Comics Rainbow - Nick Fury

So, this Friday marks the return of James Bond to cinemas everywhere.  It’s probably going to be a big deal as director Sam Mendes, the man who brought back widespread audience interest in the Bond franchise.  Additionally it’s starting to look more and more likely that Daniel Craig won’t be sticking with the franchise for much longer so this will probably be the last chances audiences get to see a Bond who can actually do his own stunts.  

Add on top of all that the increasing return to golden age Bond formula with the reemergence of Spectre as villains and Christoph Waltz playing some kind of Bloefeld esc villain and it’s promising to be a memorable blockbuster, especially after Skyfall gripped the world in Bond-mania and made more than double the box office take as its predecessor.  With all that considered I was going to do a Comics Rainbow about James Bond but James Bond doesn’t really have a comic book presence. 

For most of his career the adaptation rights have flittered from one limbo to another while his more adult nature as a character has kept his adventures out of the standard comic book audience.  Remember, for most of the medium’s history comics were made for kids.  However, I’m still getting in on the Bond fun with the next best character: Nick Fury.  Though he debuted in a brief lived Marvel war comic in 1963, Nick Fury didn’t find a mainstream audience till 1965, when he was resurrected as a James Bond/Man from U.N.C.L.E. esc cold war spy.  This was right around the time spies were catching on as a major popular trend so it makes sense Marvel would want to ride that cultural phenomenon.  Since then the Marvel universe super spy has been through a plethora of reimaginings and revitalizations and this is your full spectrum look at all of them; shades, shames, successes and all. 

What has to be the worst and most despise iteration of Nick Fury is also the most recent and comes to us from one of the best authors to ever work on the character.  Even since the rise of the Marvel cinematic universe Marvel has been laboring to solve the ‘Nick Fury Problem.’  Basically, due to the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe they’ve more and more pushed classic, white guy Nick Fury out of the comics so that his biracial son, Nick Fury Jr., can take over the mantel and bring the comics universe more in line with the incredibly popular movies and TV shows.  To do this, acclaimed author Jason Aaron penned an event comic for Marvel called Original Sin, and it was terrible.  One of the key ideas of Original Sin was that Fury had been conscripted by Howard Stark to fill the role of “Man on the Wall,” a soldier of Earth who would, in secret, neutralize aliens threats with extreme prejudice. 

The basic idea of the “Man on the Wall” is a decent one and was the mantel was ultimately passed to Winter Soldier it was a much better fit but for Nick Fury it was painfully perfunctory and added nothing to his overall mythos.  The “revelation” that all along Old Man Nick Fury had been secretly murdering people with his army of robot duplicates only serves to undercut the glory of any previous Nick Fury adventure.  At the same time, the Marvel universe Earth is ALWAYS so menaced by alien monsters that it starts to seem like Fury was actually really terrible at his job.  Under his watch the Earth had to fend off the Kree-Skrull War, the Kree-Shiar War, Galactus, the Celestials, Apocalypse, Kang, and sundry other threats too numerous to mention.  For Earth’s “secret weapon” he sure did suck at taking out the actual threats.

In 2001 Marvel changed the comics game by starting 2 new imprints.  The first was Ultimate Marvel Comics, a long running but really disappointing and cynical alternate universe Marvel that was meant to be a gateway for new readers who wanted superhero stories without all the superhero continuity and back-story.  The other imprint was called MAX Comics and marked Marvel’s break with the Comics Code Authority, an industry agreed upon structure of standards and practices put in place to avoid having to deal with official censorship.  The idea was that MAX would tell adult stories with blood and sex and swearing, a similar goal to the Epic Comics imprint Marvel had started in the ‘80s and ‘90s but never really developed.  Among the many comics produced by MAX one was a Nick Fury limited series entitled Fury: My War Gone By, and it was great. 

Written by Garth Ennis My War Gone By was the first real attempt to make Nick Fury a more amoral character.  The whole story is him relying in flashback his various misadventures and murders in the 50 years he spent fighting communism for Uncle Sam.  The book doesn’t really have anything deep and meaningful to say about war or the cold war specifically but that’s not why it was written either.  It was written to be a glossy, stylishly brutal cold war story about compromised morals and taking stock of this entire era in American foreign policy through the lens of the Marvel universe.  That’s really what sells the comic honestly, that Fury’s various war exploits always tend to bring him into conflict with the seedier sides of the Marvel universe, like during the Vietnam war when he met the Punisher.  I know a lot of folks didn’t care for all the cameos and pop ins and I understand the objection to turning Nick Fury into basically the Cancer Man from X-Files but for me, any chance to dive into the weird fictional history of the Marvel universe is a great opportunity and this is no exception. 

