Inventor, designer, and futurist, born in Milton, Massachusetts, USA. The great-nephew of Margaret Fuller, he left Harvard early and largely educated himself while working at industrial jobs and serving in the US Navy during World War 1. One of the century's most original minds, he free-lanced his talents, solving problems of human shelter, nutrition, transportation, environmental pollution, and decreasing world resources, developing over 2000 patents in the process. He wrote some 25 books, notably Utopia or Oblivion (1969) and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969). A professor at Southern Illinois University (from 1959), he became in his later decades a popular public lecturer, promoting a global strategy of seeking to do more with less through technology. His inventions include the Dymaxion House (1927), the Dymaxion Car (1933) and, foremost, the geodesic dome (1947). He has the distinction of having both his names used for a scientific entity, the fullerene (also known as a bucky-ball), a form of carbon whose molecule resembles his geodesic dome.
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Bucky is the name of several fictional masked heroes in the Marvel Comics universe.
History
Origin and World War II
Barnes (named after James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States) was an orphan, the son of a soldier killed in training at Camp Lehigh just before the United States' entry into World War II. This was at the same time that reports of the then-mysterious Captain America began to appear in news magazines, and Barnes eagerly devoured the accounts of this new hero.
One night, however, he looked into Rogers's tent and saw that his friend was changing into the uniform of Captain America. Together, Captain America and Bucky fought Nazis both at home and abroad, as a duo and as part of the superhero team known as the Invaders.
In the closing days of World War II in 1945, Captain America and Bucky tried to stop the villainous Baron Zemo from destroying an experimental drone plane.
Legacy
Late-WWII and post-war Bucky
Fearing that the deaths of Captain America and Bucky, if revealed, would be a blow to morale, President Truman asked William Naslund, the hero known as the Spirit of '76 (a member of the Crusaders), to assume the identity of Captain America. The new Captain America and Bucky finished the rest of the war and continued to fight crime with the All-Winners Squad.
1950s Bucky
In 1953, an orphan named Jack Monroe, who idolized Captain America and Bucky, discovered that his history teacher also had a similar passion, to the extent of undergoing plastic surgery to make him look like Steve Rogers and assuming his name as well. The two used the serum and began to fight Communists as Captain America and Bucky (Young Men #24, Dec. 1953).
Unfortunately, "Rogers" and Monroe were unaware of the stabilizing "Vita-Ray" process used on the original Captain America. The 1950s Captain America and Bucky would be revived years later after the return of Steve Rogers, going on another rampage, and would be defeated by the man they had modeled themselves after (Captain America #153, September 1972).
Nomad
Monroe was eventually cured of his insanity and took up the superhero identity of Nomad, an identity that Rogers himself had once taken in the 70s (when he discarded Cap's mantle as a consequence of the Marvel-version of the Watergate Scandal, engineered by the Secret Empire), even teaming up with the original Captain America on a number of occasions.
Rick Jones
For a brief time after Rogers awakened in the modern age, perennial Marvel sidekick Rick Jones also donned the Bucky costume in an attempt to make himself Captain America's partner.
Others
When the role of Captain America was taken over by John Walker, he formed the Bold Urban Commandos (BUCkies) as a backup team.
Winter Soldier
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.In 2005 issues of Captain America, series writer Ed Brubaker returned Bucky from his seeming death near the end of World War II. During the drone-plane explosion that had apparently killed Barnes, the young man's arm was pinned to the plane — at odds with Captain America's memory of Bucky choosing to stay with the drone and attempt to defuse it.
According to the file on the Winter Soldier, after the plane exploded, a cold-preserved body (minus an arm) was found by General Vasily Karpov and the crew of a Russian patrol sub.
The Winter Soldier was kept in stasis when not on missions, and as a result has aged only a few years since the closing days of World War II.
In the present day, the Winter Soldier caught the attention of Captain America when the Soldier killed the Red Skull and Jack Monroe (Nomad) under orders from former Soviet general Alexander Lukin (Karpov's former protege). The Soldier's objectives were to retrieve the Cosmic Cube for Lukin and to play mind games with Captain America. The attack killed hundreds of people, charged the Cosmic Cube, and gave Captain America his first visual of the Winter Soldier.
The Winter Soldier kidnapped Sharon Carter, and when Captain America rescued her, she told him she caught a glimpse of the Soldier and that he looked like Bucky.
When Lukin grew paranoid over the power of the Cosmic Cube, the Winter Soldier was ordered to bury the Cube in an underground facility in West Virginia. With help from Iron Man and the Falcon, Captain America tracked down both the Soldier and the Cube and prepared for a confrontation.
Upon making it to the facility, Captain America fought the Winter Soldier, but urgently tried to make him remember his past as Bucky.
After the concluding issue was released, Brubaker confirmed in an interview that he intended no loophole involving Captain America using the Cosmic Cube to restore the Winter Soldier's memories:
Newsarama: "But playing devil’s advocate — asking the Cosmic Cube to help you is very "monkey's paw" at best ... the Winter Soldier could have been, in reality, someone named Comrade Pitor Nikoli, created just to demoralize Cap, but with him wishing it to be so with the Cube, couldn't Cap just have willed the Winter Soldier to be Bucky, and so he was?" Which is more the tragedy, since Bucky immediately has this immense guilt for everything he did as the Winter Soldier."In Captain America #18, the Winter Soldier is seen in London, knocking out a mugger who stole a woman's purse, and reading a newspaper that mentions the arrival of Lukin in one week. Captain America later says he's convinced The Winter Soldier is out to kill Lukin.
Giving his aid to Captain America to fend off a terrorist attack in London brought by the new Master Man and a Deathbot, the Winter Soldier badly damages his robotic appendage.
Powers and abilities
The original Bucky Barnes was trained by Captain America in hand-to-hand fighting techniques as well as being skilled in the use of military weapons such as firearms and grenades.
As the Winter Soldier, Barnes has superhuman strength and reaction time in his cybernetic left arm.
Of the various Buckys, only Monroe and Hoskins had augmented strength and reflexes.
Alternate versions
U.S. War Machine (Marvel MAX)
In the Marvel MAX series U.S. War Machine, Bucky was serving in the present as Captain America, as the Captain had died in his stead in World War II.
Ultimate Bucky
In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Captain America had a sidekick, Bucky Barnes.
For the 2005 What If? event, the Captain America story featured Steve Rogers' commanding officer, Major Buchanan, who the men called "Bucky".
In other media
The Winter Soldier recently appeared in the video game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
Ultimate Bucky appeared in the movie Ultimate Avengers.
Notability
Bucky used to be notable as one of the few comic book deaths that stuck. A frequent aphorism among comic book fans, known as the Bucky Clause, was that "No one in comics stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben."
Bucky's death has also been used to explain why the Marvel Universe has very few kid sidekicks, as no responsible hero wanted to endanger a minor in similar fashion.
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