Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Release: February 10, 1966 Cover: May 1966 12 cents Writer: Stan Lee Designer: Jack Kirby Penciller: H. Purcell Inker: M. Demeo Letterer: Sam Rosen 12 pages
It is given to few men to serve the forces of SHIELD… and those of us who are chosen dare not take the challenge lightly!
We are back for the new year! And Howard Purcell is back on art. He was credited with an assist last issue, but now is credited as the penciller, with Kirby as the “designer”. Which presumably means layouts by Kirby, finished pencils by Purcell, followed by inks by Esposito. Or something like that.
Strange Tales has oddly shared its pages of late between the spy stories of Nick Fury and the mystical stories of Dr. Strange. It seems like the writer has finally mixed up the two and tossed a Dr. Strange villain into Nick Fury’s story.
Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Release: January 11, 1966 Cover: April 1966 12 cents Story: Stan Lee Art: Jack Kirby with an assist by: Howard Purcell Inking: M. Demeo Lettering: A. Simek 12 pages
Howard Purcell is a new name to us, but he’s been in the business since 1940, mostly doing work for the companies that would become DC. He’s not going to be a regular Marvel artist. It’s not even clear what he did this issue. Some form of finishing Kirby’s pencil art before handing it off to Mike Esposito to finish in ink.
Here’s a sampling of his work for DC.
Adventure Comics #53, featuring Mark Lansing of Mikishawm, 1940
World’s Finest Comics #2, feat. Lando Man of Magic, 1941
All American Comics #25, 1941
All American Comics #26, feat. Sargon the Sorcerer, 1941
Sensation Comics #1, feat. The Gay Ghost, 1942
Comic Cavalcade #15, feat. Johnny Peril’s Surprise Story, 1946
Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Release: December 9, 1965 Cover: March 1966 12 cents Stan Lee, writer! (Our answer to Bond) Jack Kirby, penciller! (Our answer to UNCLE) Mike Demeo, inker! (Our answer to Brand echh) Artie Simek, letterer! (Our answer to Rosen) 12 pages
We’re a team, blast it! We trained month after month ta live like a team– fight like a team– die like a team!
I’d like to open this post with a happy birthday to the issue’s artist, Jack Kirby. He would be 106 years old today.
The story breaks have become increasingly unclear. Last issue seemed to both end the Hydra saga and begin this Mentallo/Fixer saga we find ourselves embroiled in. We took a pause at the end of the last issue, so let’s recall where we were.
Hydra was finally defeated, the Supreme Hydra murdered by his own agents; Nick allowed his daughter Agent H to escape because he had a soft spot for her. We were then introduced to the “Thinkers”, SHIELD’s ESP division. Mentallo had been a former agent of this division, who had gone rogue. Mentallo decides to form an alliance with a villainous inventor called the Fixer. And Nick Fury realizes Mentallo must be stopped at all costs.
This issue opens with a robot out of control. Lee, as the narrator, lets us know this robot has nothing to do with the main story. Sometimes it feels as though he is offering his commentary on Kirby’s storytelling as we go.
But whatever, Stan. Check out Jack’s awesome robot design!
Featuring: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos Release: February 10, 1966 Cover: April 1966 12 cents Explosive editing by: Stan Lee Seething script by: Roy Thomas Pulsating pencils by: Dick Ayers Invigorating inking by: John Tartaglione Lacksadaisal lettering by Sam Rosen 20 pages
Armageddon… that the day when good and evil are supposed ta lock horns for the last time… with the good guys comin’ out on top! ‘Course, I know we went through that ‘war to end war’ jazz before! Still, a guy can’t help hopin’–! Yeah, every once in a while, I get ta thinkin’… mebbe this one will be the last war! Mebbe—
We met Roy Thomas in his first Marvel story featuring Millie the Model. He’s since done other work for Millie and for Kid Colt Outlaw. He has a couple other credits out there because he’d submitted some story ideas to other companies before landing the Marvel gig, and they’re now seeing print. We saw him a second time on a confusingly credited issue of Iron Man that seemed like they’d recruited everybody around.
This will be his first ongoing series. He’ll script the next 12 issues of Sgt. Fury. And the first time any of these Marvel titles have seen Stan Lee take a break of longer than a couple issues. Stan Lee has penned his last Sgt. Fury script. Without much fanfare.
Of course, Stan Lee still gets his name first in the credits. He is indeed the editor for this and all the titles.
