Fury #1: Review

MCP doesn't give reasons for its sequences of appearances (but you may find clues in their Forum or its archives). But I can make a suggestion:- Stoner didn't die in this book, he was just seriously injured and in a coma, so he couldn't tell anyone about Jake Fury. During this period is place was taken temporarily by Col Harrison. Stoner then recovered and retook his Directorship, but was no longer as hands-on. Stark (and others) eventually replaced him with Nick Fury. This could also tie in with the 2-issue Fury/Agent 13, whose villain is never named, but is Fury's only predecessor as SHIELD Director, who was shot by Hydra and abandoned by SHIELD. That statement *could* be taken to match my outline above. But actually FA13#2 inserts kidnapped by Hydra in between shot and abandoned, which means it follows from a modified version of this book's plot, and doesn't relate to EtM which hadn't even been dreamt of yet. Continuity implants, even when they're not deliberate retcons, usually involve changing things that were stated in earlier comics. For instance this book negated the implication in ST#135 that SHIELD had only recently begun, and Fury was its 1st Director. FA13 denied the scene here where Stoner dies in front of Stark, and said he was captured by Hydra, and SHIELD didn't rescue him. TIA ignores him completely. EtM effectively ignores his death and/or capture, and implies that he just gets replaced by Fury. There is often a choice of what to ignore. Eg one could imagine Stoner's death scene in this book occurring after his mentions in EtM, but then have to worry about the state of the helicarrier in its various appearances. And now the recent Iron Man Season One throws a large rock into the pool by introducing a new early SHIELD Director, and having SHIELD existing before the origin of Iron Man, and the helicarrier already being built then.

The history of SHIELD presented here and in Iron Man: The Iron Age and Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin are somewhat conflicting, but the Marvel Chronology Project tries to make sense of it. The relevant parts of this book mostly involve Tony Stark, so the easiest thing to do is look at the MCP sequence for Iron Man around this time. It has Stark organising the creation of SHIELD and the hiring of Stoner in this book between Tales of Suspense #40 and #41. Stoner gets SHIELD up and running here before ToS#43. Stoner's death after investigating the sabotage of the flying car prototype is between ToS#44 and Avengers #1. The helicarrier is still being developed. Then in the middle of ToS#45, TIA#2 has Stark liasing with Col Harrison about SHIELD stuff. After ToS#48 it has a working flying car, and the helicarrier is flying but not quite finished during Spymaster's attempt to hijack it. MCP then inserts elements from Fury #1 here:- the official launch of the helicarrier is sabotaged, and Fury is brought in to investigate before ToS#49. Then we have the EtM version of ToS#50 where SHIELD send Iron Man to investigate the Mandarin. Stoner is said to be still in charge throughout EtM, but never actually appears. The series never actually says that scenes occur on the helicarrier, but one could be forgiven for assuming that they did. EtM ends after the equivalent of the 2nd Mandarin story (ToS#54-55) with Stark saying he wants to replace Stoner with Fury. But this doesn't happen until ST#135 after ToS#64, which this book says occurs a few months after Stoner's 'death'. The detailed dating in the 1st Official Avengers Index has ST#135 in May, and Stoner's death would be in the preceding October, with the end of EtM in March.

Strucker's hologram claims the Deltite affair was just a diversion. As was the story of the alien Gnobian hive queen in NFAoS(1989)#1-6. There Nick's buried memories of finding the Gnobian queen with Strucker in 1944 led to a revelation that Srucker got lots of Hydra tech from the alien, but also that she was the source of SHIELD's LMD tech. The Strucker hologram now claims these memories were false implants. The Strucker hologram says these things were distractions while he himself was being resurrected in NFAoS(1989)#21 (which tells us when this hologram scene is happening). Strucker had been killed by Hydra's Death Spore bomb in ST#158. Since then he'd been replaced by a series of LMD's (not counting the Deltite). But now the Death Spore virus itself was used to revive him. This is presumably the 3rd of the things Arnim Zola gives him, alongside the Deltite and the Gnobian. Finally I don't think Stark's promised bigger role with SHIELD refers to anything in particular, just getting back together after falling out over the attempted takeover of his company.

We see Fury becoming Director in Strange Tales #135. He still doesn't know about SHIELD and the helicarrier because Stark and the President didn't share that information when they instructed him to find the mole in Stark Industries. And this book treats Fury appearing not to have met Stark before in #135 as a joke. But the scene with Nick's girlfriend Laura Brown must be a mistake. She was the daughter of the Supreme Hydra in ST#135, and only hooked up with Nick later. After that we get a quick overview of the Deltite affair in the Nick Fury vs SHIELD mini-series. As here a sentient 'Deltite' LMD took over SHIELD by replacing lots of agents with other Deltite LMD's, including the ruling council, until Fury discovered what was going on and stopped it in the limited series. One of its aims was to get Fury's Infinity Formula to extend the lives of the Deltites. But here there are differences. Jake Fury smuggles the 1st Deltite into SHIELD, to be activated later. But NFvS had the LMD active very early, even replacing enough of the SHIELD council to ensure that Fury was elected the next Director. (In fact the secret inner council as portrayed in NFvS seemed to be a different thing than the council described here and in ST#135.) There the Deltite was a 'mutant' LMD that became sentient. Here it was all a plot by Strucker. There the Deltite took control of Hydra as well. Here that is brushed under the carpet. The attempted SHIELD takeover of Stark International mentioned as part of the Deltite's reign was in Iron Man #117-119, with Fury's blessing. This is retconned here to being a Fury LMD under Deltite control.

