SERGEANT FURY Give my regards to Sergeant Fury He wanna be the judge and jury He teach me every thing I know Aha Aha Say goodby to Syracuse She can dance away my blues I was a big boy up 'til then Aha Aha I wanna be rich and famous I wanna be just the same as The stars that shine on the Christmas tree Aha Aha Say hello to Mrs. Foster She wanna know how much it cost her She only lay and whispered why Aha Aha I wanna be rich and famous I wanna be just the same as The stars that shine on the Christmas tree (Repeat) (Repeat) Nick Fury Real name: Nick Joseph Fury First appearance: Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos 1 Powers: Colonel Fury has no super-human powers apart from significantly retarded aging, brought on by annual applications of the Infinity Formula. He is, however, a munitions, martial arts and covert operations expert. A bone sliver has caused him to lose most of his sight in one eye. History: During World War II Fury headed up a special Commando group, the Howlers, that annoyed bad guys like Baron Von Strucker and his Death's Head SS troops no end. After the war Fury took a less direct route toward preserving world freedom and became a spy. He headed up S.H.I.E.L.D., which was formed when it became evident that there were Things Out There conventional covert activity was incapable of uncovering. Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. had repeated confrontations with A.I.M., HYDRA, Baron Von Strucker, and Fury's own brother Scorpio before the Delta Incident forced the organization to be disbanded and Fury himself into retirement. However, those Things Were Still Out There. The United Nations reformed S.H.I.E.L.D. with new security guidelines, giving Fury unprecedented autonomy. Current status: Fury was presumed killed by the Punisher, although his casket at Arlington National Cemetery was suspiciously empty. He's returned to Earth through a time portal. Where the heck he's been is going to take some explaining. Comics Formulas That Work 1: Nick Fury This column marks the beginning of another series in the Profiles feature, examining comics notions that work, regardless of genre, and regardless of what corner of comics - either comic books or newspapers - that presented the material to whatever large or small sample of humanity in their original published form. And, owing to luck of the draw, we come first to the sixties comics concept of Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D., a body of work from the high Silver Age, which, though tangent to Marvel's superhero comics and definitely sharing certain conventions of style, editorial model, and setting with such works, played to its own themes with its own cast in a series of episodes featuring infiltrations, betrayals, attempted coups of the world, mass engagements, and one-on-one rumbles. In essence, this body of stories examined the security perils involved in protecting the world order left in the wake of World War II, and therefore connected the modern angle of high-technology (circa a comics-universe 1967) to a number of figures from that war. Nick Fury, an infantry sergeant in Silver Age comics about the Second World War, came to pull a second shift in comics, dragging most of his hide, an endless stream of smelly cigars, and a chutzpah that brought him, alive, out of the European Theater of Operations in the 1940s. Refurbished, he continued his fight against new enemies as Colonel Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., an agency that pushed the state of the art for technology, intelligence, and military operations at select points in the Marvel universe. And, through the hands of sixties talents such as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (concept creators and early writers), writer Roy Thomas, and particularly the under-anthologized Jim Steranko, Strange Tales came to feature a remarkable series of stories, bursting off the page in a way that pulled both from the Lee-era comics model and the themes of front page news. Those fortunate enough to own the originals or canny enough to acquire the recent reprint trade paperbacks might, with the works in hand, wonder why many other pieces hit the stands while these works waited so long for suitable anthologization. Making or Failing the Grade in Comics Not all comics, after all, make the cut. Even where, by modern standards, first-tier name talents participate in converting pencil and board to what arrives on the newsstand, the piece that makes it into the readers' hands may fail to satisfy, and these failures often proceed from lack of (or failure to grasp the opportunities inherent in) a suitably fertile defining concept. When a comic fails to impress me, my critical impulses incline me to define precisely why - generally by inclining me to ask what it did wrong, or, instead, what it failed to do. For instance, to use (or abuse) a semi-recent example, I read a late-2000 issue of Wolverine that Rob Liefeld wrote and Ian Churchill illustrated, and found it somewhat wanting. Why? The formula didn't have enough going for it - I found in that issue a long fight in the sewers, with Wolverine and Spider-Man going up against a small army of semi-humanoid goons. The presence of some of the required ingredients of a superhero comic, including costumed steroid kings in improbable outfits performing unlikely deeds against some kind of impossible goon or goons did not suffice to make this comic a must-have piece (and I do not mean by this to slight fans of Liefeld or Churchill). It lacked the minimum set of hooks to draw a reader into the book, those storytelling devices that pump the reader's adrenaline, electrify his cerebral cortex, and invite him to relate to the troubles of the hero(es) depicted within a book. All in all, that issue of Wolverine offered a simple fight scene in a marginally interesting arena with a generic nemesis, with only minimal logical justification for the whole series of events. With omission identified in