Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.Written by Jim Steranko & Stan Lee
Art by Jim Steranko
248 Pages, Paperback
Collects Nick Fury strips from Strange Tales # 150-168
ISBN 9780785107477
What you get with this collection is the complete Steranko run of the Nick Fury feature from Strange Tales. At the time Strange Tales was being published as a split book with Nick Fury and Doctor Strange with alternating cover art of Fury and Strange.
What you don’t get are any of the later Nick Fury comics by Steranko that were published in Fury’s solo book, which was titled (potential confusion warning) Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Those comics have been collected in a volume called “Who Is Scorpio”. I’m tempted to go off on a rant saying that the two volumes could have been titled Nick Fury by Steranko Vol. 1: Who Is The Supreme Hydra/Yellow Claw and Nick Fury by Steranko Vol. 2: Who Is Scorpio/Your Daddy. But I won’t….for now. Confused?
So most people that are going to buy this book are probably going to do so because of the Steranko connection, or so you’d imagine. Nick Fury hasn’t left the mark that other Silver Age characters have and later re-boots haven’t popularised him as much as Marvel would have hoped. Having said that, Fury hasn’t drifted into obscurity like some other characters and he still has a role in the Marvel Universe. In fact, Fury’s more recent resurgence in the Ultimate Universe seems to have spilled over into the mainstream Universe. That this book was released ten years ago speaks more for Steranko’s popularity than Fury’s.
I’m the first to admit that I’m not very familiar with Steranko. Aside from reprints of the three Captain America
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| Strange Tales # 167 |
This volume gets of to a slow start in terms of Sterankoism. The first half of the page count is written by Stan Lee (mostly) with pencils by Steranko over Jack Kirby layouts. Everything seems pretty much run-of-the-mill B-List adventure comic. I’m sure like me, you’ve read worse, but there’s nothing in act one to talk about. Steranko, probably on the insistence of his new employer, uses a style that is Kirby-esque. Adequate sequential art, with little to herald him as the cutting edge creator that he grew in to.
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| Strange Tales # 168 |
Act two introduces a new storyline, with script and art duties falling to Steranko. Here we go then? Well, not quite. The story concerns the return of the Yellow Claw as a major threat to world peace and as the pages roll by, crazy Sci-Fi elements are added which show that Steranko is allowing his imagination to run free. Anyone unfamiliar with Steranko’s later work (like me) will be thinking “Ahh…So this is what it’s all about.” I experienced a kind of false enlightenment at the start of act two, purely because the style changes as soon as he’s left to his own devices and I’m thinking “Jim, you’re making this your own.”. It’s good, better than act one and the layout and composition are distinctive, if not the artistic rendering itself.
And then it’s over.
The final plot twist is revealed and the world continues to turn. I’m not awestruck or overwhelmed, but I am satisfied. Steranko’s Nick Fury is……..Enjoyable.
But wait. Hold on. One minute. What’s this. Twelve more pages.
The dozen or so pages I’m referring to are sometimes known as Strange Tales # 168 and they are a different animal altogether to any previous pages by James “Greatest Hair On Any Man” Steranko.
Within this post (not including the cover image at the top) two of the three images I’ve posted are from # 168, the other is from # 167. The differences are profound. Prior to # 168 Steranko takes inspiration from the American tradition in general, Jack Kirby in particular, but for the final issue we suddenly see a very different style, one that borrows from the European (Italian) style.
I found the plot of the last issue to be forgettable, but the art shows a quantum leap in Steranko’s technique. Clearly he didn’t develop this from one issue to the next, so I wonder why he hadn’t shown it to his audience in earlier instalments.
The layout and composition of the panels is much less rigid, it seems that the artist is applying a sense of design rather than just a narrative to the pages he’s producing. For readers more familiar with modern creators I found a similarity between this and J. H. Williams III’s work on Promethea, a sense of the page rather than just the panel, the whole being greater than the sum of it’s parts. It’s expertly meshed though, the narrative is enhanced, rather than detracted from by the composition.
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| Strange Tales # 168 |
What we’re a left with is a readable Silver Age adventure comic, with the last few pages acting as a teaser for what comes next. It’s actually quite frustrating, but it’s a great starter, heavy with promise, if this is your first exposure to the work of Jim Steranko.
But what does come next? Well, Ill
Mad Thinker
Jim Steranko started in Charlton Comics, he did Spyman, a copy of the Steel Claw that he had seen in Europe. Charlton went out of business as they had changed over to Super-heros too late. I think he did the jigsaw man also for them, though I could be wrong ?
