These days, I’m not really sure what Marvel’s Nick Fury is up to.  The superspy boss of S.H.I.E.L.D was given a dramatic new look by Mark Millar, more notable for his promotional skills than his writing for the most part.  That new look?  Well, if you’ve seen Samuel L. Jackson you’re picturing exactly the actor that Millar wants to play Fury, and may indeed do so in one of Marvel’s forthcoming films.

Now, I’m not particularly a fan of the spy genre.  Kind of liked James Bond when I was younger, but by then Dr Who already had a hold on my imagination.  And where books were concerned I preferred the seedy world of Len Deighton; Funeral in Berlin, The Ipcress File, etc.

It’s only as my appreciation of seminal comics artist Jack Kirby has grown that I’ve become interested in the work of Jim Steranko and his particular take on the adventures of Nick Fury and his chums.  Steranko was a one-off, a musician who was also a close-up magician and escapologist, who also happened to be a dynamic artist with an advertising background.

Steranko took over Fury’s stories, initially over breakdowns supplied by Jack Kirby, who pretty much defined the look of Marvel’s comics.  But in short order, Steranko was trusted to create the stories entirely on his own, writing and colouring the adventures of the superspy as well as drawing them.  As you can see from these pages, Steranko thought in terms of the overall design of the page in more sophisticated ways than his contemporaries.  He built on Kirby’s innovations, using collage and photo-montage, and took them further still with influences from the likes of Dali and rock concert posters of the era.  No doubt about it, Steranko was pushing the boundaries of what comic art was at the time.

It was clear that Nick Fury had been created by grown-ups for an audience of youngsters: the agent’s hair was already greying in his sixties appearances, Fury having earned his reputation in World War Two.  Presumably Stan Lee was wary of identifying him with a war where good and bad were less cut and dried; Korea was far too ambiguous, let alone Vietnam.  And his cronies, most famously bowler hatted ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan, were of similar vintage.

Steranko’s approach was to make Fury a slimmer and sexier figure, influenced by the filmic versions of James Bond, and to similarly make his world one of amazing gadgets, gorgeous women, fast cars and deadly enemies.  And it works a treat: if you were 13 at the time it would have been amazing stuff.  Now, it holds up because of the quality of what Steranko brought to the page; energy, pace, and in particular design sensibilities.

Make no mistake, Nick Fury comics are nonsense, but nonsense of a high order.  If you’ve ever enjoyed Our Man Flint, The Prisoner, or Connery-era Bond, you’ll hopefully warm to these improbable yarns of two-fisted agents battling the sinister squadrons of HYDRA, each side keeping abreast of the other’s latest developments through a network of moles.  Which gives me a story idea, come to think: what if HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. are actually the same organisation, pushing technology forward by trying to outsmart the other?

Being an innovator and a perfectionist, Steranko was never going to match Kirby’s relentless pace, and to make money the more entrepreneurially inclined Steranko set up his own publishing operation.  Kirby remembered him in the form of Mister Miracle, superhero escape artist, in his powerful run on New Gods for DC having escaped Marvel’s shackles in the early 70s.  But for me, to really remember Jim Steranko, you only have to look through the pages of his work on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.