Strange Tales #154

Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD
Release: December 8, 1966
Cover: March 1967
12 cents
Edited by: Stan Lee
Scripted by: Roy Thomas
Plotted and drawn by: Jim Steranko
Lettered by: Sam Rosen
12 pages

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Leave the thinkin’ to AUTOFAC…

The training wheels are off for Jim Steranko. In his first couple issues, he’d been drawing off layouts from Kirby, but Kirby has stepped away. The newcomer Steranko has drawn this all by himself.

And he even gets a plotting credit for his work. Something it took Ditko and Kirby years to get. That folks like Orlando and Wood left the company over.

Roy Thomas was also on scripting duties last issue, but this won’t be a regular gig for him. This is his second and final turn on the series.

AUTOFAC is the AI system that does SHIELD’s thinking. If they feed it what they know about Supreme Hydra, it will deduce their identity.

Can you, reader, deduce the identity of Supreme Hydra before AUTOFAC can? If not, maybe we should just surrender to AI.

We get a detailed diagram of the Heli-Carrier. Below the story notes, we recorded all the rooms and notes.

Boothroyd is Fury’s “Q”. He gives him a new suit and explains all the ways that the accessories have special uses. Like the buttons that provide oxygen when swallowed. Or the belt that holds his pants up.

We saw a similar scene in Strange Tales #137, perhaps with the same character. He wasn’t named before this.

He has a British accent.

Here’s some Hydra agents in their favorite multi-armed pose.

And notice the cool effect with the SHIELD and Hydra logos complementing each other in adjacent panels.

Nick seems to have a romantic interest in Laura Brown but she looks way too young for him. He must be mid-40s by now. How old do we think she is?

Just make sure you divide by 2 and add 7, Nick.

Cool splash page where we meet the Dreadnought. As noted, Kirby was not involved with this issue, but Dreadnought seems Kirby-esque, evoking the Destroyer.

The Dreadnought bombards Nick Fury with gamma rays. Will it kill him? Or turn him into a Hulk?

It’s worth noticing how Steranko illustrates the gamma ray effect. This is a fairly unique image in our reading so far, and hints at what’s to come with Steranko.

We finally learn Dum Dum’s real name: Timothy Aloysius Cadwaller Dugan.

Not the first character with a middle name of Aloysius we’ve met. There’s also Percival Aloysius O’Toole, better known as Knuckles, from the Young Allies.

Laura Brown, former Hydra agent, wants access to a secure area she has no authorization to be in. “Well, since you were here before, I suppose it will be all right!” says the guard. SHIELD security protocols leave much to be desired when it comes to pretty ladies.

Even those top 4 panels represent some interesting posing. Narrower than usual, fixed perspective with the guard holding position, to see Laura approaching closer.

Also, look down a row. The panel of Laura Brown’s face is laid on top of a horizontal panel. A common enough way to place panels today, but we haven’t really seen that in ’60s Marvel comics yet.

Marvel’s 1980s editor-in-chief Jim Shooter will actually have a strict edict against such panels. He thought they looked like stickers you could just peel off.

Laura has guessed Agent Bronson is Supreme Hydra, but doesn’t want to tell Nick for some reason. She learns the shocking truth of his identity from AUTOFAC, but we don’t see what she’s learned.

It’s up to you, reader, to guess.

I’ll even give you a hint. It’s someone we’ve met before, and fortunately, I’ve been keeping a list.

Much of the issue is dedicated to the battle between Fury and the Dreadnought, with Fury using all the tricks that Q Boothroyd has built into his suit.

When his friends try to help, Fury won’t let them in, insisting this is his fight. This is an adventure trope that’s common for some reason, to allow the hero a one-on-one with the villain. But Fury’s reasons here aren’t stupid. He isn’t trying to prove anything. He just doesn’t want his friends to be hurt.

I guess the ring blows up if you take it off. I have concerns about the design.

Laura Brown is missing and AUTOFAC reveals the truth: Supreme Hydra is Laura Brown. And AI is never wrong.

Speaking of panels, notice the layout on this last page. How much Steranko uses the verticality of that first panel. To see the ground and the guard above. That’s also not an effect we’ve seen much if in the 6 years of comics we’ve read.

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“Leave the thinkin’ to AUTOFAC” says Nick Fury, when a human tried to think for themselves.

AUTOFAC reminds us of the Living Brain and Quasimodo.

He also reminds us of recent advances in so-called AI technology. “Leave the thinkin’ to AUTOFAC” is exactly what the tech companies of today would like you to do.

Even WordPress that I use to make this blog keeps suggesting it can automatically do a lot for me with “AI”.

It can generate pictures so I don’t have to scan them. I asked it for a page of 1960s Marvel Strange Tales featuring Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD by Jim Steranko. It gave me this. Would save me a lot of time scanning and cleaning up images if I just used these.

