Today, we go back to 10 years ago, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Nick Fury made his Marvel Universe debut.
This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.
Today, we head back to April 2012, for Battle Scars #6, the final issue of a series that ultimately introduced both the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Nick Fury AND Phil Colson into the Marvel Universe, in a story written by Chris Yost, Cullen Bunn and Matt Fraction, with art by Scot Eaton and Andrew Hennessey with colors by Paul Mounts (it takes an odd sort of mind to know offhand that this issue was drawn by Scot Eaton and Andrew Hennessey without even checking the credits).
MEET MARCUS JOHNSON AND "CHEESE"
The Marvel crossover, Fear Itself, involved a permeating sense of fear throughout the world that was empowering the Serpent (Odin's big brother). So if you can imagine how crazy the world got when everyone's fear got ratched up to an insane degree, you REALLY wouldn't want to be in a war zone, like Marcus Johnson and his Army Ranger buddies, including his best friend, known only as "Cheese," were in Battle Scars #1 (same creative team throughout the series)...
That was quite the introduction to our Army Ranger stars...
After that battle ended and the crossover concluded and things went back to normal, Marcus was shocked to find out that his mother had been murdered. He went back for her funeral and unbenknownest to him, he was being monitored by none other than Steve "Captain America" Rogers and Sharon Carter...
As it turned out, Marcus' mom was murdered in an attempt to draw Marcus out so that he could be captured. He has to go on the run, with Cheese helping him out. In Battle Scars #5, Marcus discovers that he is the son of Nick Fury, the original head of SHIELD! A bad guy learned of Fury's hidden son, Marcus, and he wants him so that he can gain access to the Infinity Formula that is mixed into Marcus' blood. The villains accessed Marcus' DNA by having his eye torn out in a sick joke having him match his father...
Marcus escaped, though, and returned in the final issue to rescue his father and destroy the organization of the villain.
THE NEW NICK FURY BECOMES A PART OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
Things looked bad in the mid of the final issue, but Marcus was at least in a position to blow up the entire enemy base, taking out the villain in the process (even if Marcus would die, too)...
Luckily for Marcus, though, right at that moment, the Avengers showed up, as it turns out his buddy Cheese had put a tracer on Marcus eariler because he knew his friend so well that he knew that Marcus would try to lone wolf it up and he knew that he would probably need backup...
Marcus made sure to kill the bad guy first, while getting scarred a bit in the explosion that killed the villain. He gets treated for his wounds (the Infinity Formula in his bloodstream helped, but it can't regrow an eye) and is visited by his father, who recommends that Marcus try to do some good as a member of SHIELD now that he has proven that he CAN hang with that world...
We then cut to the end of the issue, where Marcus and Cheese have both been given offers to become SHIELD agents...
And oh yeah, Marcus' legal name is Nick Fury Jr., so he adopts that name now and "Cheese"'s real name is Phil...Phil Coulson...
As you can see, Marvel did not yet decide to go with a likeness of Clark Gregg as Coulson, although eventually they did (and I am not sure, but I'm pretty positive Coulson's background was retconned eventually). In any event, they were now officially part of the Marvel Universe...
Pretty funny stuff, but I guess it was probably worth it in the end, especially when the original Nick Fury was basically written out of the Marvel Universe.
If you folks have any suggestions for April (or any other later months) 2012, 1997, 1972 and 1947 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.