Despite saying he would remain with Winter Soldier while cutting back on his other work for Marvel Comics, it has now been made known that Ed Brubaker will be ending his run on Winter Soldier with issue #14, which will come shortly after his final issue on Captain America.
Before anyone gets to thinking this is another Rob Liefeld situation, Brubaker lays out the reasons for his decision in an interview with Comic Book Resources, citing quite different reasons for his own departure from one of the Big Two.
Well, originally, the book was going to end around #14 or #15, because sales weren't as good as we'd hoped they'd be. I'd been planning for that end for about three or four months.
But as it turns out, the sales of Winter Soldier have since stabilized at a decent level and the series will go on. It will have to go on without Brubaker, though. Not only did he already conceive of an endpoint for his run but other commitments have already eaten up much of his time. The man not only has creator-owned projects in the works but movie and television plans as well. An arrangement where he could focus on those and still be able to keep up with Winter Soldier as an ongoing series just didn't work out. So here we are.
Winter Soldier will carry on, written by Jason Latour of Loose Ends and Untold Tales of Punisher MAX. Plans are for the new run to run deep in the darkness of Bucky Barnes and whether there really is any difference between him and the Winter Soldier he was turned into. So thankfully, it doesn't sound wildly different from Brubaker's current take on the character.
Still, I'm not familiar with Latour's writing so there is some unease. This is coupled with Rick Remender and John Romita Jr. starting their own Captain America series with something called "the Sage of Dimension Z."
