Supervillain Origins: The Winter Soldier

Superhero Origins: The Winter Soldier

He went from the Captain’s trusted sidekick to Russian super assassin. Welcome to Watchmojo.com, and today we will explore the origins of The Winter Soldier.

As with most comic book characters, there are often re-imaginings and different versions to a character’s past. We have chosen to primarily follow the storyline, which unfolded in 2005’s Captain America Issues #8-14.

Bucky Barnes was once a fellow soldier serving alongside Steve Rogers. The sidekick to Captain America, their run together ended in 1945 at the end of the war due to Bucky failing to defuse a bomb onboard a plane.

Believed to have been killed, he was actually hurled into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic and preserved in suspended animation, before being found by the crew of his Russian patrol submarine. Brought on board and missing an arm, he was put in cold storage and taken to Moscow.

Assuming that he, like Captain America had Super-Soldier Formula running through his veins the scientists used technology stolen from Hitler’s laboratories to revive him. Successful, they discovered that the American had suffered brain damage and amnesia. This made him remember little from his past life, aside from his tactical knowledge and ability to speak several languages, including Russian.

Discovering that he did not contain the Super Solder Formula they had hoped for, they decided to put him back into stasis until they could find a use for an American soldier.

Nine years later in 1954, the Russian’s Special Section Department X decided to continue work on Bucky’s body, having stolen the schematics for an advanced cybernetic arm. Attaching it, it signaled the beginning of the Russian’s Winter Soldier project, which would transform Bucky into a weapon to use against their enemies.

Brainwashing him, he was made a loyal Russian agent given extensive field training and able to slip behind American positions. Given the code name “Winter Soldier”, he was sent on his first field test that’s same year, with the Americans granting him unprecedented access to West Berlin.

In the years that followed, he carried out assassinations with extreme prejudice, which were never tied back to Russian.

In 1957, after three years of service, he began to show signs of deterioration, as his mind began seeking to fill the gaps in his memory, causing him to rebel against his programming. This meant disobeying orders and attacking a fellow operative. As a result, Department X decided to keep him in stasis between missions and be given a new brainwashing session each time he was re-activated.

In 1973, after years of selective use, The Winter Soldier carried out an assassination in the US, before failing to appear at his designated extraction point. With Russia’s spies carrying out a massive recovery operation, he was eventually found in hiding and apprehended. Despite further mental conditioning, he could not remember this blackout period, prompting the decision to avoid deploying him to American soil.

By 1988, the project was decommissioned and he was again placed in stasis at a facility with other abandoned experiments.

After that facility’s decommissioning, his existence was discovered by Steve Rogers through uncovered Intel, causing him to yearn for a reunion with his old friend from another life.

Revived again and made a servant to the Kronas Corporation, The Winter Soldier was assigned to safeguard the Cosmic Cube from the Avengers.

This caused him to come face to face with his old friend in an all out brawl. This led to the Cap using the Cosmic Cube’s power to return his memories. With Bucky returning, his first act was to destroy the troublesome cube, before disappearing, and seeking to piece his life back together, before eventually taking on the role of the new Captain America.

A popular and complex comic creation, The Winter Soldier has appeared in the animated series and became the main antagonist of 2014’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, which followed up on what happened to Bucky after his apparent death in 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”.

Are you a fan of the brainwashed super assassin with the bionic arm? For more informative top 10s on your favorite comic book characters, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.