Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I was such a fan of NICK FURY (and Jim Steranko), early in my days of collecting back-issues, I got ahold of the entire series-- STRANGE TALES #135-168 and NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD #1-15. The hardest to find a copy of was ST #167. I'm convinced this is because, with the "4-page spread", you needed 2 copies to see the full effect. Wink

Having read the end-run of the series multiple times, I feel it wasn't the art that killed the book-- it was the WRITING. Instead of one hand guiding the thing (as it had been when Jack Kirby plotted ST #135-153, or Jim Steranko ST #154-168 and NF #1-3 & 5), they went thru multiple writers in only about a year.

Roy Thomas did #4 (naturally, it was the RETELLING of the "origin" story, something he made a specialty of over the decades) and plotted #6; Archie Goodwin dialogued #6 and wrote #7. Ernie Hart wrote #8. Gary "burnout" Friedrich did #9-15, with the notable EXCEPTION of #12, which was by Steve Parkhouse. (#12, by the way, was by a wide margin, my FAVORITE of the post-Steranko issues, derspite it's unbelievably CRUDE artwork-- better inks, say, by Frank Springer, could have worked wonders-- see the cover of #11!!!)

Apart from the wild inconsistency, the other big problem is, until Friedrich teamed up with Herb Trimpe & Sam Grainger (what a SHARP inker!), most of the writing on the book attempted to imitate Jim Steranko's writing at its WORST and most EXCESSIVE. I really like the work Steranko did as a writer on the 2nd half of the 3rd Hydra story (if you count the "A.I.M." story as the 2nd). But as his art improved, his writing grew more slapdash. Style over substance, gimmicks over logic and decent storytelling. Much of The Yellow Claw epic borders on INCOHERENT, and it got much worse in NF #1-3. But he got it back under control in NF #5, and his best work as writer may have been his 3 issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA. Which makes it all the more of a crime that he left both series the way he did, thanks to repeated intereference from his editor.

I read that Frank Springer, fresh from SECRET SIX over at DC, stopped in to see Stan one day. Stan asked him, what book would he like to draw? Springer said SHIELD. I imagine Stan was a bit put out that NICK FURY #1 had not included a retelling of the "origin" story (as DR. STRANGE #169, IRON MAN #1, CAPTAIN AMERICA #100 and SUB-MARINER #1 all had). This probably explains how NF #4 came about. Reportedly, Jim Steranko told Stan that if scheduled a FILL-IN issue by someone else in the middle of his run, he'd QUIT the series. Stan called his bluff! Suddenly having an entire extra month to turn in "Whatever Happened To Scorpio", Steranko used it to RE-INK almost the entire book, which had apparently been MURDERED by John Tartaglione. When I found this out, it certainly explained why NF #5 looked so damn good-- while X-MEN #50-51 looked so AWFUL. (It has actually been suggested by someone that Stan deliberately assigned Targag to ink Steranko as a way of "putting Steranko in his place" and showing him who was in charge.)

I'll be honest. I LIKE Frank Springer's solo work. What I don't like is when his pencils are inked by someone else (as happened with Johnny Craig on NF #10), or when he completely wastes his time and talent inking someone else's pencils (which he did for most of his career at Marvel; the notable exception being the cover of NF #11, where it was obvious Smith & Springer made a damn good team). Springer had an interesting sense of storytelling and page design, and he was FANTASTIC when it came to drawing aircraft. I swear, he really should have done a run of BLACKHAWK for DC. How come that never happened? I also suspect his ink style MAY have inspired Tom Palmer, as Palmer started his career as an inker right around the time Springer was working on NICK FURY, and the styles are very similar.

The one thing Springer NEVER got right was Nick. His Nick doesn't look like Nick-- neither Kirby's or Steranko's.

Gary Friedrich, from what I've seen, was one of the most inconsistent writers who ever worked for Marvel. He could be brilliant one month, and totally incoherent the next. On NICK FURY, he was both. It's a shame, because when he was good, his work was very interesting. But in only his first 3 issues, he went from good to awful.

I really wish Parkhouse & Smith had been able to finish the story they started. For the first time, you felt like you were actually reading the same book Steranko had been doing back when the series was still in STRANGE TALES. Unfortunately, Barry Smith got KICKED out of the country by the Immigration authorities, and by the tme he got things straightened out, the book was in other hands. (I don't know what happened with Steve Parkhouse-- is it possible he only did the book because he was friends with Smith? MANY years later, Parkhouse did some damned good work on the DOCTOR WHO comic in England, teamed with artist Dave Gibbons-- still my favorite WHO artist.)

After the almost completely incoherent #13, the last 2 issues suggested a huge improvement. With Trimpe onboard, the style and direction of the series suddenly returned to its very beginning. For the first time, someone was trying to do SHIELD the way JACK KIRBY had done it, rather than Steranko! But I suspect it was too little, too late. MIDWAY thru #15, something must have happened. I'm betting the word came down to cancel the book. After spending half the issue setting up a new HYDRA regime, and a big scheme involving an open war between them and SHIELD, abruptly, the new Hydra leader changed his plans, for no apparent, logcal reason. Also, the last several pages were suddenly pencilled by Dick Ayers, who had ALSO been brought in-- I'm betting at the very last minute-- on CAPTAIN MARVEL #11. I wonder if there aren't a small stack of Herb Trimpe pages sitting around that were never published? The change in direction of the story was so abrupt, it's clear the end of the book must have been done at very short notice, in order to end the book in a suitable cliffhanger fashion, with Fury appearing to be DEAD.

Hydra never really recovered as an organization. The last really decent Hydra story had already appeared in CAP #110-113. After that, it was all "diminshing returns". Roy Thomas concocted an extrememly contrived and awkward sequel to the cliffhanger for AVENGER #72, but to me, that was the beginning of a long, slow, downward slide for Nick. He was never quite the same character under other writers, and after awhile SHIELD began to resemble a hi-tech version of the C.I.A., instead of the incorruptible anti-terrorist force it had been designed to be.

Replies

Henry R. Kujawa November 4, 2011 at 9:49pm

Did you know many Marvel Comics reprints do NOT accurately reflect the original coloring? Check out a scan from Marvel.com side-by-side with a brand-new coloring job I did that is much more authentic to the actual 60's work of Stan Goldberg.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lZA_dmKx9fY/TrSgkcMfHPI/AAAAAAAAAQI/OLYyd...
the_original_b_dog November 5, 2011 at 12:07am

I really want to see this work reprinted, but I don't think it's gotten the Essential treatment so far.
Henry R. Kujawa November 5, 2011 at 5:41am

It took practically forever to get a Masterwork. And there was one episode in there that had NEVER been reprinted in the US for like 35 years. Absurd!
Henry R. Kujawa November 5, 2011 at 5:43am

Replaced that one image (for some reason, old links still work to blogs, even when the images have been replaced).
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Aaf5Fy4YDc8/TrUPiuwvuYI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/odG5P...
Henry R. Kujawa November 5, 2011 at 8:32pm

The REAL Nick Fury...

...and, with eye-patch!
Emerkeith Davyjack November 5, 2011 at 9:42pm

...So , have the pre-Steranko Nick Shield's been book-reprinted at all or not ?
Henry R. Kujawa November 6, 2011 at 2:14am

The entire STRANGE TALES run has been done in Masterworks, only a few years ago.
Emerkeith Davyjack November 6, 2011 at 12:40pm

...OK , thank you :-) !
Henry R. Kujawa December 16, 2011 at 3:06pm

I was such a fan of NICK FURY (and Jim Steranko), early in my days of collecting back-issues, I got ahold of the entire series-- STRANGE TALES #135-168 and NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD #1-15. The hardest to find a copy of was ST #167. I'm convinced this is because, with the "4-page spread", you needed 2 copies to see the full effect.

Having read the end-run of the series multiple times, I feel it wasn't the art that killed the book-- it was the WRITING. Instead of one hand guiding the thing (as it had been when Jack Kirby plotted ST #135-153, or Jim Steranko ST #154-168 and NF #1-3 & 5), they went thru multiple writers in only about a year.

Roy Thomas did #4 (naturally, it was the RETELLING of the "origin" story, something he made a specialty of over the decades) and plotted #6; Archie Goodwin dialogued #6 and wrote #7. Ernie Hart wrote #8. Gary "burnout" Friedrich did #9-15, with the notable EXCEPTION of #12, which was by Steve Parkhouse. (#12, by the way, was by a wide margin, my FAVORITE of the post-Steranko issues, derspite it's unbelievably CRUDE artwork-- better inks, say, by Frank Springer, could have worked wonders-- see the cover of #11!!!)

