Exclusive: The Winter Solider Gets Redesign In Comics To Match The Captain America: The Winter Soldier Movie Look

Concept art released exclusively to ComicBook.com from Marvel Comics illustrates that the upcoming Winter Soldier ongoing series will include the character taking on the distinctive mask designed for the feature film Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

While the primary reason for using the mask in the movie seemed to be preventing Captain America from guessing Bucky's identity until it was necessary for the narrative, it has a militaristic/tactical look not unlike what you see on characters like The Operative from Aquaman and the Others. 

You can see a number of sketches below from series artist Marco Rudy, depicting both the "classic" look for the Winter Soldier and a number of masked looks. The image above, obviously, is very movie-inspired, but the mask also appears below as just a small part of a larger headpiece.

The tactical, "stealthy" look referenced above also features rubber-soled shoes rather than the more standard boots the character is traditionally depicted as having.

Other than some very minor texturing issues, though, it appears to be an identical mask, suggesting that Rudy intentionally imported the look of the films onto the printed page.

This is far from the first time the comics have been tweaked to resemble the movie and TV side of things, of course; notable examples include Spider-Man's black costume making a reappearance around the time of Spider-Man 3, Batman's all-black bodysuit costume in the '90s that lacked briefs, tweaks made to the Superman costume and logo around the time of Superman Returns and the restoration of Steve Rogers to the role of Captain America and Peter Parker to the role of Spider-Man just in time for the theatrical releases of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, respectively.

Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #1 comes from Rudy and writer Ales Kot in October.