Nick Fury Goes Nuts.

Both the DC and Marvel war books more often than not gave us over-the-top action that bore little relationship to realism. But both publishers managed to hit some very effective and honest emotional notes all the same.

Perhaps one of the most effective gut-punches in this genre comes from Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #112 (July 1973), with a script by Gary Friedrich and art by Dick Ayers. It starts us off in the middle of the story, in which we quickly learn that most of the Howling Commandos are dead, while Fury is being hunted through an African jungle by natives.


How did Fury get in this situation? We learn that in a flashback. In response to information that the Nazis are stirring up trouble in the Congo, the Howlers are sent in. The intention is to drop them into the region via parachute, but a sudden encounter with anti-aircraft fire brings them to earth much more abruptly.






The pilots and the rest of the Howlers are killed. Fury is the only survivor. And it's not a mistake on Fury's part--there are bodies for him to see. In fact, its only after he pulls Dum Dum Dugan out of the wreck that he realizes the big Irishman is dead.

The resurrection of supposedly dead comic book characters hadn't yet become quite the cliche it would become over the next few years, so this must have had quite an impact on readers. Especially older readers who remembered the deaths of Junior Juniper and Pamela Hawley. Howlers had died before. So the possibility of the bulk of the Howlers getting killed now would not have been shrugged off.






Anyway, the natives catch Fury and their leader turns out to be Baron Strucker. With Fury finally in his power, Strucker decides to play a Most Dangerous Game with his arch enemy, letting the American get a head start while armed with just a knife. Strucker then follows while armed with a long-range rifle and scope.

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Fury manages to fake his death, but when he stumbles back across Dugan's grave, he breaks down in despair.

And then--all of a sudden--he's back in Strucker's camp, still a prisoner. The entire issue has been a drug-induced hallucination, leaving Fury angry and confused over what had really happened. Are his friends really dead or was it all just an illusion?





It's not often that the "It's all just a dream" cliche is actually used effectively. More often than not, it always comes across as a bit of a cop-out or Deus Ex Machina. What we have here is one of those rare occasions where it is used effectively and is dramatically appropriate. We ourselves still don't know if the Howlers are dead (though most readers at this point would guess they probably weren't). That the hallucinations were being used as a mental torture device by Strucker adds a lot of emotion to the story. We know that Fury is one of the toughest men in a Comic Book Universe full of tough men, but here we can really believe that Strucker has hit on a method to break his spirit.


Issue #113 was a reprint, which must have driven readers at the time up the wall. One of the best cliffhangers in recent history is followed by a reprint? Gee whiz, Marvel. It probably wasn't planned, but it must have seemed like Strucker was mentally torturing the readers has well.


Also, if you were reading the Marvel superhero books as well, you were processing the death of Gwen Stacy in Spider Man that exact same month!

Anyway, we get to Sgt. Fury #114 (September 1973) and immediately learn the Howlers are indeed alive. They've made it back to an Allied base, where they are having funeral services for Nick Fury. He thinks they are dead and they think he's dead.

We actually get two more flashbacks in short order. One in which we see the plane crash again, learning that the Howlers survived, but that they think Fury was killed when the plane exploded after the crash. Then another flashback shows us how Strucker's men sneaked an unconscious Fury out of the plane.



It might be argued that so many successive flashbacks (three, including the one in the first issue) is a flaw in the story construction. But I think it actually works to highlight the mental stress and confusion that pretty much all the good guys are operating under.

The Howlers return to the jungle to try and complete there mission. Fury, in the meantime, is being driven closer and closer to insanity by Strucker. When the Germans and their Congo native allies ambush the Howlers while the commandos are crossing a river, it seems like they are doomed. Their weapons are lost and the bad guys have them pinned down.



But Fury hears the battle, rips loose the straps holding him to a bed, takes out some guards and then--while duel-wielding Schmeisser submachine guns--drives off the bad guys.

But he's not doing this with a "gotta pull it together and save my friends" attitude. He's doing it because he has now gone over the edge and is operating in a mode of insane rage. When he sees the Howlers, he assumes that they are another hallucination. Not knowing what it real and what isn't, he just begs to be shot and put out of his misery.

