Writers:
Jason
Latour and Nic Klein
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| Cover artists: Declan Shalvey and Nic Klein (#15-16), Declan Shalvey and Chris Brunner (#17), Nic Klein (#18), Declan Shalvey (#19) |
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| Variant covers by Nic Klein (#15), Mike Deodata (#16), Chris Brunner (#17), Dave Johnson (#18) and Jason Latour (#19) |
Collected
in:
- Winter Soldier: The Electric Ghost (Marvel Comics, Aug 20th 2013)
- The entire series is available on Marvel Unlimited and Comixology.
 |
| Sketch by Latour |
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| Sketch by Shalvey |
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| Sketch by Klein |
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| Art by Klein |
#15 "Skin to Shed"
Continuity Notes
-
Since Black
Widow Hunt, Bucky's hair has grown out.
-
Throughout the run, Bucky refers to his
"summer protocols" - in contrast to Brubaker's run, presumably
placing this within the summer.
-
Bucky recalls a moment from his Soviet
history:
"One afternoon in 1977 [the Croatian] Colonel Rajko led his forces against the fascist Soviet occupation. All told I killed nearly 50 of his men that day. Three of his brothers among them."At the beginning of this story, he has returned to Croatia to atone for these actions."I had to tell him. His men came at me before I could think."
-
Fury meets with Bucky, presumably for the
first time since the last story. "This little crusade of yours, runnin'
'round confessin' your sins? It's got the new S.H.I.E.L.D. brass more than a
little jumpy." Fury has been underground since the end of Battle Scars, where his son, Nick Fury
Jr., found a place in S.H.I.E.L.D. (literally) in his father's name.
-
Bucky says that "by the time" he
and Steve first met, "the army had taught me to speak six languages. And
twice as many ways to kill a man with my hands. The kid he remembers never even
existed. No one's ever been able to see that. No one but Natasha." He
maintains that "I don't belong at S.H.I.E.L.D. without her."
-
Fury tasks Bucky to go after Joe Robards, a
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent at "the top of Fury's list": a man who went
undercover into Hydra "30 years" ago, "in 1982." "The
sole tether to his old life was his handler [and lover], an agent named Gina
Autry." Bucky recalls:
"That same year I was tasked with the recovery of a defecting Soviet physcist-- Dr. Linus Tarasova. Agent [16,] Autry[,] was my opposite number. Tasked with Tarasova's extraction to the west. Gina Autry died on a snowy hill in Latveria. She died defending Dr. Tarasova from me."
-
We flashback to the previous night, "18
hours ago," where Robards finally breaks his cover after "over 30
years," shooting almost all of the customers at a Hydra-run casino.
#16 "Closer Than Enemies"
Continuity Notes
-
This and the following three issues feature
flashbacks to Bucky's mission with Gita in 1982, which he referred to last
issue. Here, Bucky is working for one Colonel Conrad Petrov ('Father Hammer') -
a man who "scurried from the wreckage" after the fall, and created
'The Orphanage', a top secret Hydra-run organisation which trained children -
"[stolen] from their beds in the night" - into professional killers.
-
Bucky visits Natasha's Paris safe house,
where Robards has been laying low. He says that she "hasn't been here in
months." Unless I'm mistaken, Natasha last visited Paris in the one-shot Fear Itself: The Black Widow. He says
that Robards has been "A.W.O.L. for weeks" since his outburst at
Hydra last issue.
Pop Culture
-
Maria Hill refers to a "Steranko class
satellite" which vanished two days ago. This is clearly an
-
Fury jokes "Used to be a fella would at
least offer a glass of toilet wine before a prison hug. I guess bromance really
is dead."
#17 "A Dark and Heavy Star"
Continuity Notes
-
Fury mentions that "the Van Allen [radiation]
belts" is the "same place that created the Fantastic damned Four,"
i.e., the spatial place inundated with cosmic rays. Per Wikipedia, it
is "one of at least two layers of plasma
that is held in place around the planet Earth by the planet's magnetic field." So far as I'm aware,
the Fantastic Four's (particularly unscientific) origin has not been referred
to in such scientific detail before.