It’s worth noting that right away Thomas will start referencing the continuity of earlier issues.
Thomas picks up where Lee left off with a tense face-off between Fury and his archnemesis, Baron Strucker. Strucker has a switch which will blow up the entire city; Fury a trigger to blow the building they are both in.
Except Fury is bluffing. His explosives aren’t wired yet.
Featuring: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos Release: January 11, 1966 Cover: March 1966 12 cents Story by: Stan Lee Art by: Dick Ayers Inking by: John Tartaglione Lettering by: Sam Rosen 20 pages
Without weapons, without organization, even without hope, the spirit of free Frenchmen cannot be snuffed out!
We come to Stan Lee’s final issue as writer on this title. It ends with a cliffhanger, though a rather exciting one.
We see some conflict between Hitler and Strucker. Baron Strucker is an aristocrat who hates Hitler, who thinks him a madman. But Strucker follows orders to crush the resistance in Cherbeaux, even if he must kill the entire town to do so.
Featuring: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos Release: November 11, 1965 Cover: January 1966 12 cents Written with block-buster force by Stan Lee! Drawn with machine-gun power by Dick Ayers! Inked with dive-bomber impact by Carl Hubbell! Lettered with bloodshot eyes by Artie Simek! 20 pages
We last saw Dum Dum two issues back. He was wounded in America and sent to the hospital. The Howlers couldn’t wait for him because they were urgently recalled to base to battle (maybe) the Red Skull. Dum Dum was in for a worse fate, because his wife and mother-in-law were going to visit him in the hospital.
This will be Dum Dum’s chance to shine in a largely solo feature.
We see the rest of the team in the beginning for a mission brief that fills us in on what Dum Dum has been up to since his recovery.
Featuring: Marvels Release: December 14, 1993 Cover: February 1994 $5.95 Writer: Kurt Busiek Artist: Alex Ross Letterers: Starkings w/ John Gaushell Editor: Marcus McLaurin Assitant editor: Spencer Lamm Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco Cover design & logo: Joe Kaufman Interior design: Comicraft 45 pages
The real story was the people who’d been scared too long. Who’d been wound tight by talk of mutant menaces and hidden conspiracies and shadows under the bed.
I’ve mentioned before I want to frame our reading around the Marvels miniseries from the 1990s. That hasn’t really been obvious yet. We read Marvels #0, which retold a few pages from Marvel Comics #1. And we read Marvels #1, which paralleled 1940s Marvel comics. But our reading is concentrated in the 1960s. Finally, we get to Marvels #2, which parallels the 1960s Marvel stories, ranging from Avengers #6 (May 1964), the 191st entry in our reading, through Tales of Suspense #69 (June 1965), the 404th entry in our reading. Quite the range. We are reading it after completing the Iron Man story from Tales of Suspense #72, because we’d first needed to tie up some continuity ends.
We’ve hinted before at the theme of this comic, and I’d like to just discuss it up front. The two centerpiece stories are the wedding of Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four Annual 3, and the attack on the X-Men by the Sentinels in X-Men #14. The writer Kurt Busiek had noted in his own Marvel Universe research what we also found in our reading here, that these events must occur on nearly consecutive days. That’s not obvious from any comic, but does follow from a close reading of the many interconnected comics. And the two stories make for quite the juxtaposition.
The contrast between these two arcs becomes the central tension of this issue. The Fantastic Four wedding is the celebrity event of the century. The press covered it, crowds of fans gathered, famous people like Tony Stark and Millie the Model attended. The Fantastic Four are super-powered heroes and beloved by the public.
The X-Men are also super-powered heroes. But where the Fantastic Four gained their powers from cosmic radiation, the powers of the X-Men are innate, based on an accident of birth, perhaps from radiation their parents had been exposed to. The “Children of the Atom”. And that difference is big enough that the same public who cheered on the wedding of the FF members would listen with interest and nods of approval as Bolivar Trask went on the airwaves to declare mutants a menace and announce he’d created robot-hunting Sentinels to hunt and kill the X-Men.
We read the Heroes & Legends retelling of the wedding, which focused on this very tension in the form of a child, who was a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, but afraid of the X-Men. He learned better by issue’s end.
Here, the arc will play out within Phil Sheldon, the photojournalist who specialises in shots of the people he’s dubbed the Marvels. A person who idolizes heroes like the Fantastic Four and Avengers, but fears mutants like the X-Men.
It’s entirely irrational, just like all forms of bigotry.