I don't own issue #115 (which involves Nick being treated by a psychiatrist that the Howlers have to first rescue from the Germans), though I'm going to try to track down a copy and eventually review it. But these two issue are worth looking at on their own. Nick Fury's mental breakdown arguably represents Gary Friedrich's high point as a writer, delivering a series of emotional blows to the readers and creating a situation in which we believe and accept that Sgt. Fury--of all people--can be broken.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll return to our look at the Micronauts.

Last Stands and Cowardly Captains

Sgt Fury and the Howling Commandos was created when Stan Lee bet publisher Martin Goodman that he and Jack Kirby could create a successful book even if it was given the worst title imaginable. He was right--Sgt. Fury ran for nearly 20 years and also led to the creation of SHIELD. Without the Howling Commandos, we wouldn't have helicarriers--which would make the world a much poorer place indeed.

Marvel Comics seems to have gotten stuck on the idea that their World War II books needed to have long, cumbersome (though undeniably awesome-sounding) titles, though no other book had the success that the Howlers enjoyed. Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders (later changed to Battlefield Raiders) had a 19-issue run starting in 1968. In 1972, Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen began a 9 issue run.

Combat Kelly is an interesting book. Most of the Dozen were introduced in Sgt. Fury #98 (May 1972), when Fury's second-in-command, Dum Dum Dugan, was given command of his own unit. When Combat Kelly premiered a month later, though, Dugan was sent back to the Howlers and we meet Corporal Kelly.

The premise (and title) were rather shamelessly lifted from the 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen.  Kelly was an ex-con, a boxer who had been convicted of manslaughter after killing a man in the ring. Most of the dozen had been recruited from prison as well.

The book was created by Gary Friedrich and artist Dick Ayers, who were also handling Sgt. Fury at the time. I really admire Friedrich's work. His dialogue was consistently overwrought, but he handled the themes and emotions of war with intelligence and compassion. He did great stories about cowardice, loyalty, honor, courage, and the tragedy of war balanced against the necessity of confronting evil.

He delved into these themes in Combat Kelly as well. One interesting aspect of the book was that the regular characters were not immune to death. By the time the book was cancelled, most of the original dozen were dead. (I've always wondered what the future plans for the book would have been if it had been commercially successful.)

Combat Kelly #3 (October 1972) consists mostly of a flashback filling in Kelly's back story. It also sets up a two-part crossover between Kelly and Fury's respective books. Kelly and his men are on the front lines, attached to an infantry company that's about to be overrun by a larger German force.

I'm philosophically opposed to crossovers that force readers to buy something they don't normally buy, but there's no denying the quality of the ensuing story. The tale picks up again in Sgt. Fury #104 (November 1972) and concludes a month later in Combat Kelly #4. Kelly has called for help and Fury answers the radio. Soon, the Howlers are on their way to the front as reinforcements.

But there's trouble afoot in the form of Captain Conner, the scion of a military family who is in charge of the

company. Incompetent and on the edge of panic, he makes a series of bad decisions that place his men in grave danger.

It's an interesting problem for Fury and Kelly. As soldiers, they are obligated to obey an officer whether they agree with him or not. But as veteran soldiers who know what they are doing, they recognize that Conner is going to get them all killed.

It's a honest dilemma. A military force simply cannot operate without a definable chain-of-command. But if one link of that chain is dangerously incompetent, then where does a soldier's duty lie? At what point, if ever, can he refuse to obey an order?

Fury's dilemma is sort of solved when Conner panics completely and becomes a blubbering wreck. Sending him to the rear, escorted by two of the Deadly Dozen, Fury takes command and uses a "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes" tactic to win the battle.

But in the meantime, the two soldiers with Conner are shot by snipers. Conner, now completely mad, abandons a wounded man and returns to the front with the intention of executing Fury and Kelly for mutiny. Only a rifle shot from the dying soldier saves them.

But that's not the end of it. The general arrives on the scene and assumes that Conner was responsible for the victory. He gives Conner a posthumous medal and gives a speech about how proud the Conner family will be. Kelly wants to object to this, but Fury stops him. It doesn't matter, Fury says. They know the truth and that's what's important.

It's a great story, full of strong action backed by an equally strong story. Like many war comics of the time, the action and dialogue are often over the top--running on Rule of Cool rather than realism. But Friedrich and Ayers (like Lee and Kirby before them) infused Sgt Fury and Combat Kelly with real emotion and some honest-to-goodness humanity.

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