g-2 – Coke & Comics

Sgt. Fury #32

A Traitor in Our Midsts!

Featuring: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos
Release: May 10, 1966
Cover: July 1966
12 cents
Exquisitely non-edited by: Stan Lee
Ecstatically scripted by: Roy Thomas
Excitedly drawn by: Dick Ayers
Elatedly inked by: John Tartaglione
Eventually lettered by: Sam Rosen
20 pages

Previous	#535	Next
Amazing Spider-Man #40	Reading order	Thor #131
Sgt. Fury #31	Sgt. Fury	Sgt. Fury #33

“Now lissen, ya blasted goldbricks, and lissen good! This medic’s come all the way from the States to find out what makes us Howlers tick, an’ anybody that gives him trouble will answer to me! The doc’s here to see to it that none’a you jaw-flappin’ hyenas conks out on a mission! Like the sayin’ goes, a chain’s only as good as its weakest link!”
“Ain’t that pretty, Reb?”
“It sho’ nuff is, Gabe! Hey, Sarge… y’all think up that li’l ol’ speech by yoahself?”
“Shuddup!”

Stan has something of a mixed reputation amongst fans today. One of the common complaints against him is that he took more credit than was due, that he accepted the credit and pay of a writer on works where his role was closer to that of an editor.

As he’s been handing off scripting duties to folks like Thomas and O’Neil, he’s stopped taking writing credit. But still gets his name first in the credits, now as an editor. (Interestingly, Roy Thomas is facing a bit of controversy lately for claiming to much creative credit from his later role as an editor.)

Amusingly, the credits admit Stan is now on vacation and wasn’t able to edit this particular book. So he claims credit for not editing the comic.

And still gets his name at the top of the credits!

We’d recently read a Daredevil comic from the same month where O’Neil had to finish the script because Stan took a vacation.

This actually may be the first comic we’ve come across that Stan Lee claims no credit for.

It’s possible this was Stan’s first vacation in five years.

Strange Tales #135

The Man for the Job!

Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD
Release: May 4, 1965
Cover: August 1965
12 cents
Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: Jack Kirby
Inked by: Dick Ayers
Lettered by: Artie Simek
12 pages

Previous	#369	Next
Amazing Spider-Man #27	Reading order	Sgt. Fury #20
Strange Tales #134, Story B	Strange Tales	Strange Tales #135, Story B

Your entire life qualifies you for this job!

It’s 1965. Thunderball will be hitting the cinemas in Decembr, the 4th consecutive year Sean Connery will go into action as 007.

In the second film, From Russia with Love, we were introduced to a global criminal organization that it takes a dedicated government to fight– SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion).

The head of SPECTRE wasn’t named and we didn’t see his face, only his kitten. The kitten plainly identifies him as evil.

These movies are popular, and the rest of the entertainment industry is taking notice.

Michael Caine just went into “action” in a more subdued and bureaucratic spy tale as Harry Palmer, definitely not the world’s best spy.

Television will soon be satirizing this secret agent genre with Get Smart, in which Maxwell Smart of CONTROL fights against KAOS, an international organization of evil.

The following year, secret agents on TV will be offered an impossible mission, if they choose to accept it.

Probably most relevantly, the previous year introduced The Man from UNCLE (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement), letting us know that these organizations should have acronyms for names.

(Picture chosen especially for my mother)

In the 1950s, Marvel had dabbled in every genre, including the occasional spy series like Spy Fighters or Kent Blake of the Secret Service.

Now they are bursting at the seams with the expanding superhero genre. They have one current war title, Sgt. Fury, which we’ve been reading with the superhero comics for some reason.

They haven’t abandoned their long successful romance/humor girl genre, and Millie and Patsy each carry two titles still. And three western heroes still carry titles: Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, and Kid Colt.

They’re ready to ride on the booming spy genre with their own 007 or Man from Uncle. They’ll need a secret spy organization with a cool title that’s really an acronym. And they’ll need an evil organization to pit them against. Preferably headed by a mysterious man with a kitten.

And a star to headline these adventures. New character? Or look to their already expansive cast of characters.

We know from the pages of Fantastic Four that Sgt. Fury of World War II is now Colonel Fury of the CIA. Why invent a new top spy when you already have one?

Where to put them? Make a new title? No, you’re having crazy distribution problems at the moment and are artificially limited in the number of titles you can put out. Why Captain America and Iron Man need to share a book.

I’ve got it! Strange Tales. The Human Torch/Thing stories all sucked, so we cancelled them. Our new spy series can share this former horror title with Dr. Strange. Makes sense to me.

On that note, I then have to recall that we haven’t actually read any Dr. Strange stories since issue 129, 6 issues ago. We read the wonderful Human Torch stories from issues 130-134, but skipped the Dr. Strange stories.

But now that Nick Fury is taking over the first half of the book, I would like to… still not read the Dr. Strange stories. Not just yet. We’ll read this first half of this comic, then return to it later. Even though, with the new Dr. Strange movie out, a Dr. Strange post would be topical.

Sgt. Fury #3

Midnight on Massacre Mountain!

Featuring: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandoes
Release: July 2, 1963
Cover: September 1963
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
22 pages

The scans below are taken from a reprint in Special Marvel Edition #5, from 1972.

The goal of this blog is to get at the large meta-story that is the Marvel Universe. What we are mostly reading is a collection of titles that don’t seem to be particularly related except for one piece of glue: the Fantastic Four. At this point, the Fantastic Four have met Spider-Man, Hulk, Namor, and Ant-Man. They have not yet met up with Iron Man or Thor, but we have here a more unlikely connection. The story of how Reed Richards met Sgt. Fury.

Of course, the bonds will be forming even stronger in another comic that premieres this very same day, one which really ties the universe together, just as a rug might do to a room.