Assuming your humble blogger hasn’t missed something in his research, the comic we’re going to be looking at today was, fifty years ago, the first to feature Nick Fury, agent of SHIELD — as opposed to Sgt. Nick Fury, leader of World War II’s Howling Commandos — in a headlining role since the cancellation of, um, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, back in 1969. Not that the eye-patched director of the Marvel Universe’s foremost spy agency had been at all out of sight through the first half of the 1970s; indeed, for a while he seemed to be popping up in one book or another almost every single month.
But even with the huge expansion of Marvel’s publishing line during that period, no one had tried to revive Nick Fury and/or SHIELD as an ongoing feature… at least, not until the middle of 1976, when the recent return of two ostensible “tryout” titles, Marvel Spotlight and Marvel Premiere, to their original purpose of showcasing a variety of properties (following their hosting of long runs of “Son of Satan” and “Iron Fist”, respectively), meant that there were suddenly a lot of slots open either for brand-new properties (hello, Woodgod!) or established characters (the Warriors Three, anyone?) to be given a fresh shot at solo stardom.
Shepherding Nick Fury in this latest venture were a couple of talents familiar to regular Marvel readers, though their specific roles here might be other than what their fans of 1976 would have been expecting. Jim Starlin — a comics auteur best known for drawing as well as writing trippy cosmic sagas such as Captain Marvel and Warlock — would only be writing this time out; this was a first, at least so far as his professional published output was concerned. Meanwhile, Howard Chaykin — an illustrator (and sometime writer) who was on something of an especially productive streak at the moment, with one original series concept (“Monark Starstalker”) as well as a second one featuring a Robert E. Howard sword-and-sorcery character (“The Mark of Kane”) taking up three consecutive issues of Marvel Premiere around the same time Marvel Spotlight #31 came out — was primarily associated with fantasy and science fiction projects. While he’d also done some work with more grounded, “pulp”-style adventure heroes (The Scorpion for Atlas Comics, “Dominic Fortune” for Marvel), he’d largely steered clear of stories set in the present-day, mainstream Marvel Universe.
Simply based on their resumes, then, Starlin and Chaykin weren’t necessarily the guys you’d expect to deliver a Nick Fury story that would make a major, and mostly permanent, addition to the character’s continuity — all while largely eschewing the high-tech, fantastical trappings that had been associated with Fury ever since Jim Steranko’s SHIELD run of the 1960s.
Indeed, the book’s cover (pencilled by Chaykin, with inks by Klaus Janson), with its imagery of Fury leaping/falling from an imaginatively designed aerial vehicle is about as close to the super-spy milieu as this comic ever comes. Rather, as will soon become evident, we readers of September, 1976 were about to experience a taut, grounded crime/espionage action thriller; one which, outside of one fantastic element — the “Infinity Formula” of the story’s title — came about as close to “realism” as the Marvel Universe ever got in those days.
And now, without further preamble:
If “Duncan” — someone high enough in SHIELD’s ranks to be called on to cover for Fury as “acting head” at a moments notice — was ever referenced (let alone actually appeared) in another story, either before or after this one, I’m unaware of it. (I suppose Starlin could have been nodding to Fred Duncan, the FBI agent who’d served as a government liaison to the X-Men, as first seen in issue #2 of that series; the man could have switched security organizations somewhere along the way, after all.) Anyway, we don’t see much more of SHIELD past this point, so it hardly matters who’s running the place.
When the “modern” version of Nick Fury had first been introduced, back in 1963’s Fantastic Four #21, it had seemed plausible to portray him as being essentially as vital and vigorous as the guy in the Sgt. Fury comic, set some twenty years earlier; after all, two of the FF’s own members were WW II vets, themselves. More than a decade later, however, one had a hard time overlooking the fact that the longtime director of SHIELD must be pushing at least sixty, yet hardly seemed to have been slowed down by age in the slightest.
Starlin’s “continuity implant” concerning Professor Sternberg and his longevity serum resolved this issue pretty much for all time — and did so rather elegantly, in your humble blogger’s opinion.
I’ve seen commentary on this story that finds fault with the Infinity Formula solution because they think it makes Nick Fury seem less heroic: in their reading, he has access to the secret of eternal youth, but selfishly refuses to share it with the world. As I see it, however, Starlin has successfully avoided that trap by presenting the Infinity Formula as being at least as much a curse as a blessing; after all, the very first thing it does to him is to age him sixty years overnight. Fury has been taking the serum for the last thirty years not because he wants to live forever, but because he doesn’t want to become a very old man before his time. Sure, you can argue that he should have been trying harder to find another solution to his dilemma over the last three decades; but it’s hardly fair to accuse him of hoarding a 100% beneficent scientific miracle for himself.
