Look. If you’re not a particular comic book fan, I’m going to cut through the initial confusion in record time, giving you the bottom line without miring down in endless recapping of storylines that are better on the printed page.
In the comic book world, there are two separate characters named Nick Fury.
They have a lot in common. Both are tough, pragmatic military men who have lost an eye in combat. Both are Colonels. Both frequently wield authority far greater than you would normally expect from a Colonel.
One is a white dude who fought in World War Two but is still active well into the new century, requiring some retroactive plotting to explain why he never gets any older. You don’t need to know the details. He is a cigar smoker who talks, for the most part, like a blue-collar guy.
The other is a black dude who by his own admission was still a kid during Vietnam. He looks uncannily like Samuel L. Jackson and did before there were any Marvel movies for Samuel L. Jackson to play him in. He doesn’t seem to be much into cigars. He talks like an educated man, as played by Samuel L. Jackson.
They are not two different characters; they are different versions of the same character, created at different times, who for reasons too long and tiresome to go into now, except to say that they involve parallel universes, now occupy the same space.
For a time, there was a competition over which character would predominate; the white guy had the history, but the black guy had an international prominence worth billions. Ultimately, it seems like the black guy won out. If you pick up a Marvel Comic today in search of a guy named Nick Fury, he’s the one you’ll find. Which is fine. In some ways, he’s a superior character.
The white Nick Fury? Was definitely taken out of commission, a couple of years ago, in a storyline so gaga that, again, I’m not going to attempt to recap it here. “Gaga” doesn’t do it justice. Maybe I’ll tell you in the thread. But not here. He deserved better.
And he got better, in a 12-issue series I just read in trade paperback.
FURY, by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov, quickly reminds us that the man seems to be immune to the ravages of age, but after that leaves the realm of fantasy behind. It opens in the modern day, with Fury drinking in a hotel room, sometimes in the company of hookers, as he dictates the memoirs that detail his involvement in fifty years of disastrous foreign policy, from French Indochina to the Bay of Pigs to CIA drug smuggling and beyond. It’s all shades of gray, this account, with not all the enemies on foreign soil; and it details how Fury was wrist-deep in blood, for all of it, while the people who cared about him aged and were destroyed by disenchantment. Of particular note is the arc of a formidable woman who, aside from war, may have been the love of this Fury’s life. It’s so dark it’s ultraviolet.
Folks, I have long maintained that this team’s work on the MAX version of The Punisher was some of the darkest, smartest crime fiction of our time. Even with that frequently gamey creation, the Punisher, at the center of it.
Here, he gives us a version of Nick Fury that is even better – and that is even relevant to the world we’re now stuck with.
This may be the last stand of the original Nick Fury. I honestly hope so. To go from here from another wise-cracking battle among superheroes would be a serious comedown.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 30th, 2016 at 5:17 pm
Calling the attention of George Peterson, who will surely want to read it, and Steven Barnes, because I know he’d appreciate news about superior comics.
Comment By: Michael M Jones
April 30th, 2016 at 5:17 pm
We shall not speak of Original Sin. 🙂
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
Dum-Dum LMD *runs away*
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
Yes, ORIGINAL SIN was the more gaga sendoff.
Comment By: Michael M Jones
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
I may have to read the Ennis series after all.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
I started buying it, but I was short on cash and had to abandon it. Maybe I’ll catch it in trade.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
My only issue with “Nick, Jr.” is that he was so obviously created as a means of making the comics congruent with the MCU movies. Nothing against the character.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
He predates the movie version by years.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
He first appeared in 2012, which was the same year that “The Avengers” was released. Jackson had been playing Fury in the MCU since 2009. Not arguing, just saying.
Comment By: Josh Olson
April 30th, 2016 at 5:18 pm
The comic character was purposefully designed to look like Sam Jackson’s character, who was cast pretty early in the Marvel movie process.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
He appeared in THE ULTIMATES, years earlier; the Jr. was a retroactive continuity change, after one of those reality-altering crises that comics are so fond of. Sam Jackson contacted them and said, I won’t sue, but let me play him in the movies if you ever make any. “If you ever make any.” That is how long ago it was.
Comment By: Ari Marmell
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
The Ultimate version of Nick Fury predates the movie version, and was deliberately based on Sam Jackson, yes.
But the Sam Jackson-looking Nick Fury Jr. in the standard 616 universe was, indeed, created as a means of making the 616 Nick Fury congruent with the MCU.
