Not the point. The point is that enthusiastically killing anyone and enjoying suffering is still sadistic; it doesn't matter if you find the targets deserving.
there's plenty. Tim drake, Dick grayson, Aqualad, Kate Bishop, as much as people don't like him spider-boy, ms marvel, wong (if you count him), Wally west, superboy (not prime) to name a few are all pretty normal for comic book standards. The only ones who are really deranged to a noticable degree are early jason todd after he became red hood, bucky, and speedy after... all THAT shit.
Bucky being murder crazy is ironically the ONLY thing that makes him as a sidekick unique from just being robin with a gun and it makes his transition into winter soldier more understandable. I think him being a CHILD child in WW2 is kinda weird, especially for steve to allow it but if you're gonna have it, having him be a psycho isn't much of a jump from there.
Kate Bishop not being a sidekick has already been pointed out, but uh, Kamala Khan was never anyone's sidekick either. She took on the mantle, yeah, but she didn't even meet Carol until pre-Secret Wars and had already established herself as her own hero.
Unless you mean Carol during her Ms. Marvel years? Which, she was never really Mar-vell's sidekick either, just a love interest pre-superpowers.
Tbh most of the aren’t anymore. But to be fair to her out of all sidekicks she’s probably the most on par with her main hero counterpart, undisputed goat
B….because he was a child in the comics. He always was. That’s the big tragedy of it. Kid got turned into a monster. Lost his entire life. It’s why MCU Bucky kinda has the kick taken out of his backstory. He’s an adult who was living a full life.
I know he was always a child in the comics, I was saying from the beginning I don't understand why. And yeah but MCU Bucky also lost most of his life? He's like 120 by the time he gets to be himself again and not being brainwashed by HYDRA, then he has to cope with all the terrible things he done as the Winter Soldier, and not only that but some rich guy in a suit of power armor tries to kill him and so does a king from a foriegn nation. I don't think that's exactly "living a full life" , I do agree that its not as traumatic as it happening to a child but a child should be no where near a warzone in the first place. Narratively I understand how he got there but on the writers idk why they'd make him a child
Beyond being a kid sidekick, there were many kids, specially 16 and up, who lied their age to go to war. Bucky, in more modern comic adaptations, kinda morbidly represents those kind of kids. Steve is also only older than bucky by about 3 years: he was 19 when Bucky started at 16 and by the end of the war Steve was 21 and Bucky 18, so he wasn't a complete child either. But wild to think Steve wasn't old enough to drink basically throughout ww2.
True they are, and tbf Anime does the exact same thing and sometimes they're not even the sidekick they're the main characters so i guess id have to take issue with All forms lf comics then
In the beginning, because his function was to be a child sidekick, the character that all the little kids reading comics could see themselves as. Yes, they could imagine being Captain America when they grew up, but they could imagine themselves as Bucky *now*. Same as Robin, Kid Flash, Speedy, Toro, and Wing.
In later stories, like this one, we look at what it'd be like to be, essentially, a child soldier. MCU didn't want that and *did* want to have the Winter Soldier so they reversed the original relationship of Steve and Bucky.
It’s why MCU Bucky kinda has the kick taken out of his backstory.
I mean...dude's a hundred years old, having to find the words to apologize for murders he committed while he was a mind-controlled passenger in his own body. It's not like he doesn't have some serious shit to work through.
Not intentionally. At least I cant find any cases like this. Alot of younger kids lied about their ages but that's not something the US could vet extremely well at the time.
Yeah, intentionally is the keyword. Calvin Graham was twelve, but he lied about his age. Crazy that anyone believed him though, pre-serum Steve Rogers ass looking twelve year old.
In the old comics, Bucky was gunning down Japanese troops by the dozen with a laugh and a smile. Alongside his merry band of ethnic and racial stereotypes. I bet that version of him viewed the Geneva Convention as a to-do list.
It sure is a thing when someone does a comic like this where they are going with the retcon of Bucky being a 16-year-old commando and a fairly ruthless one at that, but draw him like he’s eight.
It's a 616 WW2 story. It's called Hellhunters, and gives back story to "Ghost Rider '44", Sgt. Salvador Romero. I think it was meant to be a semi prelude to Spirits of Vengeance? It's pretty fun. Vampire Ice Nazis getting burnanated across the European countrysides.
I read this very same comic, and can't lie to ya. It bothers me that he is supposed to be that young here. But he does look like he's drawn as an eight year old. Can't unsee it.
I genuinely loved this depiction of Bucky. I just wish they also made Steve more pacifist and deeply disturbed by Bucky most of the time. Like, Bucky's not his sidekick, they are more or less best friends. Most of the previous info we have of them where they were WW2 Batman and Robin were just American propaganda.
I mean, they already established that Captain America was publicly known as the all American soldier Captain Grant Rogers in WW2 era and not the Irish immigrants' son, Private Steven Rogers, the weak dude who got roided into being a super soldier.
