With new trailers for Thunderbolts and Captain America 4 out over the last couple of months there’s been a resurgence of “Bucky should have been Cap instead of Sam” opining, with one of the main reasons given being “Bucky was Cap first in the comics!” Sure, he was, it’s true (mostly – there’s an issue that’s published after Bucky’s Cap run but takes place before it where Sam takes up the shield while Steve is briefly incapacitated, but that’s a somewhat flimsy counterargument), but there’s an awful lot of nonsense that happens in the comics that shouldn’t be used as precedent for the movies. More importantly, if you’re talking about story then the circumstances in which Bucky became Cap don’t support the argument themselves.
Let’s start with some background. The Civil War was much more intense and protracted than in the MCU, with the Superhuman Registration Act aiming to regulate anyone with superhuman abilities whether they were using them or not and an entire underground run by Steve and Sam that mostly attempted to traffic people out of the country and perform raids against prisoner transports, etc, while pro-registration forces became more and more aggressive in attempting to catch them. The first participant to actually die was Bill Foster aka Goliath1 on the side of the resistance, and in the aftermath there were more deaths and several side-changes in both directions. Finally one last battle took place in which, like in the movies, Steve had to be held back from viciously attacking Tony. This made him realise that things were going to get really, really bad if they kept going and he decided to surrender.
The surrender was planned to take place on the front steps of the Capitol building, on live tv, announced in advance so that literally anyone could turn up to watch. When Steve arrived he was placed in power-dampening cuffs that blunted his super-strength, and almost immediately afterwards someone in the crowd assassinated him. With the cuffs on, he wasn’t able to withstand the damage and died right there on the steps. On live tv.2
Since this is supposed to be about Sam and Bucky I won’t get into most of the fallout from the war. The relevant information is that Sam probably greatly relieved the pro-registration forces by also choosing to turn himself in3 in time for Steve’s funeral on the proviso that the government would leave him alone and he’d just be allowed to do his own thing in Harlem. Bucky, meanwhile, had barely been seen since the Winter Soldier arc. He certainly hadn’t taken part in the Civil War, but he did see the footage of Steve being assassinated. He stole the shield when Tony was having Natalia transport it and resolved to kill both the Red Skull4 and Tony Stark for their parts in Steve’s assassination. Tony just barely escaped death after he managed to tell Bucky of Steve’s final requests of Tony – that he save Bucky from a descent into violence, and find a successor for Captain America.
So, making Bucky Captain America was a way to kill two birds with one stone. It was an incredibly unpopular move – the public, the government, and many prominent heroes all hated it, including Sam at first. Both Fury and Tony enlisted him to keep an eye on Bucky, because unlike Bucky Sam was well-respected and highly trusted. So, unlike during Steve’s time with the shield, Sam was not Bucky’s sidekick in any way – he was closer to being his babysitter.
No one really actually wanted Bucky to be Captain America. Steve didn’t even specify it himself, he gave Tony two separate instructions that Tony decided to treat as one to save his own life. It can’t have won the government, or Tony as the new director of SHIELD, any goodwill, and this was a time when they desperately needed it – the Red Skull’s plans were causing an economic crash and violent riots in multiple cities. And Bucky wasn’t particularly good at being Captain America, either. At one of those riots he attempted to give a speech to calm everyone down, as no doubt Steve might have done, only for the crowd to turn on him, shouting him down and throwing things at him. He could fight well, sure, but he wasn’t an inspirational figure or a symbol of anything. No one even knew who he was, and since he wasn’t registered Tony couldn’t be seen endorsing him to make things any easier.
On the other hand, consider someone who was registered – Sam, the second-in-command of the resistance, who was in fact still in contact with the remaining Secret Avengers who refused to surrender, who was highly experienced and well-liked, who knew Steve better than almost anyone – taking up the mantle. It would have given the government and SHIELD a lot of credibility and been less likely to lead to any sticky situations where Captain America maybe got a little too violent, which was an ongoing concern during Bucky’s time as Cap. After Steve’s resurrection5 Sam and Steve even discussed the problem, and ultimately Bucky only kept the shield for a little while longer afterwards.
When Sam did become Captain America it was handled very differently. Steve was, like in the MCU, an old man, though for different reasons6. Deciding that he could no longer work in the field he retired and became a SHIELD agent with the rank of Commander, and handed over the shield to Sam in a meeting attended by every single Avenger during which Steve publicly professed his love for him. (This wasn’t even weird, I have previous posts about their bromance and Steve had even been criticised by news reporters for being more concerned with Sam’s safety during a fight than with what he was meant to be doing.) Sam’s first words on the reveal were something like7 “Don’t even pretend this is a surprise.” Sam has been Cap off and on since then and he’s been seen as a natural leader by everyone he’s worked with, including mainstays such as Tony.
If you consider the context of the MCU, post-Endgame, it’s very clear that the situation is much closer to what it was in the comics when Sam became Captain America, not Bucky, right down to Steve being Old Man Cap. Sam was simply the obvious choice. Bucky is a better fighter, but Sam is a better symbol, and that’s exactly what Captain America is.
- You may recall Bill Foster from his appearance in the second Ant-Man film. ↩︎
- I was going to get a picture of this but my Marvel Unlimited app is refusing to load anything now. ↩︎
- Evidence for this assumed relief can be found in The Civil War Files, a handbook published by Marvel at the time which included dossiers ostensibly written by Tony Stark on many of the characters. The entry on Sam talks about him being the assumed successor if anything were to happen to Steve, how effective he’d be in this role, and also warns pro-registration forces about his ability to use birds as a spy force, advising them to keep sensitive conversations indoors. One can imagine how much they would not have wanted him to take over the resistance in the wake of Steve’s death turning him into a martyr. ↩︎
- It’s…. complicated. Really. ↩︎
- Because, you know, comics. ↩︎
- Weird ones, because again, comics. His serum had been neutralised during a fight with the Iron Nail and this caused him to rapidly age to match his chronological age of over 90, though he looked more like he was in his 60s and was still quite physically fit, so maybe just don’t think about it too much. ↩︎
- see: note 2 ↩︎