7 Times Comics Made Terrible Heroes Great

4. Bucky Barnes Becomes The Winter Soldier

Prior to 2005, Bucky Barnes was mainly known as Captain America's dead sidekick from World War II. He'd died intercepting a rocket launched by Baron Zemo (the same rocket that had launched Steve Rogers into the ice of the Arctic), and that was the end of the story.

Fortunately for Buck (and for Captain America fans, because this series was fantastic), Writer Ed Brubaker boarded the Captain America series in 2005 and opened it up with the bombshell that he hadn't passed away as many had thought, and had in fact been captured by the Russians, who subsequently brainwashed, cybernetically enhanced and preserved the veteran to become the Winter Soldier, an expert assassin deployed by the U.S.S.R. throughout the Cold War.

Eventually his paths cross with Steve's and they team up together, much how they used to. Buck then goes on to assume the mantle of Captain America when Steve falls to an assassin's bullet in the wake of the superhero Civil War, ending the decade as a fully fleshed out, nuanced and compelling character - Brubaker and artist Steve Epting had completely transformed him.