Original Sin #5: Review

Jul 2014

Jason Aaron, Mike Deodato Jr.

Story Name:

The Secret History of Colonel Nicholas J. Fury

Review & Comments

Rating:

Original Sin #5 Review by Peter Silvestro (July 2, 2014)

Review: Wait, this whole issue is devoted to the (questionable) revelation that Nick Fury was secretly Buck Rogers? And most of the characters aren’t even seen clearly? ORIGINAL SIN is beginning to look like FEAR ITSELF, a central miniseries that moves the plot along while relegating all of the interesting bits to the tie-ins. Well, here’s hoping the, unlike SIEGE, the central story makes sense without the side issues and tie-ins. Only three more issues left and I fear that all we’ll get is the solution to the murder mystery but none of the main theme.

Comments: None of the heroes pictured on the cover (Captain America, Wolverine, Iron Man, Spider-Man) appears inside the comic.

Original Sin #5 Review by Rob Johnson (July 7, 2014)

I think Peter's review is a bit misaimed here. Strangely this may be the *only* Event where you don't need to read *any* of the tie-ins to follow the main story. The tie-ins all concern the secrets that are the *theme* of this Event, but they are all just side-effects which I suspect will have *no* bearing on the *plot* of this series. Where Marvel *can* be criticised is that they hid the covers and contents of most of the issues in this Event, so we would have no idea which issues to order from our comic shops. But that back-fired with me. I just requested the main series (and of course any series I was regularly reading anyway). And then #3.1-3.4 when I learned they were Iron Man-related.

Fantastic Four #6:- The 2nd half of this issue concerns Thing having discovered via the Watcher's eye that (I think) 1 of Mr Fantastic's attempts to de-Thing him went wrong because of an immature action by Human Torch. We'll have to see next issue why *this* particular failure was worse than all the others. Avengers #32 would have been the only tie-in this week, but it's been delayed to next week.

Tie-ins in the previous week:- Original Sin #3.1 aka Hulk vs Iron Man #1:- And now it seems that Tony Stark was at least partially the cause of Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk. Original Sins #2:- The Young Avengers vs Hood story continues, but now it turns out that Hood isn't a major player - he's just trying to take advantage of the situation. But we also learn that the eye affected a whole neighbourhood, even people who didn't see it - SHIELD is rounding them up. The standalone 1st story this issue features Black Knight. The eye showed someone his secret - that he recently succumbed to the evil in his Ebony Blade and beat a criminal to death(?). But the evil in the sword has itself been known to us for a long time. One might suspect that this is a trailer for another upcoming series, as last issue's Deathlok story was - but it seems not. This issue also has a 2-page story featuring Howard the Duck. And I didn't mention the similar 1 last issue about Lockjaw. Technically both *do* have secrets revealed by the eye. Lockjaw's was where he buried a big bone, Howard the Duck's is that he's a suppressed genius!

comicbookdb.com claims the Brotherhood of the Shield are in this issue. They aren't directly referenced but the involvement of Howard Stark and talk of 'they' who organised the 'man on the wall' system *could* point to those guys in Hickman's SHIELD series. (And Hickman's Secret Warriors did have Fury connected to them in another capacity.) Nick Fury's spacesuit may be an homage to Steranko's cover to the original SHIELD #6. There's dodgy continuity in the Fury/SHIELD scene. They mention the gamma bomb incident that created Hulk (and Tony Stark's involvement as revealed in #3.1), and the new hero Spider-Man. So the Skrull Nick interrogates is probably connected to Fantastic Four #2. But all these happened a long time before Fury joined SHIELD in Strange Tales #135.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Original Sin #5 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

On the secret space station, Nick Fury relates to the assembled heroes the following tale: in 1958 while with Army Intelligence, he and a team of soldiers battled alien invades emerging from a portal in Kansas. Most of the troops were killed in the first attack but suddenly an armored Earthman in a jet pack, swooped out of the sky and engaged the enemy. He killed the aliens and destroyed the portal but not before being fatally wounded. Howard Stark then arrived on the scene to find Woodrow McCord, Earth’s Protector, dead. Stark flew Fury to a secret base in the Rocky Mountains where he explained that McCord was single-handedly guarding the Earth from alien menaces; Stark then asked Fury to replace him. Over the next decades, Nick Fury fought the planet’s enemies while maintaining a normal existence in the CIA and SHIELD. He fought aliens, subterranean monsters, and creatures from the netherworld, aided by LMD doubles. We learn that one possible menace he let go free was Spider-Man. After that he destroyed a living planet, thinking that all of his adventures went unseen. But there was the Watcher….

Fury finishes his account (and the readers now know that he was responsible for all of the bizarre killings revealed in the previous several issues) but the others have questions—the Orb starts to mention something but he passes out and is put into the interrogation room. Fury declines to explain the death of the Watcher….