Ed Brubaker Off Captain America With #20

is reporting (based on an interview with The Comics Reporter) that longtime Captain America writer Ed Brubaker will leave the star-spangled Avenger behind following the release of Captain America #20. The title was recently relaunched and spun out of the previous Captain Americatitle which, at the time, was retitled as Captain America and Bucky. It's now a kind of "Captain America Team-Up" book, with Bucky's name being replaced on the cover by whomever Cap is teamed with in a given story. Brubaker has written or co-written Captain America, Captain America and... and the Bucky-centric spinoff Winter Soldier for close to eight years, and is widely credited with bringing the character to great heights. During his long run on the title he successfully resurrected Bucky Barnes from the dead, knocked up Sharon Carter, killed off the title character and much, much more. Now, he says it's time to focus more of his energies on creator-owned projects. The writer is quoted as saying that by the time the interview went live on Sunday, he would have finished writing his final issue. "Partly, it's the beginning a shift from work-for-hire to books I own, instead," Brubaker explained in the interview. "I hit a point with the work-for-hire stuff where I was starting to feel burned out on it. Like my tank is nearing empty on superhero comics, basically. It's been a great job, and I think I found ways to bring my voice to it, but I have a lot of other things I want to do as a writer, too, so I'm going to try that for a while instead." Brubaker's creator-owned work includes Criminal for Marvel's Icon imprint and the best-selling Fatale for Image Comics. He will continue writing Winter Soldier after leaving Captain America, but that's likely because at this stage, he's built Bucky's character up from scratch to such an extent that it's got to almost feel like an original, creator-owned concept that just happens to be published inside the pages of a major Marvel franchise.