It's an angsty end and you hurt for Bucky (big yikes) but Bucky is so wonderfully fleshed out that you ultimately finish satisfied if not depressed (I was mostly depressed) ( )

Sin, the daughter of the Red Skull has released a Serpent who has a mystic hammer that empowers Sin transforming her into the herald Skadi. The Serpent summons his worthy causing seven additional hammers to fall across the earth. Odin plans on destroying the Earth in order to kill the Serpent, but Thor intervenes. Tony Stark forges a set of weapons made of enchanted uru metal to help the Avengers and they manage to hold the enemy at bay long enough for Thor to defeat the Serpent and die in Odin's arms. One of the casualties of the war was Bucky Barnes who was the current Captain America.

The book opens with Bucky being saved by a shot of something from Nick Fury. But they don't want anyone knowing that he is alive. Only Fury, Black Widow, and Steve Rogers know that he is alive. They hold a funeral for him with something like a body inside. Bucky has work that needs to be done in the shadows and it will be better if no one knows he is alive. Black Widow is going to help him.

Someone has woken up some KGB sleeper agents that Bucky trained years ago for what they are unsure of. When an attempt on Vicor Von Doom's life is made outside the Embassy of Latveria and Bucky and Natasha battle a gorilla wielding a machine gun they suspect that the Red Ghost a Soviet scientist is part of the plot. Bucky and Natasha go to the auction house where the sleeper agents activation codes were sold and find out that that wasn't the only thing that the Red Ghost bought. He also bought a Von Doom bot.

Now, who has it in for Latveria? A crazy woman with cybernetic implants named Lucia Von Bardas. She was placed in control of Latveria after the old crooked ruler was removed and the government was cleaned out. The problem was she was worse than he was. She was selling old Doom technology to bad guys hoping to keep S.H.E.I.L.D. too busy to notice what she was up to. They figured it out, however, and took her down. On the way to taking her to a secure location she escaped. She plans on using the Doom bot to start a World War.

One thing they discover is that one of the sleeper agents, Novokov, woke up twelve years earlier quite violently by an earthquake and likely didn't have his memories when he did. A few months ago while reading a newspaper he saw the ad calling him in and went in to see his handler who explained things to him and what the new plan was, but he ends up killing him.

And he is just getting started. He realizes that Bucky was around this whole time and could have saved him by waking him up at any time but didn't. So he wants to make him pay for this. He kills someone Bucky cares about and then he kidnaps Black Widow and has the doctor who brainwashed her when she was in the Red Room brainwash her into thinking that she is a double agent and that she was working undercover at S.H.I.E.L.D. and he completely erases her memories of her relationship with Bucky.

Can Black Widow be saved? Will Bucky survive this and capture Novokov? This book will break your heart. I will not tell you, however, whether or not it will mend it again. This was truly a fabulous book. I really loved it and cannot say enough good things about it. The art is amazing and drawn in a strict fashion that fits the book. It is by far at the top of my list of favorite comics. You really should read this one. ( )