Well.There had to be at least one of Brubaker's stories that wasn't great.sighNot bad, but I expected better.Not sure of the backstory, but Bucky has been extradited to a Russian prison, and Steve can't break him out without possibly making things worse.It was the funky art that really killed this one for me.It sort of flashed back and forth?The parts with Bucky in the Gulag were basically the same as normal, but it seemed like whenever the story switched back to what Steve & Co. were doing to g...

I am afraid 2 stars was kind of pushing it. Every good author has a dud or two.

Seriously Ed? You really think we need another Origin issue? What a complete filler job, waste of time. C'mon Brubaker, you can do a lot better than this.And boy do I dislike the jarring erratic effect on my reading when the artist's pen becomes a revolving door every month. I'm sure it's a blast for the writer to get to work with changing talent, and I'll bet it helps keep the book on schedule - but boy does it make it hard to get into a mood and sustain it over any multi-issue story arc. At le...

I just read till like 150th page because after that the stories were becoming unbearable to read like the art was just becoming bad and thats why I hate anthologies. God dont collect them in trade ever marvel else it just ruins the reading experience.SO it starts with Bucky being in Gulag and there we see him fighting different people in order to survive encountering the former Crimson dynamo and people he might have done wrong but not remembering, and then fighting wolf spiders (think male vers...

I don't know how I feel about this. Not too bad but I don't think it was needed and the story felt a bit drawn out. Also my boy Bucky was in pain and I'm gonna come after the people who did this. (Don't hurt him!!) I loved Natasha though, and it was nice to see Steve's struggles, they were really in character. I don't get why the art changed so often though.

I've been following the Winter Soldier/Bucky storyline, and I've come to the conclusion that his whole purpose in the series is to suffer. (He's also a part-time damsel in distress.) I know how to pick my favourites, right? "This is the trajectory of my life. Every time things are finally stable... finally good... something sudden happens to wreck it all. And then I learn to live with that. And after a while, worse-off becomes the new normal... And then it starts all over again."It does. I've lo...

This is why I never want to be in charge of anything. The second you become the boss, you can no longer go break your former sidekick/reformed brainwashed Soviet hitman/replacement superhero out of a Russian gulag when you want to.Current Captain America James ‘Bucky’ Barnes has been arrested and sent to Russia for his alleged crimes while he was operating as the Winter Soldier. Barnes is trying to atone for past sins by accepting his punishment, but when he gets to the Siberian prison he learns...

It’s usually a given that if someone dies in the comics, they’ll somehow not stay dead (except Uncle Ben). Characters are bought back into continuity in the most bizarre ways: Either Superboy will punch a hole in a “wall”, the character thought dead was just abducted by Skrulls, the character was in Europe for two decades of continuity, or the character who died was a duplicate/imposter/clone. Whatever! For the longest time, the character that fan boys did not want revived was James “Bucky” Barn...

It's more about the Winter Soldier and the fallout but then it shoves another story in the back which isn't as interesting. Some good info otherwise for people who follow the WS tales. OVERALL GRADE: B

This was okay. I guess Brubaker was running out of steam a bit. I don't blame him. At this point he's written over 50+ issues. This is the fallou of the trials of captain america and Bucky in prison. They have some sort of fight club thing going on (does every prison story do this?). Then the 2nd half is Steve trying to deal with his friend gone and also trying to figure out if he should put back on the shield. Overall, it's not bad, but kind of the run of the mil stories without much else. The

Everything is worth it for the Winter Widow.

Unfortunately, this volume couldn't keep up with the quality of the previous one, neither when it comes to the artwork nor as far as the story is concerned. The artwork in this volume seems to be thrown together, changing styles every few pages, resulting in a wild mix that seems somewhat disturbing at best. As for the story, I understand that Captain America is a somewhat limited character, limited by his own past. Maybe I've been lucky to start reading Cap's comics at a rather unusual angle, o...

A lot of Marvel books keep a consistent artist until the end of the run nears. This series stayed the course up until this volume, for some reason. I'm used to the anniversary issues using different artists but this entire volume shifted between artists several times. As with the past issues, the stuff with Bucky in the Gulag was wonderful. I enjoyed the last bit of Natasha's solo mission. However, the rest of this book did nothing for me. It was rather annoying to see them drag out Steve decidi...

Bucky has been transported to a gulag in Russia, and someone wants him killed. The Avengers act like they're unable to do anything about it, until they do. There's no conclusion here, but a blurb to continue the story in "Fear Itself," which I don't want to do. Therefore, this story is incomplete, and the book sucks because of it.It is nice seeing Agent Gyrich in the mix. When I was a wee lad, Gyrich showed up in Avengers #181 with a government mandate not only to limit the number of Avengers, b...

Most of this volume is dedicated to the Gulag storyline. Bucky is in Russian prison, which is every bit as terrible as you might expect. And Steve can't break him out, because his new position is so important, so high profile that he can't just storm a Russian prison. But Natasha can. This is written every bit as well as I've come to expect from Brubaker. Action, intrigue, and espionage, everything that I've come to expect from his version of Captain America. And then the story ends on a bit of

This would have gotten a higher rating if the TPB had contained only the Ed Brubaker stories, and not a selection of shorts tagged on at the end. Brubaker tells a taunt tale of Bucky's incarceration at a Russian camp in Siberia for crimes he allegedly committed while a Soviet spy/killer (frame anyone?). Of course it's a frame, but Brubaker takes us inside Bucky's head as Bucky tries to remain the better person he has become and avoid reverting to the killing beast he was while a mind-controlled

So the obvious is finally about to happen.I've complained about it before--In his first four years on Captain America, Ed Brubaker crafted a brilliant narrative that had Captain America's nemesis, the Red Skull, using the events of Civil War to his advantage to "kill" Steve Rogers. When it is revealed later that Steve isn't dead, it was obvious, even with Brubaker leaving Bucky in the role of Captain America that at some point Steve was going to reclaim the role of Captain America.While Stev...

After writing "Captain America" for years and [generally] churning out exciting storylines, this book, the last one by Ed Brubaker before yet another re-launch of the franchise, feels like the weakest of his entire run (possibly ex aequo with the Captain America: Two Americas storyline - at least that one had only ONE artist, so there was some consistency). "Gulag", the main attraction of the "Prisoner Of War" collection, only accounts for just over half the page count of the book. We get no les...

In terms of the Brubaker run on Cap, this is a rather disappointing effort (that being said, still better than a lot of other books). The main problem here is that the art is all over the place. For the most part, Brubaker has had great art to accompany his work, but here the art starts off well and then just goes all over the place, with too many different styles etc, which just take away from some of the content.The storyline itself is good, but leaves us as ever, standing at a 'now-what?' mom...

Superhero comics really haven't gotten over the Cold War yet, huh.