In a surprise move Marvel Comics announced today that writer Ed Brubaker would be exiting the Winter Soldier comic with issue #14 that is due out in January.  He will be replaced by Jason Latour, who has been known primarily as an artist, but who has shifted much of his energy to writing in the past few months, penning the crime comic Loose Ends for 12 Gauge Comics and writing a story for Marvel’s Punisher Max as well.

 

No word yet on whether or not Winter Soldier will part of Marvel NOW! and will be rebooted with a #1 issue.  This might indicate that Brubaker’s departure might not have been part of the overall plan for creative team changes at the House of Ideas.  Certainly when Brubaker announced that he was leaving Captain America, he said he was staying on Winter Soldier, a title that Brubaker had nurtured and which certainly was always identified with him and very much reflected his vision.

 

But Brubaker tweeted "To end all speculation Cap 19 and Winter Soldier 14 are my last books for Marvel for now.  But I may return, because Marvel has been my home."  Then Brubaker tweeted: "My next comic project, beside Fatale, will be announced in December or January, and you’ll sh*t when you hear about it.  In your pants."

 

The most likely explanation could be that Brubaker is simply abandoning work for hire on mainstream books to pursue creator-owned properties.  Certainly Bryan K. Vaughan has found some success by teaming with artist Fiona Staples for Saga, a creator-owned science fiction/fantasy series published by Image, and the zeitgeist in today’s comics world, which is filled with examples of the resentment of contemporary creators at the treatment of earlier generations of writers and artists at the hands of the major comic book publishers, certainly favors the independent, creator-owned path (see "Another Creator Shuns Big 2 Over Ethical Concerns"), though it is clear from his first tweet that Brubaker is not burning his bridges at Marvel.