Clandestine Operations
During WWII, Fury and his Howling Commandos won many victories and battled many foes. They sometimes teamed up with Captain America and Bucky Barnes to face dimensional invasions, engaging in conventional warfare against the Nazis, and even fighting the Red Skull and Heinrich Zemo, AKA Baron Zemo. Fury and his commandos also went up against the infamous vampire Vlad Dracula, AKA Dracula, and vampiric Nazi agent Lord John Falsworth, AKA Baron Blood.
While stationed in London, Fury fell in love with Lady Pamela Hawley, a British noblewoman serving in a London ambulance unit. While they were together, Hawley was kidnapped by the German sorcerer Viscount Krowler and the Howlers unwittingly intervened in a time-transcending clash between the demonic Dormammu and future Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange. Though Strange removed memories of their encounter and later encounters as well. Fury decided to propose marriage to Hawley, but before he could, she perished tragically during a London air raid.
Months later, when Fury was home on leave, his brother Jake, jealous of Nick's fame, was abducted by the Nazi Colonel Klaue. Nick freed Jake but was captured himself, and Jake helped the Howlers rescue Nick. Following these events, Jake enlisted in the army; he soon regretted his choice, and his resentment of Nick grew.
The Howlers then pursued Baron Strucker to the German village of Gruenstadt, where they saw him lead a Nazi SS Squad in massacring Gruenstadt's entire population. Outraged, the Howlers gunned down Strucker's soldiers to the last man, although Strucker himself escaped. Fury did not know it at the time, but Strucker destroyed Gruenstadt to conceal the nearby discovery of a party of Gnobians, extraterrestrials with vastly advanced technology.
In 1945, the Howlers went up against the sorcerer Algernon Crowe, who created zombies for the Nazis. The Howlers incapacitated the zombies and torched Crowe’s facility, believing Crowe to be dead. In late April of that year, Fury, the Howlers, and other soldiers joined dozens of the USA’s costumed champions in an open invasion of Germany. When the war finally ended in August, Fury led the Howlers on European “mop-up” missions against remaining Axis operatives, which included shutting down death camp laboratories. Fury was then reassigned to Okinawa, Japan to shut down remnants there, while the other Howlers returned to civilian life. Fury was soon recruited by the O.S.S. full-time and worked with agents of the British MI-5.
In 1946, Fury aged 60 years in minutes due to long-term effects of Sternberg’s Infinity Formula; