Featuring: Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos
Release: March 5, 1963
Cover: May 1963
12 cents
Story: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
21 pages
I read this comic in Sgt. Fury Epic Collection vol. 1: The Howling Commandos.
So why are we reading this comic in with the superhero stories? Well, the answer is probably obvious, but let’s think it through a little. What else is Marvel putting out in March of 1963 that I could be reading?
Two western comics: Gunsmoke Western and Rawhide Kid. And a few later time-travel stories will intersect these heroes with our superhero comics, so they’re not irrelevant. The problem is there are so many western comics, going back to well before we started our reading in 1961. The original Two-Gun Kid debuted in 1948, the same month as Annie Oakley #1. Kid Colt, Blaze Carson, Tex Morgan, and Tex Taylor debuted soon after. Point is, we are nowhere near a good jumping on point for the western stories.
There are two romance titles out this month, Love Romances and Patsy and Hedy. As we’ve mentioned, Patsy Walker will eventually become a superhero. But there are also a lot of these comics going back to the 1940s. Patsy’s had a regular feature since 1945.
(Notice that’s also Jack Kirby on the Love Romances comic. So he’s telling a lot of stories in a lot of genres this month.)
There are four fantasy anthology titles, each with a superhero feature we’ve been reading as the lead story. One pure superhero comic.
And now a war comic set in World War II. Why read the war comic with our superhero reading and not the westerns or romance comics?
Two answers, there.
One, there just aren’t as many war comics. It’s not an overwhelming addition to our order. There’s this long-running series. Much later, there will be a long-running ‘Nam series. There will be short-lived Captain Savage, Combat Kelly, War is Hell and Semper Fi series. And that’s basically it to come.
Combat Kelly did star in a series in the 50s, but most of Marvel’s 50s war comics were anthologies featuring one-off characters, and none of them are still ongoing. There were only a couple other recurring characters, all of whom have basically vanished by 1963. Battle Brady. Combat Casey. Devil-Dog Dugan. So picking up in 1963 with war comics doesn’t feel like jumping into the middle as it would with the western or humor comics.
The second reason is of course the significance of the characters. Sgt. Fury will survive the war and become a pretty integral part of our story in the present.
Anyways, that got long-winded. Point is, I’m mixing this war comic in with the superhero comics. For what I think are good reasons.
We’ve read a lot of Jack Kirby comics from the last couple years. Too many for him to be putting much effort into each, and the quality of stories was often quite low. But he seemed to reserve special attention for Fantastic Four. And he does the same here. This comic is Kirby at top form, seeming to care about the characters and the story he is telling.
Kirby is no stranger to war comics or to war, a World War II veteran himself. He landed at Normandy a few months after D-Day. Later, when he and partner Joe Simon founded the short-lived comic company Mainline, they include Foxhole comics, dedicated to war tales.
When that venture failed and Kirby felt he had to return to Marvel (at the time, Atlas) a war story in Battleground #14 was his first gig.
And of course, long before any of that, before America even entered World War II, Kirby was famously illustrating the superheroic Captain America fighting Nazis alongside Joe Simon.
Most of what we learn about the characters comes from a two-page spread at the start of the issue. Below I’ve scanned a reprint of the same introduction from Sgt. Fury Annual 1. There’s a key difference between this and the original we’ll discuss momentarily.
One bio I’ll pick out is Dino Manelli. It seems an odd detail that Dino Manelli is not the name he is most commonly known by. The wink seems to be that this is based on an actual actor, but they’re not naming who.
The other Commando I had started writing a long section about was Gabe Jones. I had a whole thing prepared on how Gabe Jones is Marvel’s first non-stereotypical recurring black character in a major role.
Only when looking through the art of the original comic did I learn of the problem: Gabe Jones isn’t black.
Now, he’s black in the all the reprints of issue 1 I have access to, both my Epic Collection and the Marvel Masterworks. He’s black in the scan I posted up above, taken from Sgt. Fury annual 1. He’ll be black in issue 2.
And it will be just like how Hulk was grey in his first issue and green in his second. Apparently Gabe Jones was supposed to be black, and the printers didn’t get the memo and made his skin the same color as everybody else on the team.
