Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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.



Strange Tales # 167

 I’m the first to admit that I’m not very familiar with Steranko. Aside from reprints of the three Captain America issues that he produced this volume is all that I own. Of course, it’s not as much of a surprise when you consider the small amount of comics that he’s produced over the years. According to the after word Steranko has many and varied other artistic outputs to keep him occupied.

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.

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.



Strange Tales # 168

 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.

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 be trying to get a copy of Who Is Scorpio, I’ll let you know how that works out for me.

Mad Thinker