In 2011, Captain America & Bucky #623 gave us a tale from 1941. James "Bucky" Barnes had lost his father and ended up going through months of brutal training for Black Ops missions. It turned out that all this training was in preparation for his role to fight alongside Captain America. Being so young, this experience opened up Bucky's eyes to a side of the war that was nobody's fantasy. A disciplined organization such as the Army was definitely a hard sell for this young hellion. And seeing the carnage being caused by the Nazis didn't help his attitude.
With his mentor being away on an assignment, Bucky drags Toro into an adventure of a lifetime after overhearing an American spy has gone missing. Maybe it is just me but the officer relaying this news to the other troops strangely bore a resemblance to Stan Lee. Even though their rescue mission was successful, the General yelled at them for not following protocol. However, Bucky wished they could have saved the other prisoners that they ran into at the camp they infiltrated. However, they would have never escaped alive if they tried to save the others!
This bothered the young rebel so much that it caused him to have nightmares. The important thing is that Captain America was proud of him. Ed Brubaker and Marc Andreyko presented the story in the fashion that Bucky was the narrator and telling someone else about his adventure. The brutality of the situation was told brilliantly through the artwork on the cover by Ed McGuinness and Chris Sotomayor. Chris Samnee and Bettie Breitweiser gave an aged feel to the panels on the inside of this issue due to the 1940's timeline. The look was very somber, as well as it should have been for this particular topic.