one piece, it would serve well to analyze a few comics concepts and delve into what made them work. Therefore, with this column begins another series on (aesthetically) successful comics formulae, jumping around with no particular chronological order between a number of well-rounded pieces to observe what creators injected to make them work. The Thin Line Nick Fury treatments worth noticing begin with the premise of dangerous geopolitical forces that, but for the exceptional efforts of heroic men, might wash over our civilization like a tidal wave and carry away those elements we consider fundamental virtues of our culture, including, but not limited to, liberty, prosperity, and our national identity. He contends best against things that would change and redefine us in the same destructive sortie, knowing that enemies seek to demoralize, terrorize, and enslave, as well as the more common desires of generic superhero-comics goons to simply rob or murder. Tom Clancy could tell you that the ubiquitous fears unleashed by hotter decades of the Cold War provide storytelling hooks, as well as a ready-made context for heroism and villainy. Back in its Timely days, Marvel Comics had failed to make a success of communist-bashing superheroes in doomed attempts to repackage Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, and the Human Torch, but a retooled version of the conflict between a Free World and a Devouring Power (or more than one) provided the essential conflict in the "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." stories from Strange Tales and the short-lived magazine of the same name. Heroic men equipped with magnificent hardware to confront the prospective conquerors of the world provided a thin line between the life we know and slavery, serfdom, or death. This line stood more clearly for a generation that fought the Second World War, the younger of whom approached perhaps forty years of age at the time of the appearance of the classic period of S.H.I.E.L.D. stories; and, if they took the proceedings in Viet Nam as somewhere between farce and tragedy, they saw such as an aberration and not the destiny of the United States as a young superpower. The sense of doom and futility much less burdened that generation, since they had seen how the deeds of determined men could make or unmake powers that sought to swallow the world whole. The Persistence of the War Central figures in the S.H.I.E.L.D. cast originated in the Sergeant Fury stories of the first half of the 1960s, and the World War Two setting frequently brings elements forward into the later concept. At the cost of ultimately fighting more remnants of the Third Reich than Germany could have ever manifested in its most bellicose heyday, using these connections grounded principal characters in conflicts of an earlier era which had widely-acknowledged factions of good and evil, sparing the corrosive comparisons of moral equivalency which attend conflicts with some variants of totalitarianism. Though the passage of a generation since the high point of the Nick Fury concept has made his grounding in World War II increasingly troublesome, his history as a veteran of the war in Europe added credibility in 1965, making him old enough to have learned a few tricks and made a few connections over the years without pushing him into the territory of heroes so old that only the supernatural can explain how they still manage to walk the earth (let alone fight crime). As the principals of the American Civil War generally connected to each other as onetime allies from the Mexican Wars somewhat earlier in the nineteenth century, so, too, would this link cast a tone on the conflicts between Fury, his agency, and the forces of various powers bent on the kind of world domination averted by the collapse of the Axis powers in the forties. The Geopolitical Menace Du Jour At any particular point during the "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." stories, an overwhelming menace posed to destroy or enslave the world. That various parties took this mantle of worldwide Threat to Man and overall Devourer of Freedom mattered little; each, in his/its turn, stood ready to send humanity to the dungeon or graveyard and, but for the timely intervention of S.H.I.E.L.D. in general or Nick Fury in particular, would have succeeded. That the focus of the threat would shift from place to place, rather than persistently remaining in the hand or hands of a particular inevitable faction, also reflected somewhat the experience of those who lived through the Second World War at an age old enough to remember how powers could shift from enemy to ally with no obvious logic to the change. Even where geopolitical interpretations centered communist powers as the origins of all trouble, after all, the source would vary - at moments, global politics observers saw China and Russia alternating roles in a kind of Good Communist Cop, Bad Communist Cop play - and the generation that fought World War II might remember Russia as a previous ally. History, then, argued for a flexible center of destructive military and political forces, and this worked well with the basic comics notion that readers did not want to see the same hero fighting the same fight with the same villain forever. And, if by the late sixties Americans even tired of the notion of expansionist communist states as somehow threatening - sometimes, after all, they perceived their own society in a similar role - a theoretical enemy loosely based on combinations of salient features of various totalitarian threats could do the job. Thus, Hydra, until the steam ran out of them as an enemy; thus, entrepreneurs of scientific terror; thus, self-promoters who used high-technology organized crime as an instrument towards creating themselves a global base of power. We could recognize the enemy, after all, by his desire to plant his jackboot in our faces without worrying too much about the language he speaks or the political slogans