So hey, maybe kinda sorta spoilers here. Phase 2 kicks off today in America with the midnight release of Iron Man 3 (I just bought my tickets!), which many believe to be the final Iron Man romp for this creative team (speculation presently is that RDJ may not even show up for Avengers 2, but c’mon), but we’ve still got Thor: The Dark World in the fall, and next summer comes Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Today we got new concept art and our first look at the titular Winter Soldier…
…a fairly recent comics character who was revealed to be a brainwashed Bucky. Interesting departure from the comics look, opting to go with a New Goblin-esque face mask, as opposed to the domino mask the character originally wore. Not a bad choice, mind you; the domino mask would look considerably out of place.
The Winter Soldier itself is a concept introduced during Ed Brubaker’s astoundingly stellar run on Captain America that I cannot even begin to recommend highly enough. While holding the Cosmic Cube briefly, Cap accidentally changed reality so that Bucky survived the rocket explosion that originally killed him in World War II, but was mortally wounded and picked up by Russians. Bucky was brainwashed into becoming the elusive Winter Soldier, a Russian assassin who was kept in a cryogenic sleep in between missions, making him impossible to trace. Cap managed to break Bucky free of the brainwashing, and while Cap was “dead”, Bucky temporarily picked up the shield and became the new Captain America. Believed by the world at large to have died during the ‘Fear Itself’ event, Bucky’s currently headlining his own title, The Winter Soldier, and doing his spy espionage thing.
The concept art marks one of the few recent pieces of hype for next year’s Winter Soldier; directors Anthony and Joe Russo recently released a few production pics to get fans excited. Personally, I’m holding out for a look at Batroc.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier brings Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones and Samuel L. Jackson back from the first film, as well as Scarlett Johansson reprising her role as The Black Widow, to join Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) as The Falcon, Frank Grillo (Zero Dark Thirty) as Crossbones, UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre as Batroc, Emily VanCamp (TV’s Revenge) as Agent 13/Sharon Carter, and Robert Redford as S.H.I.E.L.D. senior agent Alexander Pierce.