As he deals handily with Madame Renour’s hired thugs, Nick reflects that the woman would never have employed such poor specimens “back in Viet Nam during the Fifties when we were doing some spy work for the French government.” It’s a colorful little biographical tidbit that has next to nothing to do with the current narrative, but fills in some of that mysterious gap in time in Fury’s life between the end of World War II and his joining SHIELD. (Decades later, a solo-working Howard Chaykin would get the opportunity to add still more details to Fury’s 1950s resume with his 2011 miniseries, Avengers 1959.)
In our Marvel Premiere #33 post of a week ago, we discussed how Howard Chaykin’s style had evolved since his entry into the comics field in the early ’70s; this page is a good example of several of the elements he’d chosen to emphasize within the last couple of years, including creative page design, simplified but still expressive rendering, and a dramatic use of sold black.
Returning to our story… Steel Harris continues to gloat over how he’ll use his leverage over Fury, joking, “Hell, maybe I’ll even have Fury make me an agent.” He’s interrupted by one of his underlings, who’s just received word that the SHIELD director has arrived. “He’s in town?” replies Harris. “Good! Have the boys bring him in.” But it’s too late for that…
Fury finally notices the helicopter a couple of minute later when it dives towards his car, and someone in it begins shooting a machine-gun at him…
The men in the car turn out to be a couple of Steel Harris’ underlings. Another car containing Harris himself pulls up a few moments later, and Fury — still hanging off the side of the cliff — hears the boss order the men to keep an eye on the crash scene long enough to verify the deaths of all involved before returning to the casino…
As Fury speeds back to the Golden Dagger casino, he knows he’s racing the clock; it was harder for him to put down “Gloves” than it should have been, which means that the delay in his taking his annual dose of the Infinity Formula is already having an effect.
Meanwhile, back at the casino, Harris is beginning to feel desperate as well…
Is it a remarkable (and extremely convenient, narratively speaking) coincidence that both Fury and Harris are due to take their annual doses of Sternberg’s serum at virtually the same time? Why, yes; yes, it is.
The page that follows is another fine example of Chaykin’s design-forward approach, as we see him devote a whole panel’s worth of space to a single word:
Heh. I always did like the Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine.
Jim Starlin’s script for “Assignment: The Infinity Formula!” may not be 100% airtight, plotwise, but it gets the job done, and Howard Chaykin’s stylish, streamlined graphic storytelling complements it perfectly. Fifty years later, this story still holds up as one of the single best done-in-one comics produced by Marvel during this period, at least in the opinion of your humble blogger.
In its own time, Marvel Spotlight #31 seems to have been generally well-received, assuming that the letters of comment published a few months later in MS #33 were a representative sampling of fan opinion — although sales apparently weren’t good enough to justify the revival of a full-fledged Nick Fury series. Rather, the character would immediately return to his now-accustomed role as part of the warp and weft of the greater tapestry of the Marvel Universe (with his very next guest appearance coming in nothing less than the very next issue of Marvel Spotlight, #32, featuring the debut of Spider-Woman) — which is where he’d remain until 1988, when the miniseries Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. would finally give him anotherheadlining gig.
“Assignment: The Infinity Formula!” did have at least one very important detractor back in the day, however — none other than Marvel Comics publisher (not to mention Nick Fury’s co-creator) Stan Lee. As Jim Starlin recalled decades later for Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (Harper, 2012):
Stan always had trouble with the stuff I did… I had Fury embezzling funds so he could get this formula that would extend his life. Stan was so upset by it he said it would never be used in Marvel continuity, or ever reprinted.
Wait, “embezzling funds”? I know that this post doesn’t include scans of every single panel of this story, but please trust me when I tell you that nowhere in its seventeen pages is there any hint of Nick Fury embezzling funds from SHIELD (or anyone else) to pay off the unscrupulous Dr. Sternberg. (If there had been, I would probably have been as dismayed as Stan Lee allegedly was). Perhaps Starlin did originally have that element in his plot, but it didn’t make it into the final version of the script for whatever reason. Or he might simply have misremembered the specific reasons for Lee’s objections, all these years later; it’s not hard to imagine the whole idea of Fury being subject to extortion, or, alternatively, being dependent on a skeevy and probably illegal drug, rubbing Lee the wrong way.
In any event, it did take quite some time for Marvel Spotlight #31 to be reprinted, at least in the United States (its appearance in 1981’s Savage Action #9, a Marvel UK publication, may well have evaded Lee’s notice). By 1998, when “Assignment: The Infinity Formula!” turned up in the trade collection Grandson of Origins of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee was no longer involved in Marvel’s day-to-day publishing operations; the story’s only subsequent American reprinting to date, according to the Grand Comics Database, was in 2015’s S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Complete Collection Omnibus, released just three years before Lee’s passing.
