Winter Soldier: The Bitter March

A great story, one of my favourites, it focuses on mostly a SHIELD agent but it does feature the WS. Good!

It's only 110 pages long so a concise quick to read thriller. Although the Winter Soldier plays a supporting character here, he adds more to the story than just being a kick ass villain. I was unfamiliar with the Shield Agent Ran Shen prior to reading this and although other reviews point out that he later becomes a Captain America villain, although this point is interesting it isn't necessary to know this in order to enjoy the book.

As well noted by other reviewers this is recommended but hardly required reading. It concentrates on other characters but draws out and involves the Winter Soldier's true self before it's end in an engaging manner. The art is good, the scope large and the pacing is spot on. It loses the fifth star only for being one extended flashback to contemporary storylines and rests just short of being a classic.

Very much a companion and complementary piece to Rick Remender's Marvel NOW! run on Captain America, Winter Soldier: The Bitter March isn't actually all that much about Bucky Barnes, but is rather an origin story of sorts for the creature that Steve Rogers would confront in the Remender run: the Iron Nail. Nick Fury is here too, but the real star of the show is SHIELD Agent Ran Shen, who is assigned to rescue two Nazi scientists from the clutches of HYDRA. The scientists have come up with a formula which can transmute any substance into another, which naturally makes them of interest not just to SHIELD and HYDRA but to the Soviets, too. Enter the Winter Soldier, who pursues Shen across frozen tundra and through speeding trains, as relentless and unyielding as ever. It's a mixture of heist, 007-style gadgetry and innuendo, and Cold War thriller that rocks along at a fair old pace. Remender is on form, switching between his familiar punchy internal monologue and some debate between characters about the relative merits of capitalism and Communism. (He also never fails to include his signature "YERAGH!"s and "GAKHK"s when somebody is stabbed or shot.) Shen is a dashing hero who you find yourself rooting for, and the denouement is a real kick in the teeth. We also get a smattering of original villains, including David Bowie-lookalike Lord Drain, who saps your will to live until you're ready to kill yourself (shades of Honest John, the Living Propaganda in Remender's Uncanny Avengers). In terms of what Bucky brings to the party, there is some emotional weight for him too as his enemies discover a weakness: electricity. Consistently zapped by it, his conditioning begins to slip, and he starts to remember his life as Cap's WWII sidekick. Tragically, he begins to pull himself out of his Soviet brainwashing, only for the conclusion to drag him back into captivity and servitude - as of course it must. It's a good story, well told and drawn. As a Marvel NOW! sidebar, this is a solid limited series with a lot to recommend it.