Captain America's Sidekick and Marvel's Strangest Superhero Team, Explained

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn how Barry Windsor-Smith and Roy Thomas almost had a bizarre superhero team in 1968 starring...Bucky?

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twenty-fourth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Bucky, Quicksilver and Red Raven almost formed a superhero team by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith

STATUS:

True

Barry Windsor-Smith's comic book career, besides being amazing in terms of its output, is also amazing in terms of how it began, as Smith (just "Barry Smith" at the time, he didn't add his mother's maiden name, Windsor, until he left comics briefly in the 1970s to pursue a career as a painter) did some pin-up work for some British licensed Marvel comics over in England and then that basically started his Marvel comic book career on a wing and a prayer. He explained it to Jon B. Cooke in TwoMorrows' Comic Book Artist #2:

CBA: Did you seek out Marvel because of Jack's work?

Barry: Yes. Marvel was my only interest because of Kirby's work.

CBA: Did you submit material by mail to Marvel or basically show up at their doorstep?

Barry: Both. I sent material first, and based solely upon a pleasant return note from Stan's assistant Linda Fite, my pal and me were at Marvel's doorstep in the blink of an eye. That was the summer of 1968.

CBA: Herb Trimpe mentioned that he remembers you virtually living out of a suitcase during your initial stay at Marvel. What were impressions of New York at that young age?

Barry: Terrifying, to be frank. The summer of '68 was a time of considerable unrest in many urban areas in the States. We saw homeless people laying in the street unaided, we saw policemen in riot gear beating up groups of Black kids. A building we stayed at for a few days was blown to bits a short while after we left because there was an illicit bomb factory in the basement. And yes, we lived out of suitcases—sometimes, without money, we went without food or water for days in stifling 90 degrees-and-up heat.

CBA: Did you aspire to live in America?

Barry: After my above allusions it is bound to bring a laugh if I say "yes," but the fact is, despite the poverty and misery of those days in 1968, yes—I had every intention of living in the States. I needed to be physically free of my roots, that I might start afresh and explore my own visions in a new and thoroughly different environment.

Eventually, Smith had to return to England, but Roy Thomas stuck with the artist and kept giving him work and then brought him on to the Avengers for a classic storyline introducing adamantium in 1969 and then kept giving him short stories here and there until Smith broke out with his hit run on Conan the Barbarian with Thomas...

Amusingly enough, his initial stint on Conan the Barbarian was almost cut short by Smith being TOO good as Stan Lee was, like, "Why are we wasting this guy on this book when it's not selling that well?" but sales then rose and Smith obviously was allowed to evolve and become an even greater artist.

However, a fascinating "What If...?" involved Thomas and Smith back in Smith's first stint in the States, and it was about the most unusual superhero team that you could think of, as briefly, as Thomas and Smith worked up a proposal for a superhero team that would star, of all people, Bucky, Quicksilver and Red Raven!

In the late 1960s, as Marvel moved past its onerous distribution deal that allowed it to expand its comic book line, Marvel was starting to think of new comic books that the company could put out there (it was not yet like the BIG deluge of the early 1970s when Marvel really started competing with DC for shelving positions full force) and so it made sense to see if the company could come up with some new books, but a Bucky, Quicksilver and Red Raven team? That's pretty darn out there!

From that same Cooke interview, here are three pages from the pitch, as I guess we see Bucky (who would have been Rick Jones at the time) considering making his own superhero legacy as he was obviously a bit stuck in the shadow of the other Avengers...

Bucky really was a bit of a loose end character at the time, as we had not yet quite hit the point where Jim Steranko featured Bucky teaming up with Captain America in his issues (and then dumped when Steranko left the book, as Stan Lee was not a fan of Cap having a sidekick)...

Check out the heavy Kirby influence in those early Smith pages...

Great stuff, really. Anyhow, the project didn't go forward and then Thomas brought Rick Jones into the pages of Captain Marvel in 1969.

Thomas later shared a drawing by Smith of the Grim Reaper in Alter Ego #118, who would have been the villain of the series...

Man, I would so love to know how those characters all formed a team together. Maybe someday we can get a flashback story involving them all! There IS a pretty big gap there where Rick was pretty much doin nothing.