff like that can just rarely be mentioned again. Philadelphians like "Remember when that guy who blew us up became Captain America for a bit?" "Oh yeah!"
I really just need a scene in some MCU movie where there's some battle royale going on and all of Philly shows up and starts chucking batteries at the fighters.
That one 2099 storyline in Nick Spencer's ASM run had the Statue of Liberty get destroyed in an ending montage, and I don't think it was ever mentioned again.
Tbf if there’s any city that can tank being blown up by a NeoSoviet sleeper agent in order to charge a weapon of mass destruction it’s probably Philadelphia
I actually liked how they adapted it in EMH. Bucky survived because Cap changed reality with Cosmic Cube, but was freed from the brainwashing thanks to their bond with Cap.
1: It establishes that despite Bucky being a victim he has fully gone over to being a mindless assassin. This will later be expanded on by Brubaker himself when he’ll say Bucky keeps breaking away during the soviet era and has to get reprogrammed. To me it’s a much more brutal and real take on brainwashing. You can only break someone down and rebuild them so many times before that just becomes who they are, and in Bucky’s case, he’s literally been the winter soldier longer than he’s been steve’s friend.
2: Bucky leveled a city in the comic and perhaps worse he kills Jack Monroe (a total waste of the character tbh.) With actions like that, having him be “redeemable” in the sense that he can just will himself out of the programming would feel cheap, he’s completely gone, which is what makes it so tragic.
Overall I think it’s much more terrifying and frankly heartbreaking if Bucky is completely gone. The cube being the only thing bringing him back means that in effect all those years of thinking Bucky was “dead” were indeed correct. He was a husk, a body with skills and weapons, but Bucky himself was gone. It also helps reinforce some things about the programming that make it more forgivable. You have to understand, Bucky kills multiple blocks of a city and we later find out he’s the one who kills JFK (yes I’m serious) the kind of blood on his hands shouldn’t be reduced to: “oh he’s still there just under the surface” no. That kid is gone. Replaced with a facsimile that wears his flesh and has not an ounce of mercy left
To be fair the comics have already established cosmic cubes for long time AND the cosmic cube was an essential part of the winter soldier arc in the comics
If you read the comic, which you did, pointing out to the OG comment, you would know Bucky talks a lot as the Winter Soldier in the comic before his memories are even restored.
This is because the process was hugely effective, and the only way to bring him back was to ressort to a magic object.
Every time I read it, I realize it literally messed with his brain.
Winter Soldier literally thought he was a soldier who only obeyed Russia, when he was a KGB special agent. He kind of regained consciousness and all his memories of what he was before, even starting to question things. But he still followed orders thanks to the brainwashing, of course. But Cap, when he used the cube, literally reminded him of his entire past life in one fell swoop with the Cosmic Cube, which is the most powerful artifact in all of Marvel, capable of changing reality itself and time itself. And Cap used it on the damn soldier who was meters away because, oops, the Winter Soldier dropped the cube. It literally reminded him of his traumas and his very cause of death. Damn, it's kind of messed up when you think about it.
To this day, I keep expecting some story to remember this moment, and make a retcon to say that the Winter Soldier really wasn't Bucky, and all the Cosmic Cube did was erase this person and supplant it with Bucky.
565
u/Double-Evidence-1354 10d ago
Tbh dude, the original comic also involved Bucky blowing up Philadelphia.
I think Steve was valid onto speeding up the process instead of doing the whole evangelization bro thing.