James Hudson's early Guardian armour was seen in a backup story in Alpha Flight (1983) #2 and in AF#-1. The Logan seen here is before he gains his adamantium claws and the codename Wolverine. But he would still have his retractable bone claws, which he just chooses not to use. Stark mentions financial contributions to SHIELD from Cordco (run by Janice Cord's father as in Iron Man (1968) #2), Williams Industries (run by Simon Williams, later Wonder Man) and Roxxon (but Iron Man:The Iron Age will say it's called Republic Oil and Natural Gas at this time - this applies to all later mentions of Roxxon here). We have here a very early Forge app, long before he became involved with the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men #184. The 1st of Hitler's clones turns up as the 1st Hate-Monger fighting Fury and the FF in the original Fantastic Four #21. Nick didn't have an eye-patch there, but did in ST#135 2 real-time years later. SFHC#27 gave him a war wound that would eventually take the sight from that eye. The bit about Nick aggravating the old eye injury while fighting Jake is to explain why it suddenly gets worse. There was more to explain than an eye-patch. As the Marvel present was moved further away from WWII, how come Fury didn't look old? The Infinity Formula mentioned here was introduced in a flashback in Marvel Spotlight #31 to explain his slow ageing.

Iron Man in his bulky gold armour places that appearance between ToS#40 and #47. The goons don't know he's called Iron Man, so earlier rather than later, and the Marvel Chronology Project puts it immediately after #40. There are no real clues as to where the other parts fit, but the MCP has Stoner dying between ToS#44 and Avengers #1. Jake Fury's cameo as a soldier here causes another temporal clash, as he supposedly didn't join the army until after SFHC#68-69. However, Jake's resentment of his older brother increasing during his war experiences was documented in Defenders (1972) #49. West Coast Avengers #27 will say that it is Jake's hate of brother Nick that causes the Zodiac Key to come to him. (Daredevil #73 had shown that the Key sought out conflict.) Jake's scorpion doodle here inspires his Scorpio identity, in which he strikes at Nick and SHIELD in the classic NFAoS#1&5. Jake's escape into the river here is probably deliberately prescient of Scorpio's escape in NFA0S#5. Much later Secret Warriors will reveal that Jake Fury had been duplicated by an ancient technology (from Jonathan Hickman's SHIELD series) that was a precursor to SHIELD's LMD tech. It was the evil duplicate that became Scorpio. The good original went undercover in Hydra as Kraken.

Rick Stoner who is introduced in the middle of all the above is an invention of this book. His only other appearance will be in Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin which will present a somewhat conflicting story. Arnim Zola debuted in Captain America #208, and #209 described how his work is based on Deviant biotechnology, and how he created the body he now inhabits in WWII. (This was during Jack Kirby's return to Cap, while he was also inventing the Eternals and the Deviants in the Eternals series.) The Cap story went on to involve Red Skull and one of the Hitler clones. A flashback in Super-Villain Team-Up #17 described Zola saving Hitler's brain and producing clones like the Hate-Monger(s). (But there's a clash with this book as a flashback in SVTU#16 has the Hitler clone introducing Zola to Red Skull just before CA#208.) Red Skull of course used the suspended animation potion to survive his last WWII battle with Cap in Tales of Suspense #72, as revealed in ToS#79.

Even later comics have confused things further:- Captain America: Hail Hydra has the group as existing for millennia under other names, the latest before Hydra being the German Thule Society with the involvement of Strucker (and with Red Skull in Fear Itself: Prologue). This would suggest that Strucker took them to Japan, and got them involved with the Hand (with which he had linked up *before* WWII, according to Wolverine: Origins). And the Secret Warriors series has Hydra running SHIELD, in a variation of what *this* series seeks to deny from NF vs SHIELD. I have some issues with the date of 1944 for all this wartime activity. Internal evidence in other SFHC issues would suggest that their #28-29 happened at the end of 1942, rather than in 1944. Also the MU#1 says it happens 15 months after the Strucker and Hydra story in CSLR#2-4. If the Invaders capture of the Deutschland in MU#1 coincides with its sinking in our reality on 4th May 1945 (ignoring the fact that the Deutschland had been renamed the Lutzow in 1940), then that puts CSLR#2-4 in Feb-Mar 1944, and the meeting with Red Skull and Arnim Zola right at the beginning of 1944 at the latest. However there are reasons to believe MU#1 happened somewhat earlier and CSLR#2-4 was in late 1943 (independent of the stated 15 month gap), which pushes all the WWII action here before 1944. Of course the plans for suspended animation, cloning and Hydra are presented here as reactions to Germany facing defeat, and so make more sense the nearer the end it is. But the Axis *began* losing in 1943, so a date near the end of that year isn't unfeasible.

The aims of this 1-shot were twofold. To tell the story of SHIELD before we 1st saw it when Nick Fury became Director in Strange Tales #135. And to negate the origins for SHIELD told in the Nick Fury Vs SHIELD limited series and the 2nd Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD series which followed it. The opening scene in the destroyed French village is a replay of the end of a story in Sgt Fury & his Howling Commandos #28-29. Strucker joining Hydra in Japan is from flashbacks in Captain Savage & his Leatherneck Raiders #2-4. Strucker killing the Supreme Hydra to take over the organisation wasn't actually shown there, but is a reasonable extrapolation. And also chimes with a flashback in Daredevil #295 which shows Strucker fighting a Jonin of the Hand for control of Hydra. I think the involvement of Red Skull and Arnim Zola in Hydra is new here, and leads to some confusion. Despite saying that Skull created Hydra and sent Strucker to run it, this book also has Strucker not initially in charge, but later taking over by assassinating the Supreme Hydra. And the later Marvel Universe #1 has Skull discovering Strucker and Hydra, and getting the suspended animation drug from *them*, not from Zola as here. MU#1 also has Strucker back in Hitler's favour sometime after SFHC#28-29, as did SFHC#112&114, and the opening storyline of the 2nd NFAoS series (which this issue will debunk).