he cares to repeat. And, furthermore, Cold War logic insisted that only eternal vigilance could contain the ambition of pretenders to world domination. Where men of goodwill struck down one tyrant, then, a combination of opportunity and flawed human nature would guarantee that another might rise to replace him. In the 1960s, the pervasive sense of danger resonated well with the notion of a succession of contestants the position of Tyrant of the World, each of whom might fall, in turn, only if the united powers of freedom stood against him. Technological Window-Dressing These stories definitely reflect a technophile's ethos. Gadgetry abounded in these tales, both for instrumental and aesthetic purposes; while gadgets served to pull Fury free from many a cliffhanger, others appeared mainly for the very weirdness of the concept, including a variety of enhanced garments (essentially anything but Nick Fury's skivvies might serve as armor or armament), accessories (exploding cigars, and other tricked-out tobaccos often too silly to describe), vehicles (flying cars, invisible cars, armored cars, and cars with combinations of the previous features). While we can snicker at ludicrous gimmicks like the tactical exploding cigar (and what a Three Stooges-like series of images that one elicits!), technology played a pivotal role in the Cold War. Spy planes, spy satellites, remote monitoring devices, or even the infrastructure behind the economies of both East and West, all required deft application of available innovation to sustain hundreds of millions of people even in marginal states. To contend between powers required even more. The smorgasbord of up-and-coming technology of the pre-computer generation held a great deal to fascinate those born in the early and middle decades of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the 20th century, human ingenuity would craft the first practical flying machines; by mid-century, these would routinely cross oceans; and by the beginning of the last third of the century, human beings would walk on the moon. Nor did the technological breakthroughs of the era confine themselves to aerospace. Microconductor technology pushed electronic devices into smaller and smaller packages. In 2001, consumers can procure devices like a color television roughly the size of a cigarette case; in the 1960s, compressing a radio into a similar volume of space stood as a phenomenal achievement to those who remembered the console radios, heavy cabinets that stood about four feet tall and ran on the old technology of vacuum tubes. Audiovisual consumer technology moved into higher fidelities. Combine the technology of transistors and the breakthroughs of aerospace in the sixties and marvels like the spy satellite become inevitable; and, just as developments like the telephone seemed to threaten to shift the balance of power away from Everyman and into the hands of malevolent powers intent on his subjugation and destruction, so, too, could the wonders of the laboratory provide a means of insulating oneself against creeping tyranny. So much more so, one might assume, would the finesse of science armor against those who attempted to make war by traditional means. And to this equation, if one adds the kind of exaggeration at which comics excel, one reaches the point of bombs disguised as cigars, armored suits that look like cloth, and the entire baggage of pseudotechnology that might both fascinate and amuse readers of that generation and this one. Science-Fictional Mass Engagements A Sergeant Fury and the Howlers tale might end in a flurry of machine gun fire and hand grenades; but for a piece set in the technology-heavy and definitely colorful sixties, one could expect considerably more distinctive accessorization. Fatigues gave way to the skin-tight and frequently leather-black S.H.I.E.L.D. coverall; gunpowder weapons gave way to blasters, zappers, ink-drop energy dispensers, inertial whatsits and sonic whosits of astounding variety, a cornucopia of ordnance and fantasy-tech that seemed to appear in an unending stream from the fevered brows of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, and Jim Steranko. Explosions and fires took on a variety no longer limited by history and expanded into forms provided by the imagination. Fights, furthermore, no longer strictly belonged on the ground or sea; they might take place underneath the water, in space (in the Helicarrier or outside it) or anywhere made accessible by technology in the age of the first moon landing. The war comic, the science fiction comic, and the superhero comic all served as ancestors to such large-scale battle scenes. In context such illustrated sequences possibly transcended the ancestral genres each provided its own set of colorful components: four-color costumes, weapons that shot some kind of technobabble-energy, line-art soldiers making impossible escapes and achieving impossible victories. Terrorist Cult Movements and Malign Overlords Dramatic interpretations frequently make events more compelling by drawing the cast from a macro-human scale to that of individual heroic (or villainous) figures contending against one another. A feud between civilizations, thus, could render down to something like S.H.I.E.L.D. versus Hydra, each agency representing one of the contentious superpowers. Hydra served as the central prototype for the high-tech terror cult devoted to world conquest and/or destruction. Keeping things moving and interesting required, however, that Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. have something and someone else to confront. Sometimes, however, no great distinction beyond costuming defined these enemies. For instance, an army of costumed Hydra goons could (from a storytelling side) step aside for a numerically similar gang of understudies drawn from costumed A.I.M. goons, with their beekeeper-like headgear; or for the Yellow Claw's goons; or, indeed, for megalomaniacal costumed culties so common