10 Unbelievable Retcons That Changed Comics For The Better
5. Bucky Barnes Never Died
After a Captain America retcon that will definitely come up later, Bucky Barnes was deemed dead in the same secret drone explosion that froze Steve Rogers in the Arctic Circle, and - for the better part of fifty years - that was the rule.
In the same way that Uncle Ben or the Waynes are dead to begin with, that was the case for James Buchanan Barnes. That is until Ed Brubaker flipped the script in 2005.
A new secret history was given to Bucky. Now, after the explosion, Captain America's sidekick was found by a Russian submarine and taken to become their top assassin with a cool bionic arm. This led to not only a bit of a retcon for most of the espionage/war heroes, such as Black Widow, for instance, but it did a lot more than that too. It gave fans the phenomenal Winter Soldier storyline and the star-spangled awesome that was the Death of Captain America, where Bucky became the man under the mask for a time.