ReplyDeleteHe transfered to Marvel,as you have mentioned he was put under Jack Kirby to learn the house style. Paul McCartney saw Kirby later to ask him to do his Wings over the World album cover but Kirby recommended Steranko to him.
Jim stretched the envelope of concepts, he opens Nick Fury, Agent of Shield with three pages without script. Stan Lee was mad at him, but it was not the last time they would have creative arguments. They took Steranko off Nick and the title shortly fell. He went to Captain America, where they would not let him do the death of Captain America cover showing the Avengers carrying his casque. The second series of Sherlock Holmes on the BBC has finished with a Steranko cliff hanger that was first seen in his two issue run.
Jim then went to a third Marvel title, X-Men, he redesigned the masthead title, which Marvel has kept ever since. He redesigned the costumes of the heros so they had individual uniforms, only Cyclops costume is somewhat like his design.
George Lucas got Jim to do the storyboards for his Star war films, he seems to have been a teacher on the staff to the other artists.
He did a black and white strip called Marlow, I think it influenced Frank Miller's Sin City.
He has done sci-fi book covers, writen a book of comic history, and a few computer game covers.
Dear Mad Thinker,
ReplyDeleteReading your blog I didn't realise that Jack Kirby after doing the Captain America memorial issue after Cap's supposed death he never returned to the character he created with Joe Simon.
Jim Steranko could have made oodles of money had he allowed Marvel to publish Agent of Shield as graphic novels but he didn't, somehow the book you read he had no control over as it was published for Marvel by a European firm, the case went to court and sadly you will never see Scorpio published.
Jim was brought up in Reading, Pennsalvania, the town is overlooked by a Chinese folly on a mountain, could this be the foundation of his Sky Dragon idea for the Yellow Claw ?
Sorry if it wasn't clear in the Post, but that was Kirby's last Silver Age Cap story. He did return to the character in the 70's as the writer/artist. See my 3 posts called "Captain America by Jack Kirby".
DeleteSorry back to you, I bowed out of comics when Steranko finished his stint with Marvel, I know by seeing other websites he did do covers for them, and he was talked into doing an Epic cover, Marvel's off shoot adult anthology of stories. Editor Bill Milgrom, I think, it died after he died suddenly.
DeleteI knew of Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos but never got into it. Jim steranko got into trouble rewriting the character, in Spy School, Strange Tales he said Fury was brought up in Hell's Kitchen with his family. In Howling Commandos he was an only child. Who is Scorpio, the mystery character alludes to Fury always being lucky. Well I won't give away his ident. which is revealed in a later story. In whatever happened to scorpio, by Steranko, the one that was wholesale copied but with Captain America taking the real Nick Fury role in the original story. Fury as an LMD (life Model Decoy) uses a bar to slide along a metal beam. Stan Lee pulled Jack's 105 captain America cover for using a similiar device, having the picture amended to see cap rushing to battle an acrobatic trio of villians.
Though the death of Cap cover was redrawn by Steranko at short notice the copy of it in another yarn is missing a skull in a mask motive at the back. Great graphics, but maybe deemed too strong a meat for younger readers ?
What was Steranko's beef with Marvel, his stylistic "Who is Scorpio" story was redrawn as a Captain America yarn, the script mainly stayed the same even down to Senator Irksome.
ReplyDeleteSteve Ditko was not doing Dr. Strange by th time Jim Steranko went solo with Nick Fury in 153, the previous couple of issues had been with Stan writting. DC in their letter columns said Stan Lee did not write all the stories that Marvel produced,and Steranko was one of the many writer names that began to appear. In 153, Dr. Strange the second feature was billed as a Marvel mystic masterwork by Stan Lee and Marie Severin. The inking and colouring darker, she echoed Ditko's windows of other dimensions, her ribbon bridges or paths from and to interlacing dimensions were the same but different, his I think pretzelled up logic of sharp right turns, roofs became floors and vice versa. Her windows were logical all on the self same plane when intersecting. But some paths did not bridge they made morbiuses or even more complicated flower-like structures. The villianess was Umar, Strange was in a race to ace a death spell meant for clea. Denny O'Neil followed but his tenure was short, he and Jim had neighbouring studios in the same building. It was said Jim worked late into the night wearing sunglasses because of his colouring. But colouring became too much of a chore so frank Giacoia took over on the Yellow claw. iN ONE OF jIM'S STORIES HE REPRISED THE LOCATION OF HIS cHARLTON cOMICS CHARACTER sPYMAN. tHE sTATUE OF lIBERTY WAS sPYMAN'S h,q, WITH SUBWAY CONNECTIONS UNDERNEATH IT. iTS REMARKABLE THE THEMES OF THAT STORY ARCH WOULD REPEAT IN sHIELD, THE SUPER SCIENCE MEDICAL. hERE COULD BE THE SEED for the Six Million Dollar Man of the 1970's. Jim Lawrence and Dan Atkins took over the creative teamwork of Strange. Dan would later ink Jim's drawings. By this stage they were alternating the lead, obviously with an eye for the split of the comics in the near future. At the time of the Yellow Claw story, the oriental and his Teutonic sdiekick, Volzman, I may have thought of as a Goldfinger protagonist reversal, hired muscel and super-fired intellectual. I wonder if John Lennon copied Voltzman's all white look and Randal and Hopkirk (deceased), the latter assumed the look too. The Severin script rereading it was in rhyme. The Ancient One looked Renaissance like in his robe.