for the period, like the Legion of the Living Lightning. One-on-One Rumbles The Iliad depicts the Trojan War much as a series of personal duels. Perhaps this reflects less an artistic convention and more a preserved memory of a more ancient and duel-centered, ritualistic form of warfare. However, the logic of storytelling may have dictated a focus that portrayed war in terms of one-on-one disputes, such as the pairing of combatants Hektor and Achilles. Nick Fury, in both the Sergeant and Colonel versions, belonged among a number of heroes that we recognize as meaning business once we see that someone or something has shredded their shirts. Whether confronting Fury himself, or perhaps the Hulk, or even the venerable Doc Savage, these figures use tattered cloth partially as a visual enhancement to their action sequences and, perhaps, partially as a secondary sexual characteristic. The Real Man - cigar-chomping, crass-as-necessity-demands, fist-flinging, unstoppable human dynamo variety - enjoys the privilege of just such a shirtless style. In the one-on-one confrontation, too, we know that the good guys play skins, the bad guys shirts. Although real-world espionage frequently hinges on extremely complex relationships between many players of often very dubious loyalty, things become easier to resolve, and stories easier to tell, as a duel between exemplars of each of the striving factions. In many ways, rendering violence down to single conflicts places the camera in the best position for appreciating the drama involved. The human costs do less fading into mere statistics for an audience that can see the faces of the principals in extreme close-up. Frequently, therefore, S.H.I.E.L.D. stories ended with one-on-one rumbles between Fury himself and the Main Goon or his designated proxy. Variants existed even within such formulaic scenes; Fury might attempt to prevail with technique, with character (his refusal to accept defeat), or with gadgets (in abundance). Where these tools showed wear from overuse, luck and the deus ex machina in the form of the timely arrival of S.H.I.E.L.D. compatriots would serve to save his metaphorical bacon. The Loud, the Weird, and the Dreamlike One could say that Kirby invented loud, at least in its Silver Age aspect, but Steranko came to Marvel and his role on the Colonel Fury feature with a fine understanding of the prerequisite adrenaline that made the comics of the day work. From finishing Kirby layouts, to doing a passable Kirby style himself, to evolving a distinct Steranko style flavored with a tasty Kirby seasoning, Steranko knew what Kirby had taught about comics. Kirby's best works attacked the reader in a pincer movement that simultaneously accelerated the heartbeat while stimulating the imagination. To this Kirby essence, Steranko brought in cinematographic and pop-art elements of tone and surrealism that distinctly owed to his own vision, absolving him from a very early point of any credible claims that he worked solely in derivative, though well-executed, forms. Given the origins of the Nick Fury concept - a World War II comics character of the 1960 grafted, in part, to the techno-spy prototype of period pieces like "Man from U.N.C.L.E." and the James Bond films, and freed of the cinematic limitations imposed by budgets and period special effects technology - one might note that the tone-heavy and dreamlike quality of the later Steranko Fury pieces represented a delightful and unexpected additional feature. Comics That Try Harder Though some debate still persists about the point of origin of the philosophy of the more vital pieces of the Silver Age - what we could call "Comics That Try Harder" - we need not enter into the Mighty Comics versus Marvel Comics arguments to understand that the sixties saw a body of work appear from the concern self-designated The House of Ideas which did, indeed, try harder. DC Comics, the elder sibling of all existing superhero comics publishers, changed slowly and sometimes not at all, though it had solid talent and a few entrepreneurs of popular entertainments able to make a more staid approach work through different angles (and look to names like Weisinger and Schwartz here). For, if in the seventies comics languished in some ways as the Silver Age came to parody itself by excessive recycling of formula approaches, this came from a desire to coast rather than a willingness to charge ahead at full speed. But the Steranko-era Nick Fury piece held back in no particulars astute observation can identify. After all, where you have surrealism, film noir, Kirbyesque bombast, ray-guns, Nazi war criminals, pop art homages, cigar-chomping veterans of the Second World War, secret societies aiming to take over the world, things blowing up, space aliens, spies, alien proxies, leather body suits, zeppelin fortresses, floating islands, and, doubtless, other pieces unfortunately lost to short-term memory, you have in a simple description effectively simulated what sounds like a statement of purest Stan Lee hyperbole and bombast. However, the previous inventory exaggerates nothing. This ability to give more than one could expect from an action feature displays one angle that made the concept work so well, but a set of components like those mentioned above could, very easily, degenerate a creation into near-incoherence when haphazardly slapped together. If creators worked backwards - say, by tossing out a random set of elements and attempting to find a unifying theme - they could easily invest a monthly work with all the salient deficits that attach to too-frequent megacrossover events. The essence, however, resides in working forwards from the nuclear idea around which such a menagerie can logically orbit without straining the pretext. This, then, shows the strength of the Nick Fury franchise, as realized in the adrenal comics of the 1960s before the ugly aspects of the business side effectively drove Jim Steranko (and, as time went on, many others) from