Apart from the wild inconsistency, the other big problem is, until Friedrich teamed up with Herb Trimpe & Sam Grainger (what a SHARP inker!), most of the writing on the book attempted to imitate Jim Steranko's writing at its WORST and most EXCESSIVE. I really like the work Steranko did as a writer on the 2nd half of the 3rd Hydra story (if you count the "A.I.M." story as the 2nd). But as his art improved, his writing grew more slapdash. Style over substance, gimmicks over logic and decent storytelling. Much of The Yellow Claw epic borders on INCOHERENT, and it got much worse in NF #1-3. But he got it back under control in NF #5, and his best work as writer may have been his 3 issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA. Which makes it all the more of a crime that he left both series the way he did, thanks to repeated intereference from his editor.

I read that Frank Springer, fresh from SECRET SIX over at DC, stopped in to see Stan one day. Stan asked him, what book would he like to draw? Springer said SHIELD. I imagine Stan was a bit put out that NICK FURY #1 had not included a retelling of the "origin" story (as DR. STRANGE #169, IRON MAN #1, CAPTAIN AMERICA #100 and SUB-MARINER #1 all had). This probably explains how NF #4 came about. Reportedly, Jim Steranko told Stan that if scheduled a FILL-IN issue by someone else in the middle of his run, he'd QUIT the series. Stan called his bluff! Suddenly having an entire extra month to turn in "Whatever Happened To Scorpio", Steranko used it to RE-INK almost the entire book, which had apparently been MURDERED by John Tartaglione. When I found this out, it certainly explained why NF #5 looked so damn good-- while X-MEN #50-51 looked so AWFUL. (It has actually been suggested by someone that Stan deliberately assigned Targag to ink Steranko as a way of "putting Steranko in his place" and showing him who was in charge.)

I'll be honest. I LIKE Frank Springer's solo work. What I don't like is when his pencils are inked by someone else (as happened with Johnny Craig on NF #10), or when he completely wastes his time and talent inking someone else's pencils (which he did for most of his career at Marvel; the notable exception being the cover of NF #11, where it was obvious Smith & Springer made a damn good team). Springer had an interesting sense of storytelling and page design, and he was FANTASTIC when it came to drawing aircraft. I swear, he really should have done a run of BLACKHAWK for DC. How come that never happened? I also suspect his ink style MAY have inspired Tom Palmer, as Palmer started his career as an inker right around the time Springer was working on NICK FURY, and the styles are very similar.

The one thing Springer NEVER got right was Nick. His Nick doesn't look like Nick-- neither Kirby's or Steranko's.

Gary Friedrich, from what I've seen, was one of the most inconsistent writers who ever worked for Marvel. He could be brilliant one month, and totally incoherent the next. On NICK FURY, he was both. It's a shame, because when he was good, his work was very interesting. But in only his first 3 issues, he went from good to awful.

I really wish Parkhouse & Smith had been able to finish the story they started. For the first time, you felt like you were actually reading the same book Steranko had been doing back when the series was still in STRANGE TALES. Unfortunately, Barry Smith got KICKED out of the country by the Immigration authorities, and by the tme he got things straightened out, the book was in other hands. (I don't know what happened with Steve Parkhouse-- is it possible he only did the book because he was friends with Smith? MANY years later, Parkhouse did some damned good work on the DOCTOR WHO comic in England, teamed with artist Dave Gibbons-- still my favorite WHO artist.)

After the almost completely incoherent #13, the last 2 issues suggested a huge improvement. With Trimpe onboard, the style and direction of the series suddenly returned to its very beginning. For the first time, someone was trying to do SHIELD the way JACK KIRBY had done it, rather than Steranko! But I suspect it was too little, too late. MIDWAY thru #15, something must have happened. I'm betting the word came down to cancel the book. After spending half the issue setting up a new HYDRA regime, and a big scheme involving an open war between them and SHIELD, abruptly, the new Hydra leader changed his plans, for no apparent, logcal reason. Also, the last several pages were suddenly pencilled by Dick Ayers, who had ALSO been brought in-- I'm betting at the very last minute-- on CAPTAIN MARVEL #11. I wonder if there aren't a small stack of Herb Trimpe pages sitting around that were never published? The change in direction of the story was so abrupt, it's clear the end of the book must have been done at very short notice, in order to end the book in a suitable cliffhanger fashion, with Fury appearing to be DEAD.

Hydra never really recovered as an organization. The last really decent Hydra story had already appeared in CAP #110-113. After that, it was all "diminshing returns". Roy Thomas concocted an extrememly contrived and awkward sequel to the cliffhanger for AVENGER #72, but to me, that was the beginning of a long, slow, downward slide for Nick. He was never quite the same character under other writers, and after awhile SHIELD began to resemble a hi-tech version of the C.I.A., instead of the incorruptible anti-terrorist force it had been designed to be.

This reply was deleted.