That’s enough belaboring of themes. Let’s dive into the story. As we do, we’ll try to draw the parallels between what’s happening on the page and our reading.
I’ll note that the title is called “Monsters”, which brings to my mind Thing and Hulk. The latter doesn’t appear, and the former is a minor player at best.
It’s 20 years after the events of Marvels #1. Phil Sheldon is now an established freelance photojournalist happily married with two kids. We see hm doing freelance work for Barney Bushkin at the Daily Globe. The shadows on the page somewhat obscure Phil’s eyepatch, a lifelong injury sustained last issue by getting too close to a superhero battle.
We remember meeting Barney in Amazing Spider-Man #27. He’s nicer than Jonah, but asked too many questions for Peter’s tastes.
Featuring: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos Release: July 8, 1965 Cover: September 1965 12 cents Story: The greatest, by Stan Lee Art: The first-ratest, by Dick Ayers Inking: The ornatest, by Carl Hubbell Lettering: The straightest, by Art Simek 20 pages
“Figure it wuz worth it, Sarge?” “That’s for the history books, soldier!”
This story sets the Howlers on a mission that ties into a famous mission from World War II, Operation: Tidal Wave. This shows us where we are in time. It’s now August 1, 1943. The real-life operation was an ambitious bombing of Nazi oil refineries near Ploiești, Romania, which this comic will spell “Ploesti”.
Sergeants Fury and McGiveney will both be assigned to take their squads to provide preliminary support by destroying Nazi flak guns. McGiveney’s Maulers will be assigned to sabotage the main emplacements, while Fury and his Howlers will be assigned to destroy a train used to deploy mobile flak guns.
Of course, these two squads don’t get along and we’ve never before seen them try to work together. In fact, the story opens with them in a typical brawl, which gets interrupted by Captain Sawyer.
A Sergeant Lee and Corporal Ayers witness the Howlers going off to their mission. Lee decides he’s going to write stories about the Howlers one day and that Ayers can draw them. Indeed, we’ve met this Lee fellow a couple times before. We know he would go on to write the Fantastic Four comics, but would not get an invite to the FF wedding.
Sure enough, the rival squads step on each others’ toes a bit come the mission. The squads run into each other in the dark and mistake each other for the enemy. The confusion created leads to the capture of Fury and McGiveney.
Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Release: November 11, 1965 Cover: February 1966 12 cents Rapturously written by: Stan Lee Resplendently drawn by: Jack Kirby Rollickingly inked by: Frank Ray Reluctantly lettered by: Sam Rosen 12 pages
If he’s what ya say, he’s the most dangerous guy in the world!
Jack Kirby returns to full pencils after several issues of laying out the series for various artists, with Frank Giacoia on inks. The difference is noticeable, though I did quite appreciate John Severin’s take on these characters.
They do what is to my mind a very weird thing. The 7-part Hydra Saga is really 6.5 parts. As it’s over by page 7 of this story. They then just begin their next saga mid-issue. It’s a bit obnoxious. I’d like to keep the arcs together to best appreciate them, but Stan seems to want to end everything on cliffhangers now, so the arcs aren’t well-defined.
They’ll head-scratchingly do the same thing next month with Fantastic Four.
We will take a break after this issue. We’ll have started the first few pages of the Mentallo/Fixer Saga, and we’ll return to it one day.
First up, the half-issue Hydra finale. The organization was defeated, but Imperial Hydra, in his true identity as Arnold Brown, is about to destroy the place, killing everybody.
Featuring: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Release: October 12, 1965 Cover: January 1966 12 pages Senses-shattering story by: Stan Lee Power-packed presentation by: Jack Kirby Drama-drenched drawing by: Don Heck Dreamy-designed delineation by: Joe Sinnott Booboo-bulging balloons by: Sam Rosen 12 pages
Mankind cannot live in fear of Hydra! In the name of SHIELD… in the name of universal freedom… I cannot fail!
Kirby. Heck. Sinnott. That’s a lot of artists to draw 12 pages of comic. (A heck of a lot.)
“Booboo-bulging balloons” took a bit of deciphering. I think Stan’s claiming the letterer makes a lot of mistakes. The word balloons are bulging fit to burst with mistakes.
Hydra could have served as a looming background threat for some time to come. But they decided it was time to settle it up. This is part 6 of the “Hydra Saga”. SHIELD agents are swarming Hydra’s headquarters for the final battle.