the business of conventional comics publishing; and the excellence of delivery, through Steranko's fabrication on the foundations that Lee and Kirby set down, shows how well the piece can work, even back in the day when superhero comics routinely extinguished other approaches that contended for the same shelf space. http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/profiles/pro50.html Nick Fury (gh) Fighting: In Agility: Ex Strength: Gd Endurance: Rm Reason: Ex Intuition: Ex Psyche: Gd -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health: 100 Karma: 50 Resources: Am Popularity: 50 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Real Name: Nicholas Joseph Fury Occupation: Director of SHIELD Legal Status: Citizen of the U.S. with no criminal record Identity: Public Place of Birth: New York City Marital Status: Single Known Relatives: Jack (father, deceased), Dawn (sister), Jacob (alias Scorpio, brother, deceased) Base of Operations: SHIELD Headquarters, NYC Past Group Affiliations: Former Howling Commando, U.S. Army Colonel (Retired), former Central Intelligence Agency official, Director of SHIELD -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Known Powers: Retarded Aging: After many years of taking an age-retarding drug called the infinity Formula, Fury’s body now synthesizes the substance on its own. This drug in his system allows this man in his seventies to stay in peak physical condition for a man half that age. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equipment: Body Armor: Fury usually wears a body-suit of protective Kevlar material, affording him Typical protection against physical and Force attacks and Poor protection against fire. Weapons: Nick Fury has access to all conventional weapons listed in the Basic Set Rule Book and the Advanced Set Players’ Book. In the past, Fury commonly used a custom-made needle pistol which fired a stream of sharp metallic slivers up to six areas for Excellent Edged damage. The gun contained enough slivers for 300 rounds, and the gun had Excellent material strength. He also has access to any and all SHIELD equipment and weaponry. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Talents: Fury possesses the Military, Leadership, Espionage, Piloting, Demolitions, and First Aid talents. Fury also has the Marksman skill with all conventional weapons, Wrestling, and Martial Arts A, B, D, and E skills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contacts: Fury is the Director of SHIELD, an organization with Monstrous resources supported by the United Nations. He also has ties with the U.S. and British intelligence communities, and most Marvel heroes. Fury is close friends with Captain America and Mockingbird. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Role-Playing Notes: Fury is supremely confident in combat, taking charge in order to maximize the effectiveness of any fighting force. Fury is a proud man, and is of the highest integrity and honor. Quite independent, he prefers to solve problems without outside intervention. He’s been through some rough periods, but has come through them even more determined and driven than before. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- History: Nicholas Joseph Fury was the eldest of three children born to the wife of a World War I pilot who died in the last year of the war. Fury was raised in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City. When the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941, Nick Fury volunteered for the U.S. Army. He underwent basic training at Fort Dix, under Sergeant Charles Bass. Sgt. Bass chose Fury to be an example to his company and used Fury as a scapegoat. This treatment only served to toughen Fury. Soon after graduating basic training, Fury proved himself an outstanding soldier and quickly rose to the rank of Sergeant. Fury served with and led the “Howling Commandoes,” a specially trained unit of soldiers whose daring actions across the European Theater of Operations were considered to be either incredibly brave or incredibly foolhardy. On one mission in France, Fury was wounded and came under the care of Professor Berthold Sternberg, who first inoculated Fury with the Infinity Formula drug which Fury took for many years thereafter, and which his body now produces on its own. It was also during World War II that Fury first encountered the man who would become his greatest nemesis: Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker. After suffering innumerable defeats at the hands of the Howling Commandoes, Adolf Hitler ordered Baron Strucker to seek out and humiliate Fury in such a way that would render Fury’s and the Howling Commandoes’ reputations worthless. Strucker then challenged Fury to personal combat on the island of Norsehaven in the English Channel. Fury accepted the offer and the two combatants met for the first time. Strucker offered a toast before the combat began, Fury accepted, and was drugged by a powerful sleeping pill Strucker had placed in his drink. Strucker soundly defeated Fury, took photos of the beaten man, and had them widely circulated amongst the Third Reich, scoring a tremendous propaganda victory. Not long after, the Howlers encountered Strucker again, and this time Fury challenged Strucker to a duel. Strucker again tried to drug Fury by offering him a drugged drink. Fury refused, and easily bested Strucker in hand-to-hand combat. “Dum-Dum” Dugan took photos of Strucker’s defeat and circulated them amongst the Allies. Fury continued his active military service through the Korean War, during which the Howlers were reunited for one mission; to cross the 38th Parallel and destroy a North Korean MIG airfield. The successful achievement of this objective earned Fury a battlefield commission and 2nd Lieutenant’s bars. Performing espionage work for the French government of Viet Nam in the 1950s earned Fury promotions to the rank of Colonel, and to an eventual appointment to the Central Intelligence