Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD
Entry updated 28 September 2026. Tagged: Character, Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1968-1971). Marvel Comics. 18 issues. Editor Stan Lee. Artists include Frank Springer, Jim Steranko and Herb Trimpe. Script writers include Gary Friedrich, Frank Springer, Jim Steranko and Roy Thomas. #1-#15 were 36 pages with one strip; #16-#18 52 pages and three strips. These final three issues were all Strange Tales reprints (save for covers); likewise, a later comic – SHIELD (vt Nick Fury and His Agents of SHIELD) (5 issues, 1973) – was also made up of Strange Tales reprints.
Nick Fury, initially a World War Two hero introduced in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (1963) became a CIA agent in peacetime and was eventually promoted to lead S.H.I.E.L.D. (Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division) in Strange Tales #135 (1965). Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko took over from #155 (1967) writing and drawing the strip until the end of the magazine's run (#168, 1968). He wrote and drew the stories in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #1-#3 and #5, as well as the covers for #1-#7 (his departure was apparently due to problems meeting deadlines). The standouts are the Steranko stories (and covers); but #6-#11 are good, #12-#15 less so. The artists from #7 onwards often seem mindful of Steranko's style, and some of their work is interesting. SHIELD and its foes uses considerable advanced Technology; whilst throughout the least engaging story elements tend to be where they play on Fury being a James Bond-like character (see Ian Fleming).
#1 introduces Supervillain Scorpio who has astrology-derived Superpowers (see Pseudoscience) and wants to kill Fury. In #2 we meet Centurius, originally Dr Noah Black, a black Nobel Prize-winner from the 1930s (see Race in SF) who disappeared after being mocked for his belief that "life ... evolved from internuclear space ... theorizing that every atom was a sub-miniature solar system in itself" (see Great and Small). On his Island laboratory he claims to hold "the salvation of life on Earth": his "Evolutionizer" (see Evolution) having "produced hundreds of life forms from the microcosm" which have been sent to an artificial satellite to recolonize the planet after that craft has rained radioactive fire down on the Earth for forty days and forty nights, wiping out all existing life (see Holocaust). #3 has an ex-Nazi U-Boat commander now turned pirate working from his underground base near Loch Ness (hence stories of the Loch Ness Monster), plus "haunted house on the moor" Horror tropes, a psychic teenager (see Psi Powers) and nods to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), with a Sherlock Holmes lookalike named Mycroft who claims to be a "psychic detective" [for Occult Detectives see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Perhaps inevitably, recourse is made to a sizeable Infodump towards the end. #4 is a retelling of the first SHIELD tale from Strange Tales #135. The final Steranko story (#5) brings back Scorpio, who drugs Fury and disguises him as a LMD or Life Model Decoy (see Androids) which is being tested under battle conditions.
In #6 a planetoid from the Asteroid Belt is dragged towards Earth by "The Others", now exiled in South America but originally from "the Timeless Dimension" – they plan to return there, powered by the impact of the asteroid on Earth; they do not consider the extinction of humanity much of a loss. #7 has Fury injected with a Drug that cause psychedelic hallucinations. In #8 the antagonist Supremus turns out to be a withered genius who has a muscular disease and inhabits a robot body (see Powered Armour). #9-#11 brings back The Hatemonger, a villain from Fantastic Four #21 (1963) – in which Fury had teamed up with the Fantastic Four – who is a Clone of Adolf Hitler; in #10 he has a "vast scientific complex orbiting the Earth" (see Space Stations) from which he drops a "germ bomb" on New York. #12 sees the return of Hydra, foes from the Strange Tales era, with SHIELD infiltrated and Fury on the run after being framed as collaborating with enemy agents; his name is cleared in #14, but at the close of #15 he is assassinated by a Hydra hit man. He would be revived in Avengers #72 (1970). [SP]
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