Nick Fury

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Nick Fury
File:Nickfury weeks.jpg
Nick Fury. Art by Lee Weeks.
Publication information
PublisherMarvel Comics
First appearanceSgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (May 1963)
Created byStan Lee
Jack Kirby
In-story information
Alter egoNicholas Joseph Fury
Team affiliationsS.H.I.E.L.D., United States Armed Forces
AbilitiesInfinity Formula prevents aging

Nicholas Joseph "Nick" Fury is a fictional army hero and spy, featured in Marvel Comics.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Fury first appeared in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (May 1963), a World War II-based title that portrayed the cigar-chomping Fury as leader of an elite army unit.

A modern day Fury, a CIA agent, debuted a few months later and, in Strange Tales #135 (August 1965), the character was completely transformed into a suave, James Bond-like spy and leading agent of the fictional espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. Although artistically influential, the series Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. did not outlast the 1960s and subsequent Fury series have been sporadic and unremarkable.

Still, the character makes frequent appearances in Marvel comic books as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and an intermediary between the U.S. government or the United Nations and various superheroes.

History

Nicholas Joseph Fury was the eldest of three children born to Jack Fury. His father was a United States citizen who enlisted the Royal Flying Corps of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during World War I. This minor Marvel Universe hero only starred in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #76 (March, 1970). According to the issue Jack enlisted the Corps in 1916 and was stationed in France under the Third Republic. He reportedly managed to shoot down Manfred von Richthofen early in his flying career. He was a highly-decorated combat aviator by the end of the War in 1918.

Jack Fury was apparently discharged following the end of the War and returned to his native United States. He married an unnamed woman and became father of three. The eldest, Nicholas Joseph Fury was probably born in the late 1910s to mid 1920s. He was followed by Jacob "Jake" Fury, later the supervillain Scorpio who co-founded the Zodiac cartel, and their only sister Dawn Fury.

All three children grew up in the neighbourhood known as Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Nicholas was an amateur boxer, a good skill to have in a tough neighbourhood. He was a good friend to Red Hargrove, and the two of them eventually left the neighbourhood to pursue their dreams of adventure, eventually settling on a daring wing-walking act.

File:Sgtfury.jpg
Cover to Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1. Art by Jack Kirby.

Their death-defying stunts caught the attention of Lieutenant Samuel "Happy Sam" Sawyer, who enlisted them for a special mission in the Netherlands.

Nicholas and Red later joined the United States Army. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii when the Imperial Japanese Navy ambushed the base on 7 December 1941; Red Hargrove was among the many killed in the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lt. Sawyer, now a captain, assigned Fury the command of the First Attack Squad, the "Howling Commandos," a band of rip-snorting commandos who were stationed in a military base in England, and assigned the most dangerous missions of the European Theatre of World War II. The Howling Commandos consisted of Corporal Thaddeus Aloysius Cadwallander "Dum Dum" Dugan, Private Gabriel Jones (the first black man to serve in a white unit), Private Reb "Rebel" Ralston, Private Dino Manelli (modelled after Dean Martin), Private Eric Koenig (a defector from Nazi Germany), Private Izzy Cohen (the first Jewish American comic book hero), and Private Jonathan "Junior" Juniper (killed in action, replaced with Private Percival "Pinky" Pinkerton).

Their earliest chronological (but not first published) assignment occurred in Autumn, 1942. Their assignment was to recover British rocket scientist Dr. MacMillan from a German military base near occupied Paris. Their success brought them to the attention of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill who incorporated the unit to the British Army.

The adventures of Nick Fury and the First Attack Squad were brought to life in the pages of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, in which the unit fought the likes of the Red Skull (Adolf Hitler's bellboy turned supervillain), Baron Strucker, the first Baron Zemo, and many other Axis villains. They also fought alongside Captain America and Bucky in issue #13, and Reed Richards (later Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four) in issue #3. The series lasted for 120 issues before going into reprints (the last original story, #120, was published in 1974). After 47 reprint issues, the series finally ended in 1981. The series ran concurrently with another Marvel World War II book, Captain Savage & his Leatherneck Raiders. An issue of the later series featured the foundation of HYDRA in Japan.

At the end of World War II in Europe, Fury was severely injured by a landmine in France, and was found and healed by a Berthold Sternberg. Professor Sternberg used him as a test subject for his "Infinity Formula," and he made a full recovery.

Cover to Strange Tales #135. Art by Jack Kirby.

Nick Fury worked for the OSS after the war, gathering intelligence in Korea. Six months into his service, he learned the extent of Sternberg's life-saving operation: the Infinity Formula retarded his aging, and if he didn't receive annual doses of the Infinity Formula, he would age rapidly and die. The good doctor began a thirty-year period of extorting large sums of money from Fury in exchange for the Infinity Formula. The formula, the extortion, and the eventual end of said extortion was detailed in 1976's Marvel Spotlight #31: "Assignment: the Infinity Formula."