.jpg)
-
The Electric Ghost (Tesla Tarasova) is reunited with
Bucky for the first time since her mission in 1982.Pop Culture
- Amidst
MOPOD is a rather amusing analogue to Monopoly: 'Monopolize' (or, according to Fury, "drinkin' Scrabble"), a game emblazoned
with the billionaire Iron Man's likeness.
#18 "The Phantom Limb Technique"
Continuity Notes
-
In this issue and the next, we see several
flashbacks to the Electric Ghost's history in the 1980s. This issue is largely
a summation of that history. Following the mission to extract her father, Tesla
had been "taken into the custody of the KGB" and sent to The
Orphanage (#16). We open here with Tesla writing in her journal: 12th July
1984. She says "My first years at The Orphanage were spent in
isolation." A few years later, "at 11 years old, she is "finally
inserted into the student body": the age at which she murdered her dying
friend, Alphonse, in the jungle, upon command: "That was the day Tesla
Tarasova died her secret death." Having returned to The Orphanage, she
pondered scientific questions: ""If" is at the core of
"life." What, then, is the value of "if"?" She tried
to escape, perhaps on numerous occasions, "but I didn't make it very far
or last very long." Following
graduation, she was sold to one Van Owen and became his "chisel,"
working in a high position training children. Warren Van Owen's role as
recruiter saw him as a covert, black level S.H.I.E.L.D. agent
"funneling" members of The Orphanage into S.H.I.E.L.D. - a fact Tesla
only discovered after his death on his own computer. By the late 90s, Tesla
went rogue, pursued by sleeper agents and murdering Van Owen. She became driven
by the Winter Soldier's visit in 1982, unable to recall her "father's
face." By the 2000s, "all I had was my father's work": an essay
on cosmic rays - concepts she put to use in her own Electric Ghost technology.
She is reunited with Father Hammer. He says:
"Your mother died screaming as we ripped you from her womb. So too did your father as he tried to rip you from our arms. He died on my order. At the hand of my assassin, the Winter Soldier."
-
The Electric Ghost notes Bucky's costume
redesign, seen since #15: "[You had] a widow of your own. And you wear
this to mourn her? A black star?" Throughout Brubaker's run, the Winter
Soldier of the modern era has been seen with a white star, encircled by blue
and red - creating, in effect, the colours of the American flag and the shape
of Cap's shield. In his current appearances in All-New Invaders, he still has the black star: although he has
dropped the red circle and long hair.
#19 "It Ends With a Kiss"
Continuity Notes
-
Fittingly, this issue opens with a pop-art
recreation of Bucky's 'death' from Avengers
#4, descending from Zemo's plane into the Atlantic Ocean. He recalls words
his father told him shortly before his death: "It's the soldier next to
him he fights for." Bucky concludes: "Those words that have rung in
my head my entire life. Even when I couldn't recall where they'd come
from."
-
This issue occurs immediately following the
last, with Tesla kissing Bucky.
-
She refers to the object she calls, which
resembles a Cosmic Cube, as the 'Tarasova Tesseract.' Clearly, this is a
reference to the MCU equivalent of the cosmic cube. She calls it "Such a
brightly burning star--turned inward on itself" - not "power for the
sake of power" like the Cosmic Cube.
-
Tesla physically takes Bucky through her
history, seen in last issue, through the power of the Tarasova Tesseract.
-
Gina's file says she died 09/04/83, contrary
to the year given in #15. Robards recalls: "I hadn't talked to Gina in
months when she died. Not really. Not since the day I'd asked Fury to put me
back undercover--"
-
We are given a somewhat optimistic ending:
Bucky touches the Tarasova Tesseract, and is briefly transported back to his
time with the Black Widow, represented by the blue, white and red symbol on his
robotic arm, where, in accordance with the issue's title, they kiss.
