While Bucky's revival was met with some initial hostility, "The Winter Soldier" was ultimately a critical and commercial success, and has been ranked by multiple outlets as the greatest Captain America story of all time.

Nick Fury, director of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., briefs Captain America on the "Winter Soldier": an assassin active since the mid-twentieth century who seemingly does not age.

Fury suspects that the Winter Soldier is a brainwashed Bucky Barnes, Captain America's former sidekick believed to have died during World War II.

[1] Brevoort gave Brubaker fourteen questions he was required to provide satisfactory answers to before he agreed to greenlight the story, including how Bucky survived his original presumed death and the cause of his amnesia.

[3] Beyond Brevoort's questioning, Brubaker stated that his concept for "The Winter Soldier" received generally little pushback from Marvel, and that the published story was effectively identical to his initial proposal.

[3] Certain elements not included in the proposal were integrated mid-production as the story developed, such as the inclusion of the Falcon as a supporting character and a subplot involving the re-introduction of the Red Skull's daughter Sin.

In developing "The Winter Soldier", Brubaker stated that he sought to "tell a gripping Cap story that touched on some of the things I always loved" and wanted to avoid Captain America "giving speeches about what his costume means".

[3] He noted that to reverse Bucky's death meant "tak[ing] away Cap's biggest tragedy",[1] and was thus conscious about replacing it with a new plot element that still reinforced the character as a "wistful man out of time, with the weight of the world on his shoulders".

[7] In addition to Brubaker, the creative team for "The Winter Soldier" included Steve Epting, who is credited as penciller for all but one of the issues that compose the story arc, which is drawn by Michael Lark.

[12][13][14] Brubaker noted that the decision to revive Bucky was initially met with some hostility from readers, which he attributes in part to its proximity to a controversial storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man in which the long-deceased Gwen Stacy returns and has an affair with Norman Osborn.

She argued that the storyline "resonated with people" due to its "heady brew" of themes, including classic espionage tropes, mental health, America's treatment of veterans, portrayals of violence in superhero comics, and "male bonding so powerful that it's regularly read as homoerotic".