WINTER SOLDIER #1-2 (Marvel Comics)
By Ed “ward Cullen” Brubaker, Butch “Cassidy and the Sundance Film Festival” Guice, Bettie “Stop with the damn nicknames” Breitweiser and VC’s Joe “Fine, no more nicknames” Caramagna

Synopsis: Bucky Barnes fights against those damn Commies and finds himself at odds with a Russian Gorilla with a machine gun, and a jetpack.

01. There’s nothing that I like more than a good melding of genres. More often than not, I find that the practice produces content that feels a bit more fresh than your more standard fare. For instance, early volumes of Criminal (alongside the extremely talented Sean Phillips) told fairly straight laced crime stories - heists and hitmen and dames and the like - and they were all great. But then Bru pulled out a trick where he plied the more typical noir tropes to a set of characters that borrowed heavily from Archie Comics - and the results of that had me floored. The two genres that don’t seem to go together - the all American, apple pie and baseball, Happy Days style ground up with some Chandler and Hammett and the like - but showing an equal love and respect for both, Brubaker turned out a script rife with nostalgia-made-new. Something old polished and placed in a new light.

Again alongside Phillips, he continued his streak of mixing genres with Fatale, another noir style series but with dribs and drabs of H.P. Lovecraft and other creeping horror bits.

It’s been one of their best work to date - and Bru is complimenting this series with some Marvel work that also plays with genre, in the pages of Winter Soldier

02. The opening pages of Winter Soldier #1 paint the book as an old school classy spy tale - and this is very much the case. Butch Guice and Bettie Breitweiser take great pains to give Bru’s script that high stakes, high rolling, off the cuff, sex-venture style that you’d typical find in, say, an old James Bond movie. A bit more Sinatra than Clooney, draping the proceedings with a touch of that old class, even when things veer more towards the fantastic. And things do get pretty fantastic.

Mixed in with all the dressing of an old school spy story, are bits of sci-fi craziness. The main thrust of the story comes from some old Russian sleeper agents being reactivated and used in measured attacks on the Marvel Universe. Doctor Doom gets a taste of some of the consequences, and needless to say, he’s not too happy. Oh, and also, this happens.

For those wondering, yes. That is definitely a gorilla with a machine gun yelling “Death to America”. And the kicker? He also has a jet pack.

03. The twin ideas behind the straight laced classy spy thriller and jet pack gorillas seem a bit incongruous, and under normal circumstances, they would be. There’s a reason why Bond never fought gorillas. There’s also a reason why The Middleman did fight gorillas. But together? One would seem to cheapen the other. But here? In this series? The two live beside each other, and are treated with equal validity. Neither set of tropes swipe at the other, and Bru doesn’t pass judgement on which he enjoys more. He just writes a slick, fun spy story that happens to have a talking jet pack gorilla, one that is a serious threat… and that’s rad.

04. If you haven’t managed to get your mitts on some Winter Soldier yet - trust me: you owe it to yourself to correct this mistake. Even if you are the type who has read Brubaker’s Cap run and fell away for one reason or another, you need to get this book. The work is some of Brubaker’s best - not to mention Guice and Breitweiser’s - and you can tell everyone involved is having so much fun.

And isn’t that the point of comics? Of media in general? Isn’t it supposed to be entertaining and fun? I’m definitely glad there are books like this at the big two publishers, adding a bit of style and levity to what can become a bit of a straight faced, grim fictional universe.