When a Sgt. Fury Issue Was Set In Casablanca...Until Stan Lee Said 'No'

Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

Gary Friedrich passed away yesterday and while the writer will forever be associated with his co-creations, Ghost Rider and Son of Satan (and rightfully so, I mean, come on, dude created Ghost Rider! You don't get much bigger than creating Ghost Rider!), his longest sustained run on a comic book title in his career was working on the long-running World War II series, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. Sgt. Fury was an interesting series in that it was pretty clearly intended as a knock-off of Sgt. Rock from DC Comics who was a "hot" character back when the book debuted in 1963. In case you didn't know this, Marvel had a deal with DC Comics over the distribution of Marvel Comics. Martin Goodman folded his distribution business in the 1950s and signed with one of the biggest distributors in the business. Said distributor then went out of business after it turned out that they were up to all sorts of shady business practices. So Marvel suddenly had no one to distribute their comic books. In an attempt to keep his comic book company afloat, Goodman turned to his contacts at Independent News Distribution, which was owned by National Comics (now DC Comics). They agreed to keep Marvel going, but only if Marvel would agree to a limited slate of monthly titles. They had Goodman over a barrel, so he agreed. In any event, that led to Marvel having to be very picky when it launched new titles and so when Sgt. Fury debuted (Stan Lee would claim it was due to a bet with Martin Goodman over whether Lee/Kirby could sell a book even with an intentional silly title like Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos), Marvel had to cancel a book to make room for the new series on the schedule. That book? Incredible Hulk. Oh well, that title never went anywhere anyways, right?

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched the title but soon it became the regular gig of artists Dick Ayers and John Severin, two comic book veterans. Roy Thomas followed Lee on the title and when Thomas' workload kept getting bigger, he passed the series on to his friend Gary Friedrich in 1967. The Friedrich/Ayers/Severin team would remain consistent for the next four years until the book began alternating reprint issues with new issues. Friedrich stuck with it even when it went to mostly reprints. Friedrich's first solo issue was #45 (after Thomas eased him into the book by co-writing #42-44 with him)...

That issue was the first of Friedrich's "The" issues ("The War Lover"), which I'll be spotlighting separately soon.

Friedrich really tried some different things on Sgt. Fury during his run, but one story went a little too far for Stan Lee's standards and led to a furious last minute re-drawing of the entire issue!

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One of the most acclaimed films of all-time is 1943's Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as former lovers who are reunited when Bergman's Ilsa walks into the Casablanca bar of Bogart's Rick during World War II. Her husband is a wanted freedom fighter and she needs to get him out of the country to freedom. Will Rick help her and try to win her back? Will she stick with her husband or go with Rick? Lots of questions.

Friedrich decided to tell a story starring Captain "Happy Sam" Snyder, the captain in charge of the Howling Commandos that would be essentially within the overall film, Casablanca.

John Severin, like his sister Marie, was a brilliant artist when it came to likenesses, so Friedrich had Ayers and Severin draw the characters like their Casablanca counterparts (Humphrey Bogart's Rick, Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa, Paul Henreid's Victor Laszlo,

Claude Rains' Captain Renault, Conrad Veidt's Major Strasser, Sydney Greenstreet's Signor Ferrari, Peter Lorre's Signor Ugarte and Dooley Wilson's Sam).

It was fully penciled and inked when Stan Lee found out about it and flipped his lid a bit. He thought that Warner Bros. might sue Marvel for copyright infringement. So he had he issue quickly re-written to make it different from Casablanca and had the characters all re-drawn.

Roy Thomas wrote an awesome article about it in Alter Ego #6 (I wrote about it, as well, in Comic Book Legends Revealed years ago).

Here are some of the changes...

From Claude Rains to not Claude Rains...

From Peter Lorre to not Peter Lorre...

From Sydney Greenstreet to not Sydney Greenstreet (note Stan Lee suggests that they give him a thick mustache, but they decided to go a different direction)...