So, in the vast gulf of nearly 10 years that came after Secret War and before Original Sin Marvel was basically left with more Nick Fury than they knew what to do with.  Secret War and Civil War had definitively ousted him from the role of Director of SHIELD and nobody in the editorial department or writing staff seemed too keen to return him to that position.  The solution they settled on was to have him go underground as a rebel against the superhero registration government and then, later, Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers.  Of all the Fury’s on here this is the version of him that brings the least to the table, offers the fewest stories to be told, and is just in general a waste of his character, mainly because it robs him of having any.  Most of the times he showed up during this era he wasn’t there to tell a Nick Fury story, he was there to act as a plot point in some other hero’s story, usually providing them with safe houses or SHIELD tech or the like. 

Even during his big, triumphant, save the day moment in Marvel’s Secret Invasion series where he comes out of nowhere to be the sole defender against the Skrull Invasion he ultimately ends up playing second fiddle to Norman Osborn, and it’s not like it had to be Nick Fury for that sequence.  If you subbed in Dum Dum Dugan or Gabriel Jones or even Maria Hill they all could’ve occupied the exact same space with essentially no change.  This was also the time when he most often turned out to be a robot duplicate of the real Fury, an overused cliché that became supremely annoying very quickly. 

Even though Nick Fury Jr. was created specifically to bring the character closer in line with the popular Marvel cinematic universe he really does seem like the best realization of Nick Fury’s potential.  As much as I love Nick Fury he’s never really felt right as the director of SHIELD, his growl and demeanor are far too low level to really sell the idea of a Machiavellian mastermind running the most advanced global espionage agency on the planet.  Nick Fury is not a compass guiding the path of this massive ship so much as he is a soldier, everything about him screams “grunt in the trenches” mentality.  That’s why Nick Fury Jr. works as well as he does, he embodies Nick’s same hard edged, tightly focused outlook but was never forced into the position of director of SHIELD.  

Instead he ran covert operations and actually got to BE a super spy, even taking over a team of Secret Avengers to run high risk, covert operations for SHIELD.  He’s got all of Fury’s rugged charm without the armchair generalisms to undercut it and his encounters and working with the various major aspects of the Marvel universe make him all the more endearing.  Lately he’s become more of a SHIELD liason to the superhero community which is a pretty great position for him all things considered, he makes an especially good foil to old man Steve Rogers running SHIELD but that’s a story for a different rainbow. 

For whatever reason “Nick Fury, the Soldier” rarely seems to show up in most adaptations.  Even in Nick Fury comics I really like such as My War Gone By or some of the classic Steranko work the emphasis remains on Nick Fury, the spy or Nick Fury, the leader.  It’s a weird omission given that Fury started his career as a cigar smokin’, duel wielding, sergeant in world war 2 fighting alongside Captain America and Bucky against the Nazis.  Even when Fury’s time in the war does come up it’s almost never HIS story but rather the story of Captain America and the Invaders that just happens to have Nick Fury involved in the proceedings.  It’s another way that they avoid talking about Nick Fury, the soldier, instead he’s Nick Fury, the guy who knew Captain America way back when.  There’s also plenty of precedent for great stories of Nick Fury and his howling commando’s solo adventures in World War 2, just look at DC. 

Though Marvel never really capitalized on the late ‘60s interest in war comics DC did and they cleaned up on it with 5 majorly successful comics that all spawned characters that have endured to this day.  Most new fans may not know the Blackhawks, Sergeant Rock, Enemy Ace, or the Losers but they were big sellers back in the late ‘60s and are still a reoccurring element of the DC universe today, to say nothing of the weirder war stories like G.I. Robot, the creature commandos, and the war that time forgot.  It wouldn’t be hard at all to throw Nick Fury into situations where he fights Nazi robots or Japanese dinosaur men or something, especially given all the great DC stories that have already been told to work as a template.