As for the story’s place in Marvel’s “official” continuity, the first post-MS #31 reference to the Infinity Formula that I’ve come across is in the aforementioned Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., published in 1988; the most recent is in 2019’s Amazing Spider-Man (2018 series) #33. So, yeah, Doc Sternberg’s serum has hung on through the decades; and though the lore has been tweaked here and there (for example, Fury now appears to have shared the formula with at least a couple of his Howling Commandos buddies at some point; well, I guess those guys knew what they were getting into), it seems likely to hang around for the duration. And why not? It’s a great way for Marvel to be able to continue featuring a relatively youthful, credibly badass Nicholas Fury, Sr., in its books, while retaining his World War II military service as an important part of his backstory,
Reed Richards and Ben Grimm should have been so lucky.
Hi, Alan.
Wow, I vaguely remembered this story, but had completely forgotten that Starlin had written it! It’s actually pretty good by Starlin’s standards. (I never was a big fan of his scripts, though his plotting was usually spot-on.)
What most impressed me revisiting this story is – as you say – how swiftly Chaykin’s storytelling had evolved. His art in that one issue of DETECTIVE COMICS from 1974 (?) looks crude in comparison. Here we have little touches like the use of inset panels (the close-up of Harris saying “Fury! This is your doing!”) and the incorporation of sound effects in the art (“Jackpot!”). Only six years later Chaykin’s confidence as a creator would lead to AMERICAN FLAGG, the first 12 issues of which are nigh-perfect in terms of world-building and pacing.
Thanks for the memory, Al!
I got this issue new off the racks and had also forgotten that it had been written by Starlin. Having since read a collection of Steranko’s run, I think Starlin’s script emulated Steranko’s style reasonably well. As of September 1976, the only Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD story I’d read was the first one as reprinted in Son of Origins of Marvel Comics.
I could just cut and paste my response to Captain America #153, discussed some years ago…
“it might be interesting to note that the first ten-odd pages of #153 tidied up an old plot thread that came to a head in this issue: Nick Fury’s sawn off because Val has been making eyes at Cap. The grist of his complaint is that he’s an old grey warhorse, while Steve Rogers popped up young as the day he was snap-frozen.
All well and good – except four years later in Marvel Spotlight #31, Jim Starlin and Howard Chaykin show how Nick’s been taking his “Infinity Formula” for the last 30 years, the annual application of which keeps him looking as young as he did back in The Big One – which kind of renders the whole plot about Fury’s age complex completely redundant.
I guess they just decided to sweep it under the carpet and presume everyone’d forget about it*. And one supposes they had to come up with something to explain how Fury was able to be a WW2 vet while remaining an active SHIELD Director 30 years later.
(* how could they know a grumpy old pedant would be waiting 45 years to bring up the subject…?)”
More like 50 years now; anyways, had I seen this on the stands at the time I wouldn’t have purchased it on account of being mired in my Chaykin moratorium (on account of his work in Amazing Adventures #18…ridiculous grudge? Moi?)…having long since purchased it, his Toth influences were quite to the fore in some parts, but it’s a solid job otherwise (much like that Solomon Kane story highlighted last week). Was Starlin doing much other script-drawn-by-other-hands at the time? I think I would have found a story written by him set in the present day slightly confuzzling, given his previous efforts (someone certainly liked that Carabo, though).
I think I had the impression back then that while the Infinity Formula greatly retarded Fury’s aging, it didn’t keep him from getting any older at all; or, to put it another way, he’d come by those white temples naturally. In my head canon, that left enough wiggle room so that the “old grey warhorse” stuff from Captain America still made a kind of sense.
Yeah, Fury looked more like eternally 50-something rather than 30-something.
Sounds like Sylvester Stallone circa age 60 going to Australia, loading up on HGH (Human Growth Hormone – a cousin to steroids), before making the first of his belated Rambo sequels (some call them “torture porn”).
It also makes the long arc in the Ka-Zar tryout series where Fury is looking for the Super Soldier formula moot.
Obviously, the 616 CIA and US Army are not keeping up on his Bring Ups, since Fury is compromised.
Also, how good are Shield’s Counterintel folks not to catch this. Very sloppy Background In estivation . . . .
I wonder if “Duncan” was simply a slip of the tongue, and Starlin meant to say ‘Dugan’?
Afraid I didn’t like this so much, for exactly the reason Baden Smith gives above. I was a major Englehart fan back then, based primarily on his early Avengers and Captain America. He’d established a certain tension in the Steve/Nick bromance originating at least in part, as Baden says, with Fury’s resentment of Cap’s youth. MS #31 was one of the first instances I can recall in my collecting days, where one writer decided to completely ignore (or was totally unaware of), what another writer had done and flat-out contradicted what had been established. The fact that it took over a decade for this story to even be referred to again suggests that it may not have been met with unanimous approval.
