A superhero created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and published by Marvel Comics. Bucky first appeared in Captain America #1 in 1941.
Bucky is actually James Buchanon Barnes, an orphan and ward of the state of Virginia. Bucky, as he was known, was assigned to Camp Lehigh, Virginia, during the opening days of World War II. He became fast friends with Steve Rogers, a private who had newly arrived on the base.
One night, Bucky surprised Rogers in his tent, finding him switching into his costumed identity as Captain America. Rogers convinced Barnes to keep his secret and began to train him to be his partner. After several months, Rogers presented Barnes with a costume and mask and Bucky was born.
Bucky joined in on many of Captain America's adventures, fighting the likes of the Red Skull and Baron Blood. The two even joined the World War II superhero team of the Invaders.
Toward the end of the war, Captain America and Bucky attempted to stop their foe Baron Zemo from stealing an experimental rocket plane. Zemo overcame the two and they awoke to find themselves tied to the plane. The duo escaped as the plane took off, but pursued on a motorcycle, trying to stop Zemo's plane. As the plane lifted off over the English Channel, the two made a desperate lunge for the plane. Bucky succeeded in grabbing the plane, but Captain America missed. Unbeknownst to either of them, Zemo had booby trapped the plane, which exploded, killing Bucky. Captain America plunged
into the icy waters of the Channel and was trapped in suspended animation for 30 years encased in a layer of ice.
While the original Captain America was out of commission, a number of others took his place, to keep the dream he represented alive. Fred Davis took over the title of Bucky soon after the disappearance of the original Bucky. He and the replacement for Captain America, a hero originally known as the Spirit of 1776, became members of the All-Winners Squadron.
Later in the 1960's, Jack Monroe became the next Bucky. He and his Captain America, a man obsessed with Captain America, were injected with a version of the super-soldier formula. Unfortunately,
the treatment caused them to become paranoid, and the two were placed in suspended animation until a cure could be found (or they could escape and become the cause of an adventure for the original Captain America, whichever came first). Monroe was eventually cured and became the hero known as Nomad.
After the original Captain America was awaken from his suspended animation, he teamed for a time with the teen sidekick Rick Jones. Jones adventured with Captain America in a costume that looked like Bucky's original, although he never formally adopted the name "Bucky."
More recently, when Steve Rogers resigned from being Captain America, a former hero known as Super-Patriot took the title up. He was an agent of the U.S. government and they hired a black man named Lemar Hoskins to serve as Bucky for the new hero. Hoskins had undergone a process that gave him super-strength, so he was much more formidable than the previous iterations of Bucky. Hoskins eventually changed his name to Battlestar, feeling that the name Bucky could be thought to be demeaning to a black male.
Bucky has been portrayed on film and television by Romanian actor Sebastian Stan in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Ant-Man (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Black Panther (2018), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019) and the series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).