Stop emulating the movies with this poser!
This past Friday, Marvel Comics announced that there would be a new ongoing Nick Fury series. Written by James Robinson and drawn by ACO. So what’s the problem? It’s not Nick Fury
Let’s just get a little fact straight:
In the Marvel Universe THIS is Nick Fury:
This Nick Fury who stars in the new series:
That poser is actually Nick Fury Jr., not Nick Fury.
So why all the hostility towards him? Well, it has to do with the way Marvel has been shoving down the reader’s throats just because he looks like the movie version. This is marketing 101 and it really pisses me off the way the entire thing went down.
Since 1963, Nick Fury has been a caucasian hero. So we are talking about 54 years of the same character. I wouldn’t have had an issue if Nick was another nationality from the begining either.
Then in 2000 Marvel introduced the Ultimate Universe. The point of the Ultimate Universe was to re-invent current Marvel characters, without changing the current continuity.
The Ultimate version of Nick Fury first showed up in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up #5 (August 2001) looking very similar to his mainstream Marvel Universe version.
Still a caucasian man, but even that didn’t last. When the Ultimate Universe wanted to make their own Avengers, writer Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch created the Ultimates. And when Fury showed up in the Ultimates, this was Hitch’s version of him.
Yup. Hitch modeled the Ultimate Universe Nick Fury on Samuel L. Jackson. Why? Writer Mark Millar originally intended Fury to be like Colin Powell. When asked by Business Insider, Millar had this to say:
Sam is famously the coolest man alive, and both myself and artist Bryan Hitch just liberally used him without asking any kind of permission. You have to remember, this was 2001 when we were putting this together. The idea that this might become a movie seemed preposterous, as Marvel was just climbing out of bankruptcy at the time
It worked too! Marvel took this version of Fury and starting with the direct-to-DVD animated film, Ultimate Avengers, started using him in all their animated programming. Whether it was the kids show Super Hero Squad or the more adult Avengers: Earth’s Mightest Heroes cartoon.
Then the Marvel Cinematic Universe started with a bang with Iron Man, and who show up at the end as Nick Fury. Samuel L. Jackson himself.
This was awesome. I had no issue with this. Plus the Nick Fury I grew up with, was still alive and well in the comics. That is until Marvel decided to emulate the movies.
There’s nothing new with the comics emulating the movies. Some of the changes were annoying but others worked. All of sudden, the Nick Fury I knew and loved was gone. Replaced but this punk ass.
It was so forced it wasn’t even funny. In January 2012, Marvel released the miniseries called Battle Scars. The main character of it was an African American Army Ranger, Sgt. Marcus Johnson. In the story, it’s revealed that Johnson is the illegitimate son of Nick Fury and his birth name is actually Nick Fury Jr.
Again, I have no problems with this. Fury was a hound dog. He slept around. And this wasn’t his first illegitimate child either. But in the story, Johnson just happens to lose his eye and shave his head, and then looks like Samuel L. Jackson?? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?? WHAT KIND OF HACK WRITING CRAP IS THIS??
And then, on top of it, Jr. is accepted as a high ranking agent of S.H.I.E.L.D and every hero just accepts him.
I’ll say it again: WHAT KIND OF HACK WRITING CRAP IS THIS??
I get it. It’s a marketing decision to drawn in new readers who only knowledgebase is the movies. But this doesn’t work. This transistion could have been done a lot better than it was. Plus, there is no proof there has been an overall increase in sales due to movies. So quit screwing with the comics.
So now we have Jr getting his own series, and the original has become some kind of cosmic being or some crap like that.
To that, I say: Enough Marvel! Bring back the real Nick Fury and off this little bastard!
And while you’re at it Marvel, allow Fury to smoke again. Don’t give me this nonsense about “role models”. If that was the case, then the heroes wouldn’t be using violence to solve their problems.
Did they ever address the redesign in the Ultimate universe, of how he went from white(ish) to the “SLJ” look?
They never did. I think Marvel hoped readers would forget