Nick Fury Jr. is based on the movie Nick Fury who is played by Sam Jackson and who is based on the Ultimate Nick Fury who was based on Sam Jackson. *dizzy*
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
Adam-Troy Castro The Jr was the version to which I was referring. Apologies for not being clear.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
In “Ultimates II,” if memory serves, Nick Fury even says that Jackson should play him in the movie.
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
Ari beat me to it, and I’m glad. Just READING that explanation made my head throb.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
This reply thread is the reason I didn’t get into it in the essay.
In any event, the miniseries is about the white guy, and is a terrific piece of work.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
What I read of it was interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
Adam-Troy, it could be worse. We could be trying to untangle DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes continuity. *ducks to avoid heavy objects thrown at him for even broaching the subject*
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
Hawkman. *gets behind a retaining wall*
Comment By: Steven Barnes
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
I really loved the original Nick Fury, and have never read the comics with the black one. Of course, I loved the Howling Commandos too, and when Stan and Jack created SHIELD and brought Fury in, I about shit myself, being a Bond and UNCLE fan at the time. Just too cool. And as for the change of race? They’re just undoing the prejudice that made all the comic characters white at the time. Seems a decent thing to do.
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
The Ultimates version, which was a different timeline and is currently nothing at all thanks to the recent Secret Wars that realigned the Marvel continuity, predates the movies by more than a decade, and was deliberately designed to look like Samuel Jackson…and the architects of the MCU made a major effort to land Jackson for the role. The 616 black Nick Fury is Nick, Jr., Fury’s out of wedlock son. Who undergoes an ordeal that leaves him bald, one-eyed, and resembling the Ultimate Fury. All that remained was to get rid of the original, which was done.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
All of which translates, really, to going around Robin Hood’s barn to transplant the Ultimates version.
There have been many versions of Superman, differing in power set and level and even background, but they are all Superman; you do not say that the Superman we know “was not introduced until the 80s” or even more recently with the new 52.
Sigh. This is continuity-fuckery and exactly what I tried to put aside.
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
It’s head spinning. I’m finding myself looking at both DC and Marvel and wondering why I’m bothering any more. I’d give up comics again, but there’s so much more than the big two…or even those guys and Image.
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
In short…it wearies me. Unfortunately, I have one of those minds that locks into the continuity trivia. And yet I can never remember where I put my MP3 player when I came home.
Comment By: Shelley Adrienne Mimi Belsky
April 30th, 2016 at 6:17 pm
Nick Fury will always be David Hasselhoff to me.
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
April 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
I have a bit of a fondness for that TV movie.
Comment By: Shelley Adrienne Mimi Belsky
April 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
He got the character soooo right, and it was cool seeing Dumdum, complete with hat.
Comment By: Edward Foy
April 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
It was better than I had any reason to expect. Especially compared to the Captain America TV movies.
Comment By: Shelley Adrienne Mimi Belsky
April 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
It’s one of those “Once you see it.”
Like the way cool reboot of “Thr Munsters” (“1313 Mockingbird Lane”).
Comment By: Donald G
April 30th, 2016 at 5:37 pm
Technically, there are THREE Nick Furys – one old white guy and two younger black men:the original white guy created in the sixties, the Ultimate Universe version created ca. 2001 and based on the appearance of Samuel L. Jackson years before Jackson assumed the role in the MCU, and Marcus Johnson/Nick Fury, Jr., created ca. 2012 to be the Earth-616 counterpart of the Samuel L. Jackson Nick Furys of the Ultimate and Cinematic Universes.
Comment By: Louann Miller
April 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Charlton Heston plays a suspiciously Fury – like boss in the movie “True Lies”.
Comment By: Michael Pullmann
April 30th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
They created Nick Jr. well before they got rid of the Ultimate Universe, but yeah, he’s basically Ultimate Nick’s doppelganger in the regular universe. So that’s fine.
And he beat the crap out of time-travelling Hitler, so he’s got that going for him.
Comment By: Christopher Long
April 30th, 2016 at 6:15 pm
Dennis Morrigan McDonough, Black Nick Fury appeared in the first arc of “the Ultimates” in 2002. That’s a LOT earlier than the casting of even “Iron Man!”
Do your research, next time.
Comment By: Craven Sean
April 30th, 2016 at 7:18 pm
The two comic book series I really hated to leave when I had to quit comics in order to go to Taos Toolbox? Irredeemable, and The Boys. I may have to acquire this graphic novel.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
Irredeemable is all in trades, now, FYI.
