It’s been awhile, but I thought it was time to dig out (digitally speaking) an old comic and see what it had going for it. This time round I let a random number generator do most of the work. My only rules were that it had to be something from available on Marvel Unlimited (to make it easy for myself and because I pay for the damn thing but haven’t used it in quite awhile) and it had to have been released in June of a previous year. As a bonus I lucked out and the comic chosen was actually released not only June of 1968, but June 10th of 1968. Letting me say today’s old comic is 47 years old today!
Yeah, I probably should have picked something from 65 so I could review it on it’s 50th birthday. Hindsight and all that.
Anyway, today’s old comic is: The Invincible Iron Man #2!. Wah wah. Yeah, no. That was what initially came up, but I read it and there’s nothing special there. Well, except this panel:
Wherein artist Johnny Craig crafted the most perfect B-movie comedy evil mad genius expression.
So then I looked back at my options and realized that my random numbers were only one off from giving my Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1. And that was something that looked worthy.
And it was.
Writer & Illustrator Jim Steranko (who is most famous for this series) crafted the very nice looking book with the help of Inker Joe Sinnott & Letterer Sam Rosen.
Seriously, this is a great looking comic. Wikipedia tells me that “Sterenko earned lasting acclaim for his innovations in sequential art during the Silver Age of Comic Books, particularly his infusion of surrealism, op art, and graphic design into the medium” and I believe it. There isn’t a single word of dialog in the first three pages of the issue which shows Nick Fury infiltrating what looks like some kind of Hydra base, only to be gunned down!
Except, surprise! It’s Nick Fury doing the killing and a Nick Fury LMD (Life Model Decoy) doing the dying. It was all a test to see if LMDs could replace agents in the field and apparently as this one got bumped off by Fury himself the whole plan is headed for the scrap heap. Seems a little rash to me, but Fury isn’t one to waste time on decisions. Having never spent a lot of time on Fury, whose use of LMDs is famous, I found myself wondering over the moral implications here. What exactly are LMDs? Are they clones? Androids? Are they sentient? Fury finds it “kinda funny feelin’ ” to kill himself, but otherwise the comic isn’t interested in these moral issues and moves on.
Moving on is a bit of a hallmark of this issue. It’s fast paced and doesn’t waste time explaining most anything – This might be a number #1 but it’s no origin issue. I guess that’s no surprise as Nick Fury had taken on the mantle of “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD” 3 years prior in Strange Tales #135 and had been taking up half of that series’ monthly pages ever since. This “new” series seems to have clearly been an expansion on that role and designed to give those who were already fans at the time more to chew on, as opposed to drawing in a whole lot of new ones. I mean, biz wise there may have been that hope, but this comic wasn’t bothering to hold anyone’s hand while they came up to speed.
I’m not going to recap every panel or piece of story, but in short someone called Scorpio seems to be out to kill Fury, and yes, an eventual confrontation occurs. In not-what-I-expected mode though we don’t get to find out who Scorpio is, and the entire resolution of Fury and Scorpio’s battle is determined not by either of their actions, but by the actions of the characters of the B-plot who seem to have NOTHING to do with SHIELD, HYDRA, Fury, Scorpio, spys or anything else at all. It’s just that a gangster, his henchmen, a gambling addict and a mix-up between them just so happens to intersect with Fury and Scorpio at the right moment to determine the outcome of their battle.
It was…well, weird.
Also unexpected is the final denouement of Plot B that ends the comic, and reminds me once again that “older” comics were not all the grit-free four-colour fun affair that we often remember them to be. Dark though it is, the last page also shows just why Steranko’s art came to be so influential.
Two final fun tidbits:
1) Along with testing LMDs for field service Fury also personally tests a new protective device: The EPB G-System – basically a kick-ass force-field sort of thing. This is him waiting to see if the system can hold up against…AN H-BOMB.
Why, O reader, would they not bring out the LMDs for this task? No clue. But I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.
2) Fury spends half of this comic, pretty much all of the high-action scenes, shirtless. Why? Don’t know. But if this was the Fury that ended up in the MCU I think perhaps Thor would have had some competition for some folks’ gaze:
So…Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1? Worth a read. In fact, I might spend a little time pursuing the rest of this series, if only to take in more of Jim Steranko’s artwork. We’ll dig out another old comic next week, perhaps something from The Digital Comic Museum for a change.