Starlin was known to have worn his Moorcock influences on his sleeve, and I wonder if he was also inspired here by Philip José Farmer’s classic ‘A Feast Unknown’ (1969), featuring Lord Grandrith as the thinly disguised Tarzan, a previously upstanding hero who had ‘sold his soul’ for the sake of a potion granting eternal youth?
I totally understand that something had to be done to address Nick Fury’s increasing age, but I’d have wished for maybe a new development in Fury’s life that reversed the effects of aging, and that would have left the Englehart-scripted tension still valid.
I’ll join the chorus celebrating Howard Chaykin’s evolving talent. This was certainly very nice to look at.
Some of the more obvious plot-holes:
A WWII doctor capable (with the medical knowledge available at the time) of developing a formula for eternal youth.
A WWII doctor capable (with a large chunk of hand-waving) of spending decades eluding the Director of the most sophisticated espionage agency within this continuity, even while taking money off him on a regular basis – but who then gets captured and killed by a… casino owner.
The unanswered question of why Doc Sternberg gave his formula to these specific men, at a time in their lives when presumably he would have had no way of knowing that they would ever become rich enough to be suitable targets for extortion.
The unanswered question of how, with Doc Sternberg dead and gone, Nick is going to obtain any more of the formula. If it was analysed and duplicated, you might expect that the Director of SHIELD would be sharing it with some respected heroes (so that their abilities continued to be available to his organisation), not just sharing it with a ‘couple of his Howling Commandos buddies’.
“A WWII doctor capable (with the medical knowledge available at the time) of developing a formula for eternal youth.” In the MU I don’t see this as a problem. He’s co-existing with the super-soldier formula, Arnim Zola, Horton creating the world’s first android …
Yeah, fair point. It just felt somehow conspicuous in this story. Adding to your list below, was it at some point suggested that the cosmic rays had kept Reed and Ben youthful, before their WW II histories were retconned away?
I heard a version of that as fan canon, can’t say I ever heard it officially — anyone else?
“A WWII doctor capable (with a large chunk of hand-waving) of spending decades eluding the Director of the most sophisticated espionage agency within this continuity, even while taking money off him on a regular basis…”
I didn’t get the sense that Fury was actively looking to bring Sternberg in. Rather, he had accepted the situation and was making the annual payoffs without fuss. You could argue that this wasn’t really in character, but that’s really a different discussion.
You know I’m really not fond of disagreeing with you (and I haven’t thanked you recently for the sustained quality of your reviews), but…
Fury says: “The doc stayed well out of my reach…” – ‘stayed’, to me, suggests that Dr Sternberg maintained an out-of-reach position, which suggests that Fury must have made more than one, or repeated attempts to get to him and always found him out-of-reach. Seeing as Fury’s reach (and resources) exceeded possibly anyone else on the planet, staying well out of his reach suggests an extraordinary ability to avoid being tracked and caught.
That was the sense I got, anyway. I think sometimes comic-book dialogue is shorthand and imprecise enough that people can go away with different impressions from the same text.
Ah, I’d forgotten that one line. That’s what I get for not carefully re-reading the whole post (including the scans) one last time before hitting “publish”.
Anyway, your humble blogger stands humbly (but also happily) corrected! 😉
Given the quality of reviews here once or twice a week, you have nothing to be humble about. Stay happy!
My view of Fury is that he is an Operator and has (probably profoundly good) Tradecraft skills but is no Analyst. He probably has never let anyone in the 616 IC know about his “problem.”
Yeah, but he wouldn’t necessarily (being the tight-lipped guy we know he is) have to reveal anything about his ‘problem’ to initiate a search. ‘Find this guy and detain him’. ‘Why?’ ‘Because I’m the boss and I told you to.’
Well, the real-world reaction would be: “I wonder why he did that and was it authorized, maybe that needs to be reported?”
Absolutely… in the real world, and in environments where you obviously have more experience than I do. In the Marvel Universe, though, I think Nick Fury operates with a lot more autonomy/latitude than the real world might allow.
If you were a SHIELD agent, who would you report Nick Fury to?
The Silver Age “THEM” plotline has the head of AIM report Nick to the supervisory board, counting on Jasper — who’s been on the outs with Nick — to destroy Fury on the witness stand. So there is procedure in place. (In case anyone is wondering, Jasper’s conflict with Fury was a set-up to sink AIM’s scheme. A twist I did not see coming).
And Bobbi Morse’s superhero career began with her investigating SHIELD on behalf of a senator wondering where all our funding was going.
Their version of a a Security Manager, Counter Intel department or even IG (if seen as use of SHIELD resources for a personal gig
Actually, those are some good points you raise… but none of them ever occurred to me before now. Fridge logic at work, I guess.
It seems I’m always learning new phrases from you, Ben. 😉 This was another one: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic
Fridge logic is merely pretzel logic, but with a delayed reaction.