Comment By: Gilbert Avila
April 30th, 2016 at 7:05 pm
We all agree that David Hasselhof’s “Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (1998)” never happened.
Comment By: Gill Avila
April 30th, 2016 at 7:18 pm
We all agree that David Hasselhof’s “Nick Fury: Agent of Shield “(1998) never happened.
Comment By: Shelley Adrienne Mimi Belsky
April 30th, 2016 at 10:17 pm
You are entitled to your opinion.
Comment By: Gary Miles
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
No, we don’t, Gill. It was actually pretty fun, and the ‘Hoff made a good Nick Fury.
Comment By: Gill Avila
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
Scenery chewer.
Comment By: Dennis Morrigan McDonough
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
It was dangerously low-budget, which hurt it more than Hoff.
Comment By: Steven Barnes
April 30th, 2016 at 10:18 pm
Sounds terrific!
Comment By: Gill Avila
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
Take this! 😀 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NGbv8IxCYY
Comment By: Gill Avila
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
In 1996 Fox aired a pilot–“Generation X.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2woRmWMhm0
Comment By: Jay Ramsperger
April 30th, 2016 at 11:20 pm
I remember this for Mondo describing his power (assumes the properties of any matter, organic or inorganic, he touches) and someone immediately asking him “So what happens when you eat Jell-O, ese?” 🙂
Comment By: Julie Vaux
May 1st, 2016 at 1:17 am
As I understand it not having read EVERY issue they had the “white” guy in the MAIN universe then introduced the AfroAmerican version over in the Ultimates then they tried to merge the universes and decided to say the black one is his son. MIdway into that process I wa semijoked he was actually the grandson thereby explaining the limited physical resemblance. I had a lovely back story made up that one of the reasons Nick Senior joined SHIELD in the 60s was getting in trouble for marrying an African American and that FURY Junior was probably NOT Seen cos he was stuck in some military prep school.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
May 1st, 2016 at 9:18 am
Has anybody read the FURY series?
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
May 1st, 2016 at 9:18 am
Yes, I have. It’s terrific, as you say.
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
May 1st, 2016 at 9:19 am
Here’s a good review of it: http://comicsalliance.com/fury-my-war-gone-by-garth-ennis-goran-parlov-review-marvel/
Comment By: Wyman Cooke
May 1st, 2016 at 2:18 pm
I read the article and the comments; some folks argue more over this than they do about politcs. 😉
Comment By: Paula Jane
May 1st, 2016 at 2:18 pm
It’s classic form in comics to rewrite stories repeatedly. They love to say ‘hey what if back when there was this decision to be made we had gone the other way? Hey lets do it’. That’s how we got things like Spiderman, amazing Spiderman, Ultimate Spider Man. The MCU is just another big ‘what if’ universe. Only this time it’s in movies/tv rather than books. And just like all those other experiments, some details are the same, some are really different. In comic book Dr Strange he was trained by an Asian guy, in MCU it’s going to be a Celtic priestess warrior figure type. In comic book Captain America James Barnes was a young boy orphaned when his father died fighting in WW2 who was adopted by the soldiers of an army base when they found out he was homeless. In MCU he’s a young 20s fellow that grew up with Steve and was his best friend and backup before all the Captain America thing. And so on
Comment By: Earl Tower
May 1st, 2016 at 9:18 pm
I am a huge fan of the original Nick Fury, Sr. And if they bring him back great. But they did such a fantastic job introducing Nick Fury, Jr. to model in the Ultimates version and match the films that I’m quite happy. This type of attention to story is how I feel more of the diversification should happen. The Spiderman story was good as well. Even Captain American and Spiderman are roles, some one wearing a costume and using a code name. I’m good with that, I just strongly dislike recasting a whole character just for the sake of making it ‘diverse’, much as they did with Johnny storm or the movie version of the Ancient One. A good story building off the new but moving into new directions is always the preferable method in my book.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
May 1st, 2016 at 9:18 pm
The post was about the Ennis miniseries….
Comment By: Gill Avila
May 1st, 2016 at 10:20 pm
Fury Max: My War Gone By
Kindle version $51.87, hardback $21.86?
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
May 1st, 2016 at 11:19 pm
?
Comment By: Gill Avila
May 1st, 2016 at 11:19 pm
At Amazon. Ouch!