Agency. Fury remained with the CIA until he was approached by the Board of Directors of the newly-formed espionage agency, SHIELD (Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division) and was offered the position of Director. Fury accepted. Fury served the original incarnation of SHIELD both as administrative head and as field commander. His peerless leadership saw the organization through myriad crises and helped it rise to become the world’s premier covert operations agency. Fury and SHIELD thwarted numerous major threats to the world’s freedom launched by such groups as Baron Strucker’s creation HYDRA and Zodiac—headed at one time by Fury’s brother, Jacob. Fury also assisted Earth’s superheroes in cases, and SHIELD spearheaded Earth’s defenses during the Dire Wraith invasion. Fury’s own integrity kept unethical covert operations by SHIELD to a minimum. Yet, any organization the size of SHIELD could not be controlled by any one man. As a result, members of SHIELD did, from time to time, act without Fury’s consent or even knowledge. Most of these operations were directed either by rogue SHIELD regional directors or by subversives who had managed to infiltrate SHIELD’s ranks. Barbara Morse, a.k.a., Mockingbird, was instrumental in revealing and eliminating the corruption present in SHIELD. Not long ago, the original SHIELD was dismantled after the “Deltite Affair” in which large portions of SHIELD’s personnel were replaced with technologically advanced robots. Baron Strucker engineered the crippling compromise of his rival’s organization, and international support for SHIELD was soon withdrawn. Fury retired from duty. The United Nations soon realized that some international espionage agency was necessary and asked Fury to come out of retirement and head up SHIELD II. Fury accepted total control of the new SHIELD (Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage, and Logistics Directorate) being answerable only to the U.N. Security Council. The new SHIELD was to be a more tightly run organization, built with safeguards to prevent corruptions like those of the original. Fury first gathered a small cadre of agents and began to expand the agency. SHIELD and Fury were both dealt severe blows when Baron Strucker was resurrected by his old compatriots and he reformed HYDRA. HYDRA replaced one of SHIELD’s first graduating class of 1500 agents with an LMD with an explosive implanted in it. The explosive was detonated in SHIELD’s New York City Central Office, destroying the building and killing all 1500 agents. This, and subsequent actions against HYDRA, including the successful defeat of a HYDRA team attempting to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear-powered ice breaker, and the hijacking and subsequent recovery of SHIELD’s flying headquarters, the heli-carrier, drove Fury near to the brink of insanity. Fury subsequently recovered from this affliction with no permanent ill effects. More recently, a conspiracy arose to prevent Fury from obtaining the Infinity Formula. Fury began to age rapidly. At his weakest, all of Fury’s physical statistics were Feeble. Fury’s body soon began producing the drug on its own, however. Fury became young again and, with the aid of Deathlok, he put an end to the conspiracy. Fury now continues his battle against Strucker and HYDRA. He has also temporarily resigned his position as Director of SHIELD to “Dum Dum” Dugan to take time to cope with the losses of the past few months. HYDRA (gh) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Members: Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, Lieutenant Romulus, Lieutenant Garrotte, Lieutenant Saltz, Lieutenant Guillotine HYDRA has been a worldwide subversive organization dedicated to global domination for many years. At its height, HYDRA was the most extensive, powerful, and dangerous organization in history. HYDRA agents wore green costumes with cowls revealing only their mouths and chins. Their organization takes its name from the many-headed monster of Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra, whose venom was lethal and who was known for its ability to grow heads immediately after they had been severed. HYDRA prided itself on its ability to regroup and rebuild itself, allegedly mightier than before, after any defeat. Indeed, the organization endured for over four decades, and has recently rebuilt itself yet again. During that time, HYDRA underwent considerable structural and sociological changes, so that to many, HYDRA bears only a superficial resemblance to the organization in its heyday. HYDRA has always been (and has been most successful as) an instrument of the infamous Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, the last in a long line of Prussian noble men with impeccable military backgrounds. Strucker was recruited into the Nazi intelligence service during the 1930s, and was one of Nazi Germany’s most successful intelligence operatives during World War II. He rose to become the commander of Germany’s Death Head Squadron, an elite military unit; which Hitler gave a special target. That target was the famous Howling Commandos squad of the United States Army, led by Sergeant Nick Fury. The Commandos had handed Germany numerous defeats, and Hitler ordered Strucker not just to defeat Fury, but to humiliate him. The arrogant Strucker was all too happy to oblige, challenging Fury to personal combat on the island of Norsehaven in the English Channel. Fury violated orders to accept the challenge. Before their duel, Strucker had Fury drunk a toast; Fury’s drink was drugged, and Strucker won the duel. Still photographs and films of Fury’s defeat circulated widely around Germany, giving the Nazis a major propaganda victory. Shortly thereafter, the Howling Commandos encountered Strucker again, and Fury challenged him to another fight. Strucker coolly accepted and proposed a toast, but one of the Commandos, Dino Manelli, warned Fury that the drink was probably drugged. The