Well, he randomly came across Fury and saved him and then black-mailed him, assuming he would die if he did not pay. (Not great, but it is something.)
As for your second point, I assume he is not using SHIELD’s resources (or the CIA or he US Army’s, before that) since he does not want those entities to know he is susceptible to blackmail. (I would assume Fury has some kind of 616 clearance, as an Army O-6 and a CIA Agent and the Director of an International spy agency.) and is subject to background checks.
I think the intent was that Fury had it analyzed and duplicated but I think he might find “the cover up is worse than the crime.”
I remember enjoying this story, but not loving it. It’s well-executed — though I agree with Mike Breen’s points above (including that Duncan should have been Dugan) — but it doesn’t captivate me any. Good use of the Contessa though.
IIRC, the survival of Dum-Dum and Gabe alongside Nick has never been officially explained. Fan canon is that they’re LMDs and Nick just blocks out that his oldest buddies are dead. That never worked for m.
Like DC’s JSA, the question of Marvel’s WW II heroes surviving into the present leads to some awkward retcons. Except where Roy Thomas dealt with the JSA in one A-SS story, we have multiple Marvel explanations: Infinity Formula. Cap on ice. Black Widow getting IIRC a variation of the Infinity Formula (why they had to keep her childhood in WW II as canon, I don’t know). Arnim Zola’s super-science and cloned bodies. Namor surviving just because (I find the idea that he spent around 60 years as a superhuman Skid Row derelict most unsatisfying). Etc.
Black Widow shouldn’t have appeared as a child in that X-Man story considering how old it made her even back then but her slow aging at least got a lot better explanation than Black Canary at the competition.
The post-crisis explanation Dinah is a legacy hero worked much better than the “mom in her daughter’s body” or ‘Tasha’s immortality though.
I have to assume that “Duncan” was just a mispelled “Dugan” as well.
There were a few attempts at explaining the longevity of Nick’s pals – “Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD”, “Original Sins”. Let’s just say that the results were not uniformly stellar and probably could never be. Even if you build a convincing explanation for why they are effectively unaging, that ends up distancing them from their own origins, and these are character concepts that can’t go very far from the 1940s and 1960s without becoming something significantly different.
The idea of Gabe Jones having gone from Jim Crow to civil rights and beyond could be interesting. But the preference for him and Dum-Dum seems to be “Look away, look away, don’t think about it!” As you say dealing with it would change their characters significantly.
Would make quite the interesting alternate continuity storyline, though.
Dugan takes Fury to Christmas Mass in one 1990s Christmas Special. That does not seem to LMD-like.
As noted in one of the comments the latest retcon is that it’s an LMD with the real Dugan’s mind occupying its body. So that would fit.
My introduction to Nick Fury came by w4ay of getting Captain America & the Falcon #153, which also happened to be the first issue of that title I purchased. I think within that general time frame of 53 years ago I also got at least a couple of issues of Sgt Fury and, a bit later, Marvel Double Feature #2, which reprinted the story wherein Cap & Nick got together for the first time in the Silver Age (and I know they’d encountered each other at least once during WWII). I did purchase this mag from the NAS Lemoore Navy Exchange 50 years ago, and I mostly enjoyed it for the art and overall story but I also couldn’t help but think of all those other characters of WWII vintage who were still around. Mike & Baden had some good points about a few problematic issues with the story. I’ll have to hold on that note as I gotta get my 60-something self to work. Fortunately, I don’t have to engage in fisticuffs with anyone in my line!
Y’know, with the anniversary of another trip around the sun approaching, I wouldn’t mind me having some of that Infinity Formula. Just sayin’
Actually, this is a comic book that’s very much stayed with me over the decades for two reasons. One that I appreciated Howard Chaykin’s art – providing a different, more stylized rendition of Nick Fury – one that worked nicely with Jim Starlin’s story. (Can I confess that I also had forgotten that he’d written this story?)
The more significant reason this one lodged more firmly into my mind was that I viewed as an attempt to resolve a growing problem for Marvel in the late 70’s. Part of their appeal up to then had been acknowledging actual time. The Fantastic Four had been bitten by cosmic rays in 1961. Peter Parker had not only gotten an “owie” from that mean spider but had aged enough to now be in college. Tony Stark had stumbled over that trip wire during the Viet Nam War in 1963. And this tough Fury guy had fought back in WWII.
All of which worked fine and dandy until the late 70’s when if that was true, then we were all following the exploits of characters now in their late 30’s and/or early 40’s. And if that was the case, how much longer were they viable as superheroes? So, what’s a major comic book publisher to do? Earth 2? Another relaunch?
If this was an attempt to solve an unsolvable problem for Nick Fury, it more or less worked. But as Marvel finally realized ignoring the age issue was the best option, that put this issue in an uncomfortable position.