So we’ll save a discussion on Marvel’s history with black characters for next issue when there actually appears to be one.
The pictures above are from Sgt. Fury #1 and the reprint in Sgt. Fury Annual 1 respectively.
Getting to the story, we’ve got a straightforward but decently involved WWII plot. The Howling Commandoes are an elite squad sent deep into occupied France to rescue a captured resistance leader before he’s tortured into revealing what he knows about D-Day.
The story starts in a French resistance headquarters as it’s breached by the Gestapo. A resistance member named Henri is killed, but not before sending out a message for help.
We continue in Dover, where plans are being formed. Happy Sam Sawyer is the executive officer of Able Company. The First Attack Squad of Able Company is known as the Howling Commandoes, headed by Sgt. Fury.
The comic shows all the action you might expect from a war comic. An aerial battle with the Luftwaffe. Nazi tanks. Teaming up with French resistance fighters. Nazis with flame throwers. Soldiers taken prisoner and escaping.
Outnumbered, deep in enemy territory, facing a barrage of bullets and tanks… and they don’t lose a single soldier.
The comic includes doses of humor with some exaggerated depictions of Sgt. Fury getting angry at Dugan.
And we get a cameo from Adolf Hitler himself. This is not by any means Hitler’s first appearance in a Marvel comic. His most famous appearance is on the cover of Captain America Comics #1, where Jack Kirby illustrates Cap punching him in the face. And he’ll show up again over the years, even returning in various forms to menace our superheroes in the present.
Notably, some members of the Howling Commandoes show up in Captain America: The First Avenger, including a few characters we’ll meet in later issues. From this issue, both Dum-Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones appear in the film. As of course does Nick Fury, but in the future and with a slightly different take on the character.
Incidentally, I’ve spent years struggling with where to put these comics in my boxes. Comics titled after “Doctor” characters will sometimes spell out “Doctor” and sometimes abbreviate to “Dr.”. So filing under “Do” makes sense. But titles never spell out Sergeant. It seems weird to file something under “Se” when they never spell the word that way. So “Sg”?
The comic includes a somewhat odd page about different types of guns. Is this aimed at children?
Rating: ★★★½, 64/100
Characters:
- Sgt. Nick Fury
- Robert “Rebel” Ralston
- Corporal “Dum-Dum” Dugan
- Jonathan “Junior” Juniper
- Gabriel “Gabe” Jones
- Izzy Cohen
- Dino Manelli
- “Happy Sam” Sawyer
- Adolf Hitler
- Marie (Labrave?)
- General Von Ritzik
- Monsieur Labrave
Minor characters:
- Pierre (member of French underground)
- Henri (member of French underground)
- Joe (US military officer)
Story notes:
- Sgt. Fury is 6’2″.
- Ralston an ex-jockey from Kentucky, small.
- Dugan a former circus strongman.
- Juniper from Ivy League college.
- Jones used to blow the trumpet; notably, Gabe Jones is not black in issue 1.
- Cohen a master mechanic.
- Dino Manelli, former actor under different name.
- Story begins in French Underground communications center deep in occupied territory.
- French underground member Henri killed by Gestapo.
- We first meet Howling Commandoes in Dover Allied facility.
- Story takes place while D-Day is being planned; D-Day was June 6, 1944. The comic takes place well before that, but close enough to that date that people would already be familiar with the plans.
- Happy Sam Sawyer is exec officer of Commandos “Able Company”.
- Howling Commandos are First Attack Squad of Able Company.
- French underground leader knows time of D-Day.
- Junior has been practicing with dynamite.
- Commandos fly in C-46.
- Commandos’ plane attacked by Luftwaffe.
- French resistance blows up Nazi tank and command post.
- French leader named Monsieur Labrave.
- Labrave held in Fortress of Louviers.
- Labrave’s daugther turns out to be Marie of the resistance. Presumably, her name is Marie Labrave.
- One day in the future, the Howling Commandos will be part of the D-Day invasion.
- A page about different types of guns
#68 story in reading order
Next: Tales to Astonish #44
Previous: Journey Into Mystery #92
