1. Brubaker finally reveals Baron Zemo’s endgame against Bucky-Cap, as Bucky must survive the threat that lead to him becoming Winter Soldier.
2. Steve Rogers figuring out where Zemo took Bucky is great logic by him, but then arriving too late means it effected the plot not one iota.
3. Zemo apparently feels Bucky is more Winter Soldier than Captain America and hasn’t yet earned his redemption. Zemo wants Bucky to confront and accept his past so that he may earn a better future. I can live with this, as it fits the Zemo redemption in Thunderbolts and gives him a reason to have gone to all this trouble.
4. What I don’t care for is Zemo going to all this trouble to just go away.
5. I’m a fan of Bucky as Winter Soldier, where he is a very interesting and different character, but as Captain America he’s far too whiny and I’m less interested. Hopefully this sets the stage for a return to Bucky as Winter Soldier, but more likely we’ll further redeem him as a hero, unfortunate since this is a role he simply will not keep when the movie comes out.
6. Guice does great here with innovative and interesting panels, and an especially gruesome version of Zemo without his mask.
7. The respect with which Zemo was handled here is great. Hes clearly a far superior strategist to Bucky and really out-manuevers him at every turn.
8. Can we please get the Nomad backups out of this? It’s thematically not at all similar and really breaks up the flow of the book even when it’s good.
9. This entire arc seemed like a set-up to get to the Trial of Captain America, which, while interesting, isn’t something I wanted to spend $4 for all these months to set up.
10. <b>Rating: 5/10</b> – On the one hand, this is extremely strong characterization and my favorite art of the week (and when there’s an Alan Davis comic, that’s no mean feat), but on the other, an arc where the villain destroys the heros life and then walks away is simply unsatisying and poor storytelling. This was good, then just petered out leaving an average comic.