But taken as a single “one and done” comic, I also offer a supportive “thumbs up.”
Thanks again, Alan! This is a great way to break up a long work week!
Someone being in their late 30s or 40s might not keep people from doing “adventurous things.”
(I served in the GWOT in my 40, by the way.
There are a few of ways of explaining Ben and Reed being younger than their chronological ages would imply. Ben in particular was changed into the Thing and back again several times, so who knows how that would affect his biological age (and for that matter, his strength level)?
Beyond that, the two of them (and Susan) were subject to a Skrull accelerated aging effect during the Marv Wolfman run (#206) which was later reversed and at least hinted to made them effectively younger (#214).
And, of course, there is the catch-all explanation from early 2016’s “Secret Wars #9”, which establishes that the multiverse has been destroyed and is then being recreated by Franklin Richards (it will take a couple of years before he finishes). The only _obvious_ change to Earth-616 is Miles Morales becoming a native, but there is wiggle room for plenty of biological age fine tuning – particularly to the people Franklin might most want to be at their primes.
I came “this” close to mentioning Wolfman’s de-aging of Reed, Sue and Ben in my response. But I knew someone else would bring that up as well.
Romita Sr. “de-aged” Aunt May when he took over Spidey from Ditko… 😉 …then Stan made him age her up again, saying in the lettercol that Jazzy Johnny was starting to make *everyone* young and good-looking in the stories. JR did, whether intentionally or not, make Peter Parker look more “filled out” and handsome—-which I personally loved. I thought that, after Ditko’s lanky nebbish version of Parker that Romita made him grow up a bit and blossom as a young man. It also made some of the romantic rivalry of Gwen and Mary Jane over him a bit more convincing that he was someone they would actually fight over.
But making Doc Ock interested in Aunt May was utterly bizarre (yes, I know this is off topic)!
Actually, within the last year of Ditko’s run, Peter, in or out of costume, looked much more muscular than he did during the first year. In that famous scene in ASM 33 wherein Spider-Man is pushing off that massive weight he had been trapped under, he hardly looked as spindly as he did in AF#15. But certainly, Romita made Peter look more handsome even if not that drastically different than Ditko had drawn him. He also made Peter far less caustic in his relations with other people than he had been during Ditko’s last year. Of course, that last year was almost pure Ditko aside from the scripting and Lee & Romita worked more closely together on the plotting, even if Lee’s plots weren’t all that detailed.
Agreed. And in his personal life, we saw Peter starting to connect with Harry and be less of a loner.
In every comics universe in which characters remain about the same age for decades, we have to pretend their past selves from the earlier decades were in a different imaginary reality than the current one. Peter Parker, et al, were around in the 1960s & 1970s, but in a separate reality from that in the present or even in the 90s, etc. Eventually they’ll have to distinguish 1960s Spidey from 2060s Spidey. And only about 12 years away from Superman having been around in continous print for 100 years.
Sadly this means the Stan Lee and Co. of Earth-616 probably never did write about the Fantastic Four. If they went in for superhero comics at all, it would have been the First Line or the Blue Marvel.
This is definitely a good, quality story by Jim Starlin & Howard Chaykin. I like the more grounded, gritty feel of this tale to a lot of the more “spy-fi” type SHIELD stories.
I got this one as a back issue at some point in the 1990s. I think by that point in time Nick Fury using the Infinity Formula had been pretty well established in other stories. I agree with you, Alan, it’s an elegant solution to explain how a World War II veteran like Fury is still alive & active in the present day with the Marvel Universe’s ever-lengthening sliding time scale.
As for the other members of the Howlers who also joined SHIELD, I really have not kept up with most Marvel books over the past quarter century, but I do know it was eventually revealed that Dum Dum Dugan was at some point replaced with an LMD who believed himself to be the original, and the other Howlers still alive in the present were finally killed off.
As I mentioned in my comments on Marvel Premiere #33 last week, Chaykin has been very dismissive of his pre-American Flagg! artwork. Nevertheless, I find his art on this story to be well done. Maybe not nearly as accomplished as he would become in the early 1980s, but still good. As the saying goes, artists can be their own harshest critics.
“Dum Dum Dugan was at some point replaced with an LMD who believed himself to be the original”
Not exactly (I went looking). Apparently Original Sins (which Luis refers to upthread) revealed Dum-Dum’s original body is in cryo and his mind has been placed in an LMD — and if that’s destroyed, SHIELD has others. So Dugan lives in spirit.
Gabe never got an explanation that I can turn up, and got killed in Secret Warriors so it’s moot unless (until?) they resurrect him.
What about clones? This is Marvel. They love clones! When in doubt, “Send in the Clones!”
Alan, did you forget about Marvel reprinting Nick Fury stories in 1973 with new Steranko covers?
