Please re-read in context with the very next sentence, Greg:  "And, with the information available, that was a perfectly reasonable assumption.  Whether intentional or not, however, Lee & Kirby constructed that available information in such a way as to leave an "out" for someone to bring Bucky back in."

Never said he was "wrong."  Simply that he constructed the information we were provided in such a way as to not rule anything out.  That construction may have been intentional...may not have been.  Being "right" or "wrong" doesn't figure into that.

QUOTE: Before, Cap had lost his friend and Partner. Forever. He felt guilty about not being able to save him, and maybe even guilty about having a young partner to begin with. Now, Bucky is alive, and can perhaps be rehabilitated. Cap may have failed in a different way, but he now has a chance to regain that which he thought lost forever.

An interesting take on it, and I can see where you're coming from.  While enjoying the story, the cynic (or is it the realist?) in me just can't see that happy ending happening, though.  Even if Bucky's rehabilitated, I'd expect some twist to blunt the happy ending.

QUOTE: Anyway, Todd, I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. But, I appreciate your calm, well-articulated points (no points to Rankin, though), and thank you for the spirited debate.

Back atcha, Greg.

After all, we never saw Uncle Ben's body, either. In fact, given the much more discrete fashion of storytelling in the Silver Age, there are a whole lot of dead bodies we never saw. All candidates for resurrection?

Problem with today's comics, in too many cases, is that any idea that's tossed out is considered fair game, so long as the writer can "tell a good story".

Bucky dies...

"certainly Brubaker's arcs are not comparable to "Superman is a pedophile"."

Not in practice, perhaps, but certainly in principle.  The principle being "some things are just bad ideas, no matter how well done they are".  I think that's a perfectly valid concept, especially in the context of pre-existing characters and their audience.

Mike

"I just fail to see the point.."

The point being that a story can be extremely well written, but still just be a bad idea.  The classic example I've come up with is someone writing a Star Wars novel, where someone discovers that Luke and Leia had a one-night stand after The Battle of Yavin and uses that to blackmail them into doing bad things.

I don't care how well-written it would be, a Star Wars story about unwitting Jedi incest is a bad idea.

Mike 

Brad, I'm clearly a bit biased on the matter, but I'd have to say that the answer to your question would be, "No."  While I'm sure Cap would be doing his best to bring Radar back in from the proverbial cold, the connection between him & Bucky is much closer...more personal.

No, I do not believe it would have been at all possible to do a story with anyone other than Bucky. Again, who from Captain America's past would have made sense? And Brubaker did one better by doing something I've never seen done before: deeply exploring the Bucky/Cap relationship. Since I've read very few of the golden-age Cap stories, I'm at a loss to describe their relationship. Was it pseudo-father/son, like Batman and Dick Grayson? Was it mentor/protege, more like Batman and Tim Drake? Was it partners? Best friends? If it was best friends, how did Captain America feel about entering the fray with someone ten years younger than him at his side? Brubaker did, what I would call a deep nuanced examination of their friendship, and Bucky returning made Steve Rogers reevaluate and mourn for the loss of that friendship more than, I would argue, James Buchanan Barnes' death ever did.

I can see the Luke/Leia one-night stand as a somewhat valid point of comparison, but there's nothing subversive in the story that Brubaker's doing. There's no pedophilia or incest. It's deepening Captain America's heroism, exploring Bucky's heroism, and is adding to the mythos as opposed to subtracting from them, or adding in something "vile" or "adult."

QUOTE: I would also guess that this has done away with any guilt Cap felt over Bucky's death and turned him rather cynical and reluctant to trust others close to him again.

I'm glad you mention this is a guess, Brad.  Because it's a wrong guess.  As noted before, it hasn't done away with Cap's guilt...he still feels that he failed Bucky.  It hasn't "turned him rather cynical and reluctant to trust others close to him again."  In fact, he's actively trying to reconnect with Bucky...to help Bucky face whatever demons he has.  (And, right now, Bucky doesn't want that help - he still can't even bring himself to face Cap.)  If anything's caused a cynical/mistrusting turn in the character (and I'm not sure that such a turn is present), it's not the Winter Soldier storyline, it's Civil War.

Did someone say they were?