Fury was sent to the CIA as an espionage agent, gathering information in Korea, where he earned a battlefield promotion to Colonel. The CIA used him as a liaison to various super-powered groups that began appearing popping up in the 1960s, including the Fantastic Four. The modern day, CIA-employed Fury first appeared in Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #21 (December 1963).

During his time with the CIA, Fury began wearing his trademark eyepatch. Various reasons have been attributed to this.

In Strange Tales Vol. 1 #135, Nick Fury jumped genres from two-fisted war hero to a James Bond-esque Cold War spy, and Marvel introduced Colonel Nick Fury (and Marvel readers) to S.H.I.E.L.D. (Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division), the Marvel Universe's top-notch spy agency, and HYDRA (despite the capitalization, it is not an acronym), an international terrorist organization created by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (after some retconning of the original SHIELD continuity).

Fury's new adventures were detailed in Strange Tales Vol. 1 #135-168, and then he got his own series: Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., its early issues written and pencilled by Jim Steranko, known for his surrealist artwork. Unfortunately, this series only lasted 15 issues before it was cancelled.

Cover to the Nick Fury: Agent of Shield TPB. Art by Jim Steranko.

Fury continued to make appearances in the other Marvel books, from Fantastic Four to The Avengers. In 1972, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos celebrated their 100th issue with a reunion of the Commandos, sponsored by Stan Lee and the creative team behind the title (Stan Lee has made several appearances within the Marvel Universe, breaking the fourth wall, as it were).

In 1988, Marvel produced the six-issue Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. miniseries, following it up with a second Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series. In 1991, Marvel changed S.H.I.E.L.D. to stand for "Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage and Logistics Directorate" (the acronym still made no sense). A pivotal event of the second series was "the Deltite Affair," where S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were replaced with Life Model Decoy androids. The second series lasted 47 issues, ending in 1993 (some say it went out with a whimper), and the two books made controversial changes to the character of Nick Fury, and resurrecting (again) Baron von Strucker.

File:Doubleedege.jpg
Cover to Double Edge: Omega. Art by Joe Quesada.

In 1994, the Fury one-shot retroactively changed ("retconned") the events of Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. and the second Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series into a series of events designed to distract Fury from von Strucker's resurrection plans. Also in 1994, Howard Chaykin wrote the four-issue Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. limited series, considered much better than most of the second Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series.

In the 1995 "Over the Edge" crossover, the Punisher is captured and sent to a maximum-security facility with a S.H.I.E.L.D. escort. During a hypnosis session with Doc Samson, Spook interrupts and has the Punisher conditioned to believe that Nick Fury was responsible for his family's murder. He escapes the facility after a Mafia attack and goes after Fury. At the climax of the storyline, the Punisher kills Nick Fury, who was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

However, in the Fury/Agent 13 two-issue limited series, it is revealed/retconned that the Nick Fury that the Punisher "killed" was a highly-advanced Life Model Decoy designed by Tony Stark (Iron Man), and that Fury was never dead.

Fury has since made a number of appearances in other Marvel books, including Captain America, Deathlok, Iron Man, and books in the "Marvel Knights" imprint.

Alternate versions

File:PULSE007 COV.png
Art from the cover to The Pulse #7, by Mike Mayhew. Featured are Nick Fury, along with J. Jonah Jameson and Ben Urich.

Different versions of Nick Fury, not part of the regular Marvel Universe, have appeared from time to time, including:

  • In the Ultimate Marvel Universe, General Nick Fury is a significant figure. His characteristics are similar, although he ranks General in this continuity. Notably he is portrayed as African-American; the character is modelled after Samuel L. Jackson, based on the liner notes in hardback "Ultimates" this is with Jackson's consent.
  • The Fury miniseries under the Marvel MAX imprint imagined a world where Fury was a burned-out Cold War vet unable to cope with the modern world. This version, created by Garth Ennis, continues to appear in Ennis's Punisher.
  • In the 1996 Marvel/DC Amalgam comic Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury appeared as a retired army colonel alongside General Frank Rock.
  • In the miniseries 1602 Nick Fury appears as Sir Nicholas Fury, Queen Elizabeth I's chief of intelligence. His character was modeled after Elizabeth's real life spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham.
  • A throw-away scene in Planetary #11 shows a character with an eyepatch and a cigar being shot in the head by a villain in a flashback introducing John Stone, Agent of S.T.O.R.M. (himself a pastiche of Nick Fury and James Bond).

Movies and television

File:Nickfuryhasselhoff.jpg
David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury.

David Hasselhoff portrayed Fury in a 1998 Nick Fury TV movie. Phillip Abbot did Fury's voice in the 1994 Spider-Man and Iron Man animated series, Jim Byrnes did Fury's voice in the X-Men: Evolution animated series, and Mark Gibbion did Fury's voice in Spider-Man Unlimited. Paramount is also developing a live-action major motion picture.

Franky Cook, a character played by Angelina Jolie in the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, seems to have some elements of Nick Fury, including the uniform and eyepatch, and she commands a flying aircraft carrier which is reminiscent of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier.

External Links