ReplyDeleteDating back into Jack kirby's helmsmanship, the second bananas got spy involved. Captain America had been time-locked into reveries of his WWII activities, now his war-time buddy Fury got our retro hero's head into the present day or actual future potential, fighting A.I.M., the Advanced Idea Merchanics who factory farm produced, pastry-cut androids by the dozen. And there was sex, cap had unhappily been rubber-cell psychologically abusing himself with guilt over Bucky's demise. Now he had a Shield appointed, damsel with a smile, no wallflower this Agent 13, alright, alreasy now and then still a Pauline in peril. Macho man, Cap haps to help her out of a hole, but on the whole if the girl got herself in a jam, she could get herself out of the jeapody sans the man draped in the flag solamio. Yesterday cliche meet thoroughly Modesty-Wonder-Blaise-Woman. What was a good touch when Tales of Suspense became him and him. Ironman carried the A.I.m. challenge. Meanwhile, or prior the other duo who don't combine comic, the Hulk fought the cerebal Them. MARV' GOT IN HOT WATER FOR INFRINGING dc COPYRIGHT WITH THEIR MERCENARY ASSASSIN: bOOMERANG, cAP OF THE SELF-SAME NAME WORE A THROWING STICK graphic ADORNED BLOUSON. Boomerang had boomerangs velsroed to his white lycra over birthday suit. Now it occures to me why Superman never rescued me, I'm one follicule, one eye, one ear, one tooth, one arm, one testicle and one leg challenged. Superman must have to detour to reach me to avoid White Anglo Saxon Prodestant women and their bains.
Just seen John Severin, who I would have seen his Hulk illustrations but was not a follower of his Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos strip as I didn't like the US war ones, or DC Army v. Dinosaurs tosh. Though seeing Sgt. Rock artwork on the net by Kubert I feel I was hasty in my predudice. John aged 90 was Marie Severin's brother, she was going to go into glass cutting but her brother talked her into comic illustration with him, I understand reading his obit on the net he worked for EC Comics, where his sister did too. He worked for Jack Kirby's studio going with him to Atlas comics before they became Marvel. Stan Lee says when ever you saw a comic you could identify which were by him. He worked for Mad, and did as much work as he could for Cracked.
ReplyDeleteI have been post checking on what I have writen here, working mainly from memory, Jim Steranko did not work for Charlton Comics but Harvey, who used to do Mutt and Jeff, sad Sack, Casper the Ghost, Richie Rich. Cutesy stuff, I mostly read them when I was at junior school, others may have read them longer. Jim did Spyman, a paltry 3 issues maybe, I don't know how many Jigsaw Man, but it was there lateness entering the new Superhero craze that DC and Marvel lead. Looking again at Marie's pictures her colour style got better and better through the run, see the glorius Strange Tales Golden Tribuneral cover. He died on the 12 of this month, february 2012.
I said Jim Steranko had seen the Steel Claw in Europe, at the time he could have seen it in Britain in the Valiant comic, later absorbed by the Tiger, or in Spain, in his escapologist career. Though the Steel Claw was writen in Britain, I believe the eagle's Heros the Spartan, was wrien and illustrated by the Spanish artist, the reason was they were cheaper labour. Disney used Japanese cartoonists, master cells were done in California. Today Disney with its eye on the Chinese market have a lot of their computer work done in China. France post the second world war imported Japanese workers for their haute couture industry, doing the seamstering. Today those clothes workers relations are rivals in the fashion industry.
ReplyDelete