timodactyl
asked:
Ed Brubaker credits you a lot for making sure that the return if Bucky was only done if the story was worth telling and he has said that you're largely responsible for the popularity of the character now as a result. How formed was the story when he brought it to you? Were there major pieces already in place in the initial pitch? Also, how does it feel knowing how instrumental you were in his success (if you agree that you were) and seeing him on the big screen now? Thanks!

That’s always very nice of Ed to say, but he gives me entirely too much credit, and himself not enough.

Really, the one and only thing I did do at the very outset was to go over a laundry list of questions that would need to be answered to satisfaction if we were going to do this and not make it just a sensationalistic throw-away job.

That list included items such as:

-If Bucky is still alive, how is it that he’s also still young and vital?

-How is it that nobody has ever seen or heard from him in all this time?

-Why is he turning up now, as opposed to when Cap first reappeared, or when any of the many, many Bucky impostors made the scene?

-How did he survive that exploding buzz-bomb in the first place?

And, most crucially, in bringing Bucky back, how are we going to end up with an additive situation? In other words, dead, Bucky has a central place of import in the Captain America mythos. What are we going to get out of doing this story that’s going to replace that with something better?

Ed went away and puzzled out answers for all of the assorted questions I had posed to him–and so at that point, we were committed to moving ahead. And except for one panicked moment when we got to issue #6 and Ed had a momentary fear-based second thought, that was what we did. And it worked out splendidly.

And so, yeah, it’s very cool to see aspects of what we did adapted into a film. It’s likely the Marvel movie that draws the most on stuff I edited so far.