Not to go off on too big of a tangent away from Bucky's future, and also i don't know the numbers, but didn't Marvel cancel She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel (I thought those were considered successful). Also they canceled Young Dr. Doom and Destroyers before they even came out for some reason.
I can see them cancelling Cap and Bucky, mostly because I haven't been buying it and don't know a thing about it or hear a thing about it ever. It could be really good, I don't know.
About Bucky, this story about him cleaning up his Winter Soldier messes and doing covert sleeper agent stuff will eventually end. Who knows what the Marvel landscape will look like by then, but do you think he will become a public hero again and maybe (since he can't be cap anymore and can't be the Winter Soldier) will he change into someone else?
Or do you think he will still be the Winter Soldier after all this covert stuff?
By the time MS. MARVEL ended with issue #50, it was either at the bottom of the Top 100 or below. If it wasn't at cancellation range - which for Marvel, tends to be below 19k a month with no end in sight to the monthly drops - it was close. It was a title which often needed boosts from events to keep it afloat. SHE-HULK I also believe succumbed to sales fatigue and also needed sales boosts on occasion. After all, the first Dan Slott volume was canned due to low sales, and was only revived when the trade collections sold oodles (much as RUNAWAYS was). But not even Peter David could keep it afloat - in comparison, PAD's X-FACTOR has endured for years now.
Axel Alonso (the new EIC) stated outright in regard to ALPHA FLIGHT that:
Axel Alonso said:
"new budgetary mandates forced us to rethink the strategy."
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35305
Basically, higher ups in Marvel - such as billionaire CEO and noted skinflint Ike Perlmutter - have issued new marching orders on sales expectations. I imagine both DESTROYERS and VICTOR VON DOOM were not expected to sell well. With VVD, there was a rumor of a production delay with the art, which various parties have neither outright confirmed or denied. However, DESTROYERS had roughly two issues in the can and was ready to go, but was pre-emptively yanked. ALL-WINNERS SQUAD, promoted and sold as an 8 issue mini, has sold very poorly and will end with issue #6 - likely on a cliffhanger.
With credit to Alonso, that is the closest to genuine truth being told about Marvel's reality that any EIC has told in 11 years. Apparently he wasn't drunk the "come off like an arrogant, sleazy used car salesman" Kool-Aid that Joe Q and Tom Brevoort have.
The WINTER SOLDIER stuff I imagine can last so long as Brubaker is willing to write it. The question will be what happens when he decides to call it a run on it as well as CAPTAIN AMERICA, which is inevitable. After all, we saw a peek of this with SECRET AVENGERS - Marvel merely hired two writers to fill the pages for ten issues before seeming to settle on a new one. Although aside for being "the ops books", it still serves little purpose. It isn't like NEW AVENGERS, the "street team", does too many space stories.
Technically, Bucky Barnes' legal problems are over in America. He was convicted but sentenced to time served. The issue is international, since he was convicted in absentia in Russia, sentenced to the Gulag and outright escaped. The fact that he - as a fugitive from Russia who likely was listed as wanted by Interpol - next appeared on TV dressed as Captain America defending Washington D.C. likely won't ease relations between America and Russia in the Marvel Universe (a universe in which the Russians usually are bad; even under the "sliding time scale" theory, the Soviet era lasted longer there than in real life). The fact that Russia accomplished various things via corruption is not a useful excuse - America isn't corrupt? Didn't they make a convicted killer and madman Norman Osborn a key government official? Haven't they thrown a federal badge to no end of super-villains at the drop of a hat from Venom (all of them) to Puppet Master to the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants? Isn't Magneto - himself likely guilty of some international crimes - now a member of the X-Men in San Fran and not being arrested? My point is that the "noble fugitive" era can last about as long as Brubaker or others want.
The oddity is coming up with a new codename. Barnes can't be Captain America anymore. It seems odd to call himself the Winter Soldier since that was Lukin's name for him, which he likely despises. Pals call him "Bucky" still, but would he really go by that again? Will he be Nomad: Man Without A Country? The Rikki Barnes version is dead, and Barnes iced the James Monroe version. Perhaps he utilizes the WS name for the same reason Flash Thompson is called Venom - to spook baddies. Or perhaps he's just Barnes, James Barnes, license to kill.
For the moment I am reading both, but it wouldn't stun me if I wound up liking WINTER SOLDIER more than CAPTAIN AMERICA once it gets going. But, who knows. Brubaker wears his heart on his sleeve for Barnes, but despite some decompression or annoying tics, I still like his CA stories overall - his is the only run on the franchise I have read, and likely will read. So for the moment, whatever happens is good for more, and more cash for Marvel out of my wallet.
I'm not reading CAPTAIN AMERICA & BUCKY. It's set in the past and doesn't count. And I don't have a WWII fetish like some people do - I actually tire of flashback stories to that era for this franchise. I genuinely believe that - with aid from Brubaker's run - someone could take all of the original 1940's CA comics, and the 1970's INVADERS comics, and all of those flash-backs to that era as told in AVENGERS or CAPTAIN AMERICA or so on since the 60's and LITERALLY map out Steve Roger's entire service during the war. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second. And even if someone did, and posted it online, Marvel would still pile on more. It's absurd. I prefer to stay in the present, and would rather new characters genuinely introduced without retcon cheats.
