it isn't awful, there's a lot of cat content but, like

when did this happen??

I feel like they're trying to force movie stuff into 616

bucky was tried, pled guilty to all his winter soldier brainwash crimes, was sentenced to time served, many moons ago

(or stuff that isn't even movie stuff i d k)

now: he did screw up an extradition agreement w/russia when he broke out of their weird siberian prison for obscure communist villains

and he only got out of that by faking his death, so

maybe something like this did happen in thunderbolts because i stopped reading thunderbolts because it was not good

but I did read the last Winter Soldier volume, Captain America, Tales of Suspense, Invaders, and Strikeforce and this is not a thing that comes up so it's pretty whiplashy

(granted, the last Winter Soldier volume had him like, a popular citizen beloved by townsfolk in suburban Indiana, which also was whiplashy, given his previous direction was "in space")

but it's weird they carried over a lot of the trappings of that series but not the whole point of it, like

the entirety of that series was "bucky tries to help sketchy people escape evil terrorist groups"

it was not just "bucky has a cat now"

this is also a pretty boring interpretation of their dynamic, bring back bucky trying to impress sam but also since when is sam like "nooo shooting nazis (?), anything but that"

what eight year old would have known about the winter soldier?

like, okay, it worked slightly differently in the films because reasons, but when they brought bucky back from the dead c. 2005 there was a detailed, specific timeline

one of those things was that the winter soldier project was decommissioned in the 80s, which makes sense in terms of real-world geopolitics (to the degree any comic book plot makes sense in terms of real-world geopolitics)

but most importantly it keeps this whole thing squarely before marvel year 0/fantastic four #1

which is actually important because it explains why no one ever encountered him before that specific arc

which is important because if everyone actually knows about this famous cold war assassin who is also out and running around decades after the collapse of the soviet union and dissolution of the kgb who also is transparently Bucky Barnes, like, why did no one tell Steve for like, oh, 7 years or so

the original story had an explanation for that, why do you continually fuck that up, marvel

also it's a weird line in the context of this particular story, which operates on the premise that bucky is a sketchy guy operating under a conditional pardon vs a beloved superhero eight year olds look up to

anyway also this comic namechecks misty knight without actually giving us misty knight

in conclusion, I hate that I'm still this invested in bucky barnes continuity

metal arm buddies!

I demand on panel appearance by Misty Knight

metal arm buddies who sam dated a few years ago

I want to know where alpine went

since they clearly didn't leave her with misty

I'm also still wondering how redwing became a vampire bird but y'know

marvel

(who can apparently break metal with his call?)

it was probably something in the 80s or 90s

there's been some nonsense that's happened with redwing

I mean he seemed normal in pet avengers, not that pet avengers is real continuity

baron blood bit redwing during all-new captain america

oh ty

so 2015ish

according to this comic misty and sam are still dating

yeah they were still dating during sam's book l...ast year? two years ago?

follow-up question: is spitfire still a vampire

although sam got jealous of blade iirc

(idk when he made out with jane foster)

if spitfire is showing up anywhere, why would she not be a vampire

i feel like that's a key component in her modern canon

and yeah it was back when sam was still cap that misty started dating, but i had no idea what the status on that was after i stopped reading it

as of this comic, released today, they are still dating

and the vampire stuff wasn't mentioned at all in the latest invaders comic which tbf used jackie only sparingly

it was really just a captain britain and mi-13 thing, but given how she doesn't like, get used many places

i'll admit most of my familiarity with her is through that

but i was also under the impression she doesn't get a lot of play except there and invaders

and i cannot imagine any reason to read invaders

though i think she had a oneshot some time in the last ten years

that was by paul cornell and very tied into mi-13

yeah that tracks

anyway the latest volume of invaders is about how professor xavier is a jerk

and also, is basically a namor comic

anyway the vampire thing is weird because she got bit in 1942, and then never displayed vampiric powers until that one run

and like, she also aged (and later de-aged via a totally separate plot mechanism)

so, it was a random character direction, if not a bad one.