During that brief period after the appearance of Nick Fury Jr. but before the original Nick Fury was killed off in Original Sin there was a third Fury; Max Fury, he takes the awarded for puniest name.  Max Fury was actually kind of a clever play on the annoying trope I mentioned of Nick Fury turning out to be a robot so writers could get away with him being seemingly everywhere at once.  He was a robot Nick Fury that got hacked by a villainous group known as the Secret Empire.  The Secret Empire is your pretty bog-standard evil cabal notable only for their original story concluding with the reveal that Richard Nixon was their leader, a revelation that broke Captain America’s heart so much he became Nomad but again, that’s the story for another rainbow. 

The new Secret Empire weren’t anything to write home about but the basic idea of an evil, robot Nick Fury is actually pretty great.  One of the interesting things about Fury is that he’s supposed to be a harsh and amoral strategist who’s just always holding himself back because of his friendship with so many strong moral people.  It’s the concept that Fury always COULD go scorched Earth on the various enemies of freedom and democracy but chose not to because he wanted to be as good a person as the many heroes he rubbed shoulders with.  Taking that same kind of unstoppable knowledge, especially buoyed by Fury’s inside information on the superhero community, in the hands of a completely amoral robot monster should be terrifying.  The problem was Max Fury ended up pretty much just a henchman to the very boring new Secret Empire, rather than the deadly mastermind he should’ve been. 

If war comics were where Marvel dropped the ball its classic ‘60s spy stories are where they grabbed the ball and slam dunked all over the competition’s face.  Nick Fury’s initial run under comics legend Jim Steranko are some of the best spy stories ever written.  The stuff Steranko came up with here would go on to define the Marvel universe going forward, creating characters and concepts that have endured for decades.  Everything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done with both Hyra and SHIELD is linked directly back to these stories.  Stuff like the helicarrier, flying cars, life model decoys, the entire Hydra vs. SHIELD dynamic, it all started here.  The ‘60s were always a time of completely unrestrained imagination and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD was all of that turned up to 11.  Honestly, if you’re a fan of classic Bond movies or Mission Impossible or Agents of SHIELD you need to read these comics, they eclipse everything they’ve spawned with their breadth of imagination and well-told stories. 

That’s another thing to remember about why everybody loves these comics, the stories are all completely serious and well written.  Even though they’re fantastical tales of international espionage involving space station battles and a hidden base under a barber shop they still treat the situation with total sincerity and seriousness and actually come up with great twists and turns for the story to take.  The final revelation of the Hydra Supreme Leader’s identity is one of the greatest reveals in comics, basically turning the idea of the Clark Kent/Superman dynamic right on its ear for one of the most memorable and evocative final scenes to grace the medium. 

Finally we get to Ultimate Nick Fury, the slick, cool, modern version of the character from the drab world of Ultimate Marvel and the first instance of the creators ascribing Nick Fury Samuel L. Jackson’s likeness for some reason.  I really do mean “for some reason” too as I’ve been unable to find any rationale for why he looks that way.  The decision was made in 2002, before Marvel Studios even existed, and it’s not like anyone else in the Ultimate universe resembles a celebrity.  It’s a just a random oddity heaped onto his character for no reason.  Actually it’s kind of lucky that Ultimate Nick Fury does look like Samuel L. Jackson as it tends to be the only thing people care about with him, even though he’s one of the biggest monsters of the Ultimate Universe. 

I’ve slammed the Ultimate universe multiple times in this article, mainly because it’s a garbage universe full of creepily ultra right wing undertones and boring re-hashes of famous stories, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Ultimate Nick Fury is pretty terrible.  Ultimate Nick Fury actually is a great example of everything that was wrong and broken with the Ultimate Universe, like how their idea of “realism” was just “heroes feud with government.”  I’m actually not opposed to realism I superhero comics as a general concept because the idea of trying to imagine how an entire world of complex and diverse people might respond to someone like Thor or Iron Man offers tons of story options and ideas to play with.  The problem is that the Ultimate Universe, specifically through Nick fury, only ever interpreted realism as “government no like heroes” and “all characters are jerks.” 

That’s the other big problem with Ultimate Nick Fury; he’s a major jerk not to mention how much of a watered down version of his predecessor he is.  “Watered Down” is really the best term to describe far too much of the Ultimate Universe but that element reached a peak when it was revealed that in the Ultimate Universe mutants aren’t a natural evolution of man but just some weird experiment cooked up by a villainous Nick Fury.  Not only does that rob the entire idea of mutants of its punch as social allegory it also makes Nick Fury one of the biggest monsters of all time. 

Next week we’ll celebrate Armistice day by diving deeper into those DC war comics. 


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