Warning: contains spoilers for Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #1!
The greatest ally and most loyal friend in turned Winter Soldier assassin who finally reclaimed his identity (and even became Captain America himself at one point in the comics). But in Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #1, Steve Rogers' greatest ally drops his longstanding codename...and it's not the Winter Soldier.
Bucky Barnes debuted alongside Captain America in Captain America Comics #1 in 1941. The Golden Age trend of creating a younger sidekick to the older hero was in full swing at the time (kickstarted by Robin emerging in Batman comics) and Bucky was a hit with the readership. Unfortunately, when Stan Lee resurrected the Captain America character nearly twenty years after the conclusion of World War II, he wrote a story in which Bucky was killed during a mission (Lee famously hated teenaged sidekicks and never wrote them into further stories). Bucky wouldn't emerge in comics again until writer Ed Brubaker's Captain America: Winter Soldier in 2005.
In Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #1 written by Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly with art by Carmen Carnero, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes patrol Times Square on the Fourth of July (Rogers' birthday) in anticipation of a terrorist attack. All is quiet until Bucky sees a suspicious barge on the East River. Moving to get a closer look, Bucky reports a strange energy signature in the form of an antimatter explosive, a rather exotic means of destruction. "Haven't seen tech like that since I was the Man on the Wall," he muses. This is a short utterance but quite important, as the reader now knows Bucky has left that codename behind.
In the 2014 Marvel event Original Sin, Nicholas Fury - the original 616 variant and not the modern version (with the likeness of Samuel L. Jackson) is revealed to be alive and working for the Watcher in the form of the Man on the Wall: a position that monitors distant alien threats. Bucky Barnes eventually took Fury's place as the next Man on the Wall...but he never technically left that post. The 'since' in "since I was the Man on the Wall" implies another has taken up the title, but their identity remains a mystery.
Barns has held many titles throughout his history: the Winter Soldier, Captain America, and even the Man on the Wall. Now that Bucky is free of his last label, he can now choose for himself the man he wants to be. Of course, trouble is never too far from Captain America's most loyal friend Bucky Barnes, and the identity of the present Man on the Wall remains unsolved.