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/SHIELD_Vol_1_1?file=SHIELD_Vol_1_1.jpg
I like Chaykin’s work in this story. The only face that feels off is his cover depiction of Nick Fury. His jawline is nothing like that in the interior story. If I had been the art director I would have requested a change. I’m surprised Romita Sr. didn’t paste a new head on there.
The interior panel design and storytelling reminds me of Simonson’s work on Manhunter in Detective Comics a few years earlier. He and Chaykin were friends, so I’m sure some influence rubbed off.
I didn’t forget about the reprints — I just wasn’t counting them. I could probably have expressed the distinction I was making between them and new material headlining Fury more clearly. 🙂
Wikipedia puts it thusly: “Charles Myers Lippincott Jr. (October 28, 1939 – May 19, 2020) was an author and marketer, best known for promoting and licensing the first part of the Star Wars trilogy.”
At the time Marvel Spotlight #31 was underway, Charlie (as he liked to be known) thought Howard Chaykin was busy beavering away on the comics adaptation of this new “Star Wars” movie he was promoting. He was none too happy when he found it was not quite so!
If you have the time and interest, can I suggest you go here…
https://therealcharleslippincott.blogspot.com/search/label/Howard%20Chaykin
…and see how the whole boondoggle of Marvel doing “Star Wars” began, and Roy and Howard’s part in it.
Thanks for posting a link to this. Definitely interesting reading. But we can discuss it all in detail early next year when Alan spotlights the first issue of the comic book adaptation of “The Greatest Space-Fantasy Film of All!” 🙂
I liked this one. That is, as a reader fifty years later, I liked it. As a nineteen year-old back in ’76, I never even saw it, or if I did see it, I ignored it b/c despite his presence in a super-hero universe, Nick Fury was not a super-hero (no costume, no powers) and I didn’t read anything that wasn’t about super-heroes. Actually, this wasn’t completely true. I made exceptions for Conan and various other books all the time, but that was the rule in my head and that’s why I paid no attention to Nick Fury unless he showed up in a super hero book.
Previously mentioned plot holes aside, Starlin did a solid job on the script, making it feel pulpy and dynamic and a natural extention of Steranko’s work in the sixties. The revelation was how good Chaykin got and how fast it happened. I had to laugh at our first look at Steel Harris in the splash on page one, as I thought, “What’s Robert Redford doing in a SHIELD book?” I wonder if Chaykin intentionally ripped off the actor’s Sundance Kid look or if it was just a coincidence. Given the film’s popularity at the time, even seven years after it was released, not to mention Redford’s popularity as an actor, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was on purpose. I wonder if this is what inspired Feige to approach Redford to play Alexander Pierce in “Winter Soldier?” Probably not, but it certainly could have.
As for heroes getting older, I’ve just always assumed that, as we pass from Golden Age, to Silver Age to Bronze, etc, that our heroes just get younger and regain the youth they had in the previous Age in a new historical setting. Doesn’t necessarily explain away the Fury situation, but it solves a lot of problems without a lot of fuss. Fred, Superman doesn’t have to worry about being almost 100 because his probably extended life span has been part of his canon for a while now (see Kingdom Come for one example).
Anyway, I enjoyed this one quite a bit and I’m glad I’m reading now as opposed to fifty years ago when I wouldn’t have appreciated it. Thanks, Alan!
Speaking of fridge logic (like Alan, this is a new term to me), while pondering this discussion, it occurred to me to ask: how old is Val? From the way Chaykin draws her here, she might have had a tipple of the ol’ Infinity Formula herself. I first encountered her in Captain America’s mag, circa the #140s, where she popped up almost every issue for a while .The way Sal B drew her, I formed the impression that she was, while past the full bloom of youth, still a ways to go till she was Peggy Carter vintage. Someone who’d been around the block, so to speak – it sort of made sense, given that she and Fury were an item, and I couldn’t see him going for a May/December affair. Maybe that white streak in her hair suggested a maturity not necessarily intended, but….
So, any ideas (and please, let’s not suggest she’s an LMD!)?
In several issues of Fury’s first ongoing he is involved with Laura Brown, who is implied to be significantly younger than him. As a matter of fact, the final issue of that series has Laura inviting Nick to a very 1960s music concert that he finds unappealling.
That was always an unconfortable element of that series. Nick seemed to be unwilling to decide between Val and Laura, and apparently had little incentive to try.
Personally, I always felt that Val was somewhat older than Laura and younger than Nick. Val’s background at the time was somewhat undetailed, but seems to involve a motivation to honor her parents’ sacrifice as members of some form of anti-communist resistance movement – presumably somewhere in Europe, perhaps France. That alone aged her somewhat to my eyes. Also, when we first meet her she is already well trained enough to throw Nick Fury to the ground before he even tried to resist, so she probably has some field experience as well (despite being new to SHIELD).
