BLOGIVERSARY: The List Revisited
Revisiting a list made one year ago as the inaugural post on this blog.

4. Nick Fury

Marvel has just released a beautiful hardcover collection of Nick Fury’s earliest adventures as an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., culled from the pages of Strange Tales. Marvel Milestones: Nick Fury: Vol. 1 reprints classic material by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the legendary creator who made Fury his own, Jim Steranko. It’s a pricey volume (so I’ll probably hold off until Christmas), but its archival quality makes it essential for any serious Sixties spy collection. Some of the material reprinted here predates the stories that appear in Marvel’s must-have Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. trade paperback, which begins with Steranko’s first issue.

In the modern-day Marvel Universe, the eye-patched superspy is still MIA, as far as I know. I’ve fallen behind on the titles he might pop up in, Captain America and Iron Man (even though both were in the middle of very impressive runs, particularly Cap), but I haven’t heard otherwise. I hope this lengthy absence means he’s poised to make a triumphant return to comics sometime next year. In the meantime, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) has filled his shoes as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Stark enjoys a particularly spy-heavy adventure in this month's Iron Man Annual, which is said to be inspired by early Bond films and Steranko’s run on Nick Fury. Fury may or may not be played Samuel L. Jackson (on whom the "Ultimate Universe" version of the character is modeled in the comics) in next spring’s (awesome-looking) Iron Man movie, and occasionally we hear about possible movement on a solo movie for Nick.