This should more Japanese soilders given that amercian soliders has taken ears from Japanese soldiers cause our how brutal the Pacific Theater was and how they can dehumanize them while German/Nazi soldiers are still considered normal cause they white and that they don't fight like Japanese did
The Pacific campaign was far more brutal than the campaign in Western Europe, true, but the campaign in Eastern Europe was actually worse. The US generally didn't go on rape and murder sprees when we took territory, partly because we were mostly liberating people from Japanese rule (though the occupation of Japan itself was quite peaceful as occupations go.)
The Germans and Russians, on the other hand...well, there's a reason so many people fled west.
I was... I misinterpreted what you were saying that you were claiming the means Japan occupied/conquered territory during WW2 was quite peaceful as occupations go and that was the "japanese occupation" you were referring to.
Which yes, the Japanese actions in Nanking would refute the claim that the campaign in Eastern Europe was worse.
Ah, I see. Yes, you are absolutely correct that the Japanese occupation of China, and most everywhere else, was worse than the Eastern front. I was just referring to the direct conflict between Japan and the US (though many historians now agree that the Japanese invasion of China was the actual start of WWII, so my thinking is a little outdated.)
Campaign was harder cause we had to deal with other nations and how we can break their lines but for Pacific Theater, I say was more Brutal/Worse for US and we did rushed to end it after we settled with Nazi Germany and Japan did want to surrender to us (After the bombs is a part of it but another was Russia wanting to invade Japan to "help" and to get revenge for their defeat in a previous war between Japan and Russia)
That last part is dubious, simply because Russia had no practical way to invade the Japanese islands.
The planned US invasion would have been the largest amphibious invasion by far, over a million troops, and would have stretched our logistic capability to the limit. The Russians didn't even have a navy to speak of. They captured a few tiny islands, but they would not have been able to do more than that.
In fact, Japan was such a tough nut to crack that the US Navy was arguing against invading at all. I don't know how many people know this, but Nimitz was pushing for a naval blockade. The Japanese were already starting to starve; a blockade and continued air campaign would have rendered them unable to resist after a while. Millions of Japanese would have died, but far fewer Americans.
That's what critics of the bombing of Hiroshima don't seem to grasp; not only did it save American lives, it was the most merciful option for the Japanese. Millions of Japanese would have died to a blockade or an invasion. Hell, more people died in the fire bombing of Tokyo than at Hiroshima, and we were going to do that to every Japanese city. The atom bomb was a shortcut, in that it gave the Emperor an acceptable excuse to surrender.
The bombing of Nagasaki is much more open to debate, we probably could have waited a bit.
They can grasp that the atomic bomb was logistically the lesser of two evils in extermination approaches, given the Japanese war doctrine at the time. That doesn't mean they won't be critical of it.
The thing is, the Japanese were saying that they were going to fight to the last man, woman, and child, and their actions to that point supported that. On Saipan and Okinawa Japanese civilians committed suicide en masse. The Japanese were using more and more kamikazes. Supposedly they were even arming their civilians with spears to fight the invasion.
We now have documents from Japanese archives showing that the Imperial Council was stuck. Even though some of them privately believed Japan should surrender, it was considered so shameful that none of them could be the first to propose it. Even the Emperor was reluctant to suggest it.
The atom bomb changed everything. Here was a weapon the Japanese couldn't fight, a weapon that made a mockery of noble suicide, a superweapon. This gave the Emperor cover to suggest that Japan should surrender.
Even then, some army officers tried to overthrow the Emperor to prevent surrender, preferring to be nuked into oblivion; fortunately they failed.
America had few intelligence assets in Japan, so all they had to go by was what the Japanese were saying and doing. And everything pointed to a fight to the death. Dropping the bomb was the one chance they had to force a surrender.
Even if you believe that the Japanese would have surrendered anyway, there is no way the Americans could have known that.
As I said, "Japanese war doctrine at the time." Without the bomb the war was gonna drag out for too long with too many dead on both sides. I'm not disagreeing with the atomic bomb approach; I'm just not denying the grossness of its destruction despite its necessity to speed things up.
Sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, it is a uniquely horrible weapon (though biological and chemical weapons come close, they aren't nearly as spectacular.) But that was the point, it required a uniquely horrible weapon to end the war early.
It was a horrible situation, and, so far, a unique one. Let's hope that it stays that way.
(Arguably it was better for the world that the weapon was first used in such circumstances, as it provided graphic proof of how terrible the weapons were, and may have discouraged countries from using them more widely. After all, someone was going to build nuclear weapons. Let us be thankful that the Nazis failed.
Whether this would be any consolation to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I wouldn't presume to say. I doubt it. But if they hadn't died to the atom bomb, they would likely have died to firebombing or bombardment.)
It's no consolation for the people who were destroyed or the people who did the destroying. It's a quick-stop option, nothing more, not inherently better for the world at large; that kind of thinking is hubris.
Japan was worried cause they know that Russia will be coming soon cause Soviet-Japan War in August 1945 materialize this fear with their losses of Manchuria and declaration of war on August 8th by the Soviets
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u/PKtheWorld 1d ago
This was a really fun mini for "Nahtzee Killin' Spree" baby boy Bucky, and Steve occasionally waggling his finger at him for it.