So yeah, I totally took that white streak as a hint that she was a mature woman, albeit obviously very active and vital as well.
I just checked the Marvel wiki and… boy, did her story become complicated. I don’t even dare try to explain how much right now.
My best advice to wrap your head around the nature and relationships of Nick Fury and his supporting cast in the 1970s is to remind yourself that this is the height of popularity for 007, and if we are brutally honest about it we will admit that at the time red-blooded fictional heroes were not particularly expected to be monogamous – nor, for that matter, to be unconfortable with May-December relationships. I am not defending that, just pointing out that cultural expectations were as they were.
It bothers me less if they’re both adults than when it’s say, teenager/adult, of which comics have given us a few. Laura’s younger than Val but she had enough experience to rise in Hydra ranks (it doesn’t appear having her father as the first Supreme Hydra was a factor). And part of it was the shift in authors: Steranko was Team Val, the subsequent creators seemed to be more on Team Laura.
I’m vaguely aware the Contessa’s treatment has gotten messy in recent years. I will try to resist looking up details.
I don’t know whether it qualifies as a plot hole, but there is an element of implausibility that I don’t think Mike Breen and you other folks mentioned above.
Why is Harris so convinced that blackmailing Fury will be worth the risk? Fury probably earns a fair amount of money – but he is also probably carefully watched about how he spends it. He is precisely the sort of person that can’t be allowed to be blackmailed.
Maybe a previous version of the plot had him embezzling funds to pay for the serum, maybe not. But that would go a long way towards explaining Harris’ attitude towars Fury. It is odd that a casino owner of all people is so invested in making an enemy out of Fury. His dialogue states that he expects to “take over the State” and to be protected by Fury’s government connections. Aren’t we lucky that the leaderships of AIM and Hydra never thought of scaring Fury to obtain similar protection?
Sure, Harris is a dangerous man who won’t hesitate to murder. But he is also presumably plenty wealthy already, without making himself a target for a hypothetical SHIELD black op – perhaps even one sanctioned by Fury’s higher-ups.
Perhaps Stan Lee felt that for the plot to make sense Nick would have to be pressured into giving Harris far more than just some of his personal earnings. Even in the published version Harris seems to be at least assuming that Fury will engage in some shady activities in exchange for continued access to the formula. And that _is_ an odd expectation to have about Nick Fury.
When all is taken into account, the most logical course of action for Harris is actually to give Fury the formula for free and try to build a sense of debt that he can leverage occasionally. No dangerous and inconvenient money trail to endanger his freedom, no overt incentive for removing him outright.
But that would go a fair distance from what a Nick Fury story is supposed to be, at least back in the 1970s. It would make Harris rather similar to the Kingpin of 1981 or the Lex Luthor of 1986, and apparently that is indeed what he aimed to be. Maybe he ought to have offered the formula to Spider-Man or Daredevil instead.
Unfortunately Steranko’s 60’s run kind of ruins this for me. I mean, Steranko did such an amazing job, so detailed, so futuristic,, so far ahead of his time that this kinda, well, pales by comparison. I have the same problem with anyone doing Conan after Barry Smith or the Fantastic Four after Kirby. I know it’s my own somewhat twisted thinking but as the tautology says “it is what it is”
It’s legit. My Phantom Stranger is always Len Wein and Jim Aparo.
For me, Swamp Thing was always defined by Wrightson’s art in HoS 92 and ST 1-10 (no slight to other creators who worked on it with him or afterwards).
Great article. It covers a comic that, until today, I had no idea existed. So… that explains the Infinity Formula. I’ve long wondered about that one.
Anyway, onto something that I do know a bit about: cotton spinning and silk weaving. Sad, I know, but I did my BA dissertation on silk weaving in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries and that gained me my MA funding for work on N-W England’s “Cotton Towns” in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.
All this was forty years ago – a legal career somehow followed – but I do remember speaking to many old Lancashire mill hands and their referring to the “warp and t’weft”.
The warp threads are the stationary vertical threads on a look and the weft are the horizontal threads that go back and forth over and under the vertical warp threads. Until today, I had forgotten entirely about “woof” threads, but a quick check with my wife – her grandparents were both weavers in some of the last cotton mills and she grew up around the remnants of the industry – immediately established that “woof” and “weft” are the same thing.
I hate to admit resorting to Google, but that does seem to back up our memories of a time when Lancashire still had a landscape dominated by massive (former) cotton mills.
* If anybody ever has the chance to visit, you should definitely check out Styal Mill in Cheshire and see cotton looms in action today.
Thanks for the correction re: “woof and weft”, David! The post has been updated. (It’s a good thing we have such wide-ranging expertise among this blog’s readership. 🙂 )