angry Fury refused to drink and easily defeated Strucker in a hand-to-hand fight. Commando Timothy “Dum-Dum” Dugan took photographs of Fury’s triumph, which were widely circulated. Strucker and Fury clashed many times over the next few years, with Fury victorious on most occasions. At one point during the war, Strucker was in the village of Gruenstadt when the villagers reported the presence of strange beings. Strucker investigated and discovered a colony of Gnobians, a race of peaceful alien telepaths. Strucker saw these aliens as an opportunity for fantastic knowledge and power. Fearful that the villagers would reveal the aliens’ existence to others, Strucker had the entire population of Gruenstadt executed. Immediately thereafter, Sergeant Fury and the Howling Commandos arrived on the scene and killed the Death’s Head Commandos. Strucker himself was mortally wounded, but crawled back to the Gnobian enclave, where he was healed of his wounds and stole several examples of the Gnobian technology. This contact with the Baron tainted the Gnobians’ minds, and led to their eventual suicide. Finally, enraged over Strucker’s many defeats, Hitler ordered Strucker to go to Cherbeaux in occupied France and, if the Resistance agents refused to give themselves up, to execute every citizen in the town. Fury confronted Strucker once again and made a deal with him: Fury would fight Strucker again if Strucker evacuated Cherbeaux before Hitler had it destroyed. Strucker agreed, but his battle with Fury ended in a stalemate, and the two became separated. When Hitler learned that Strucker had evacuated the citizens of Cherbeaux, he flew into a rage and ordered the Gestapo to find and assassinate Strucker. Strucker would have had little chance of escaping, except for the intervention of the Red Skull. The Skull intended to supplant Hitler eventually, or to achieve world domination himself, if Hitler lost the war. To achieve these ends, the Skull assigned Strucker to create a power base in the Far East for him. Then, with the aid of the Skull’s agents and some loyal men of his own, Strucker was able to escape. However, Strucker saw no reason to follow the Skull; once he got to Japan, he severed all ties with him. Strucker made contact with Japanese subversives who informed him that they were forming a secret society bent on world conquest. Strucker became the mastermind behind this society’s rapid rise to power: a secret society known as HYDRA. When he had built HYDRA’s army and arsenal to what he thought was maximum strength, Strucker slew the Supreme HYDRA and took his place. Strucker conceived of HYDRA as a strongly ideological fascist organization heavily influenced by Nazi philosophy. The full form of its salute reflects the fascist near-religious idealization of submission to the power to the state, or in HYDRA’s case, the organization. Its motto also has heavily fascist overtones: “Hail HYDRA! Immortal HYDRA! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one limb and two shall take its place! We serve the Supreme HYDRA, as the world shall soon serve us!” In keeping with Nazism’s male supremacist ethic, HYDRA restricted its membership to white males. Only decades later did it permit exceptions, most notably Laura Brown, daughter of Imperial HYDRA Arnold Brown, and the first Madame Hydra, later known as the Viper. Strucker created a cult of personality about himself as the Supreme HYDRA similar to that of Hitler in Germany. There was a heavy ideological emphasis on the anonymity of other HYDRA agents, who generally remained masked and who were addressed as numbers instead of names. While building HYDRA’s arsenal, Strucker had also recruited a staff of brilliant scientists, who would later become the core of the high technology HYDRA branch known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM. HYDRA was close to obtaining nuclear weaponry, and thus achieving the means to conquer Earth, when its Pacific base, Hydra Island, was invaded by Captain Simon Savage’s U.S. Marine Commandos and their Japanese counterparts, the so-called Samurai Squad. Hydra Island was destroyed, but Strucker escaped. Following the war, Strucker moved HYDRA’s principle base to America and created a new central committee, code-named THEM, within HYDRA which would supervise the activities of HYDRA and its rapidly developing sister organizations. Strucker made himself the chief, the Grand Imperator of THEM, while keeping his true identity disguised through the use of epiderm-masks. Few people knew of the existence of the Grand Imperator; fewer still knew that it was Baron Strucker. THEM appointed Arnold Brown, executive secretary to Leslie Farrington, one of the directors of Imperial Industries International, to be the Imperial HYDRA. Brown’s principal utility to HYDRA was in draining resources for HYDRA from Imperial Industries International and managing HYDRA’s day-to-day operations. Ultimate power remained in Strucker’s hands, but under Brown’s leadership, HYDRA developed an arsenal of weaponry, submarines, and fighter aircraft greater than that of most nations. The armies and agents of HYDRA ranged worldwide, striking at all world powers. To meet the threat of HYDRA, SHIELD (Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division) was created. HYDRA assassinated SHIELD’s first Public Director, who was replaced by Colonel Nicholas Fury of the CIA, Strucker’s greatest foe. Soon after, HYDRA attempted to blackmail the world with the Betatron Bomb, which could release lethal radiation upon the Earth. When inventor Anthony Stark de activated the bomb, Fury captured HYDRA’s New York City headquarters. Brown was murdered by his own men, who seemingly failed to recognize him without his costume. Immediately after Brown’s defeat, THEM used AIM and the original Secret Empire for subversive actions against SHIELD and the United States government while HYDRA rebuilt its strength. Strucker abolished THEM by reasserting himself as Supreme HYDRA