In this feature, I spotlight five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Here is an archive of all the patterns we've spotlighted so far.

Today, in honor of the latest trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, let's take a look at five times when everyone believed that Nick Fury was dead!

Enjoy!

Humberto M. Ferre, who runs the awesome Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD fan site, had already collected these deaths so that made it a whole lot easier for me to put this together.

First up, chronologically, is 1973's Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #114. In #112, Fury believes he was a in a plane crash that killed all of his fellow Howling Commandos. At the end, it turns out that it was just Baron Strucker messing with his mind. In reality, there WAS a plane crash (which Strucker used to kidnap Fury) but the other Howling Commandos were fine. They just think it is FURY who is dead!

#114 has everyone reacting to Fury's death, in a series of really great pages by Gary Friedrich, Dick Ayers and John Tartaglione...













Four years earlier, two thirds of that creative team (Friedrich and Ayers, only Ayers was inking Herb Trimpe) killed Fury for the FIRST time in Fury, Agent of SHIELD #15, which was, at the time, the last issue of the title (it came back a year later).

Fury is at a concert with his girlfriend when a HYDRA agent named Bulls-Eye shoots him dead...





Less than a year later, Roy Thomas brought him back in Avengers #72 (with the reveal being that the Fury who was killed was a Life Model Decoy sent by Fury in his place because he didn't want to go to the concert. No wonder Fury is often such a jerk - being a jerk saved his life here!).

In 1995, Fury got busy dying. In War Machine #15, War Machine goes back in time to stop some bad guys from helping the Nazis win World War II.

While there, he teams up with the Nick Fury of World War II, who is then killed in battle...





Luckily, War Machine is able to destroy the time traveling system, fixing every change that the bad guys made (and making it so that Fury never died).

Fury was not so lucky a couple of months later when, in Double Edge Omega, the Punisher was brainwashed into thinking that Fury killed his wife and kids.

He first destroyed all of Fury's LMDs...



And then shot Fury dead...



Luckily, by "there were no LMDs left," we of course mean that there were LMDs left, so the Fury who was killed was an LMD (I covered the whole ridiculous storyline here).

Finally, Fury's shortest "death" would have to be Secret War #5, where it is revealed that Fury wiped the memories of a bunch of superheroes after they did a mission for him. Now, a year later, the heroes are being targeted for revenge (and they have no idea why). Wolverine, as you might expect, is not a fan of his mind being messed with...





Two pages later they discover that the Fury Wolverine killed was a Life Model Decoy, as Fury figured one of the group would eventually try to kill him for what he did.

That's it for this time! If YOU have a suggestion for a future installment of Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!