I don’t even really use the excerpt feature. I just put the issue title in that field. But I guess a more standard practice is to put a summary of the post up at the top where I have the title, “Beware the Dreadnought”.

And AI will even write that excerpt for me.

Okay, let’s see what AUTOFAC, err, OpenAI can do for my last Dr. Strange post:

Our service provider OpenAI could not process your prompt due to a moderation system. Please try to rephrase it changing potentially problematic words and try again.

Huh. I guess I didn’t pass their content censors. What was so offensive about that Dr. Strange post? Do I swear too much?

I wonder if AUTOFAC has the same problems.

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One continuity note. We are getting ahead in our Strange Tales reading, mainly due to Dr. Strange’s ongoing attempts to rescue Clea. This is the December issue, when we’re still in August for most of our Marvel reading.

From a chronology perspective, the MCP thinks this takes place after Avengers #38, which we have not yet read. It’s not obvious to me why they think that or that they are correct.

But either way this reading order is not entirely influenced by internal chronology. When things were published, reading whole issues at a time, keeping story arcs together… we balance all these things to choose the reading order. And I see no harm in reading this before the Avengers issue, and so that’s what we are doing.

Rating: ★★½, 63/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆

Characters:

• Colonel Nick Fury
• Dum Dum Dugan/Timothy Aloysius Cadwaller Dugan
• Laura Brown
• Jasper Sitwell
• AUTOFAC
• Agent Bronson/Supreme Hydra
• Gabe Jones
• Boothroyd
• Dreadnought

Story notes:

• AUTOFAC will use all the information they have about Supreme Hydra to deduce his identity, even though he is disguised as Don Caballero in all photos. They don’t know he’s currently disguised as Agent Bronson.
• Fury assigns Bronson to take Miss Brown to Western HQ.
• Dugan, Jones, Sitwell ordered back to infirmary.
• Nick Fury’s new suit: material bulletproof and flameproof; shirt’s buttons proved 5 minute oxygen supply when swallowed; eavesdropper pen magnifies sound waves a hundredfold; cuff links are pair of electronic absorbers, including ionic de-generator and miniature atomic battery, which together dispel large amounts of voltage; each cigar contains a different useful chemical substance; repulsor watch emits stream of negative magnetic energy; ring contains auto-destuct mechanism; belt holds up pants.
• Supreme Hydra contacts Hydra HQ Eastamerica and tells them to activate Plan D… the Dreadnought.
• Nick Fury notices he is greying.
• Nick remembers being a kid in Hell’s Kitchen.
• Nick has romantic interest in Laura Brown.
• Nick eats his buttons because the oxygen is thin with the hole in the Heli-Carrier.
• Dreadnought unleashes stream of liquid fire at 3500 Centigrade. (That’s 6000 degrees Fahrenheit for my readers in America.)
• Dreadnought fingertips fire darts of doom
• Watch magnetic repulsor repels darts.
• Fury hooks cufflinks together to make electronic absorber to drain Dreadnought’s strength.
• Gabe notes he and Dugan have been friends for 20 years. They would have met around 1943.
• Jones thinks Dugan’s name sounds like an elf’s name.
• Alarm goes off; something has breached the force field.
• Bronson takes out Laura with chloroform.
• Robot repair rat has paint with lead base which blinds Dreadnought.
• Dugan wants Fury to open plasti-barrier so they can help.
• Dreadnought’s frigi-breath ices Fury.
• Reference to Carter’s Little Pills.
• Cigar has tri-sodium to lower the freezing point.
• Ring takes out Dreadnought in dramatic panel.
• Nobody can find Laura Brown.
• AUTOFAC reveals Supreme Hydra to be Laura Brown.
• Force field was turned off from someone on ship to allow the robot access.

SHIELD Helicarrier:

• Made of new silica and steel alloy
• Hovers five miles above Eastern Seaboard, but can go much higher
• Compact version of SHIELD’s massive ground installation
• Surrounded by radar-nullifying electronic force field designed by Tony Stark
• Rear Defense Armament
• Crew Living Quarters
• Super-advanced weapons design workshop
• World map and file center
• Tracking dome
• ICBM with detachable atomic warhead
• Missile launch pad
• Rocket exhaust thrust deadened by ultra-nullifiers
• Missile drone control
• Aircraft hangar
• Communications room
• Chemical lab
• Hydraulic lifts
• Cipher code chamber
• Electronic research
• Surgical center, photanalysis lab, main arsenal, auxiliary power plant
• Aircraft communications tower
• Intertialess drive generators
• Conference room
• Weapons ammo
• Gyro-complex Heli-carrier stablizer
• Jet runway
• Solar engines
• Forward obversation room
• Heli-carrier defense refactory
• VIP apartments and lounge

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