and incorporating the other members of THEM into HYDRA’s new central committee. Strucker launched the Overkill Horn, which would have set off every nuclear explosive on Earth (while leaving HYDRA safe in special shelters). Once again, they were thwarted in this scheme by SHIELD. Impersonating captured SHIELD agent John Bronson, Strucker smuggled the so-called Death Spore bomb aboard SHIELD heli-carrier headquarters. When the bomb exploded, it would destroy the heli-carrier and release deadly spores which would be carried by air currents across the face of the planet. By now, Strucker had built a new HYDRA island, a synthetic atoll on the site of the original. Here was gathered HYDRA’s leadership and elite guard, since the new fortress’s impenetrable dome would provide a shield from the effects of the Death-Spore bomb. In a telecast from the island, Strucker demanded that the world surrender to them, for only those nations surrendering would be given access to the antidote. However, Fury found the Death-Spore bomb on the heli-carrier and singly invaded HYDRA island, planting the Death-Spore bomb there. Fury and Strucker confronted one another yet again. Fury won the battle and used the epiderm-mask making machine to make masks of Strucker and himself. The HYDRA agents arrived just in time to see Strucker battling Strucker. Fury pulled off a Strucker mask, which he had placed over a Nick Fury mask. Believing Strucker to be Fury, the agents fired on him, Strucker fled in panic through the nearest doorway. That doorway led to a nuclear reactor chamber; Strucker was killed. Fury fled the island before the Death-Spore bomb detonated, which was triggered by the unsuspecting Strucker, virtually sinking the island. The dome prevented any of the spores from escaping into the outside world; all of the HYDRA agents were killed. This dealt a great blow to HYDRA, which fragmented into warring factions. AIM, the scientific branch of the organization, seceded from HYDRA, and the Secret Empire was later revived independently of HYDRA. The remnant of HYDRA in New York City was led first by Madame Hydra, and later by the Grim Reaper and the Space Phantom. A Western European faction was led by Count Otto Vermis. Another HYDRA remnant, located in Las Vegas, was controlled by Strucker’s old colleague, the Red Skull. An at tempt by the Maggia Crime Boss, Silvio “Silvermane” Manfredi, was a brief success, but eventually was stopped by Fury and SHIELD. HYDRA was later reorganized under radically different lines by a new agency. Although it had worldwide influence, it seemed more centered in the United States than before, and although it was dedicated to world domination, it had abandoned the traditional fascist ideology entirely. The only clear link between the new HYDRA and Strucker’s HYDRA was that the new organization’s members dressed in traditional HYDRA costumes. Women and minorities were now allowed into the organization in large numbers and could hold important positions in it. Indeed, the position of Madame Hydra became some thing of a tradition. Agents were often addressed by their real names, and minor HYDRA officials often appeared un masked before their colleagues and subordinates in their organization. And now, only the middle and upper levels of authority paid homage to the Supreme HYDRA. HYDRA was organized along the lines of a major corporation, including salaries and medical benefits. However, even in death, Strucker had one last trump card to play. He had infiltrated SHIELD’s LMD (Life Model Decoy) program and impregnated one of them with his own DNA and instructions. The clone Strucker began replacing SHIELD agents, as well as its board of directors, with LMDs (“Deltites”). Eventually, Fury brought down the Deltite conspiracy, but not before irreparable damage was done to SHIELD as a functional agency. HYDRA remained, at best, a minor menace during the following years. A branch of HYDRA in the Orient, led by the Yellow Claw, did achieve some prominence, but only a shadow of its former “glories.” HYDRA’s latest ascendancy occurred because of the return of its original leader. Strucker would have remained dead, but for his old ally the Red Skull, who gave several original HYDRA agents keys and charts to HYDRA Island, now sunk. There, the agents successfully penetrated the chamber where Baron Strucker had been killed, and mutated the Death Spore virus that lay on Strucker’s corpse to mimic his DNA, and restored his life functions and memories. Baron Strucker rose from the dead. Strucker began to take over the fractured remnants of HYDRA. He easily took control of the Las Vegas HYDRA, killing those who would not follow him. He infiltrated AIM, and destroyed them at an AIM sales convention, transferring their funds and inventories to his service. He aided in the downfall of Wilson Fisk, also known as the Kingpin. Then Strucker began to implement his plan of vengeance against the new SHIELD. Strucker recruited lieutenants of varying skills: Romulus, Garotte, Saltz, and Guillotine. Romulus and Garotte killed SHIELD recruit David Purcell and replaced him with an LMD with an implanted explosive. HYDRA then detonated the LMD, killing 1500 SHIELD recruits at their commencement ceremony in New York City, bringing HYDRA back to world prominence. Strucker’s next goal was to obtain nuclear weapons. The Red Skull gave him the coordinates of a Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker which had sunk, and Strucker sent his lieutenants to recover the nuclear fuel. But, thanks to SHIELD and Wolverine, the lieutenants failed to get the nuclear fuel they sought, and Guillotine was killed. In spite of the failure (so far) of HYDRA to get nuclear weapons, HYDRA is once again on the upswing. Arguably, they have never been as efficient or effective as they are now. And, given the cut backs in SHIELD support, it will require a truly heroic effort to bring them down once again. http://www.norse-man.net/Marvel/Char-N/FuryNick.htm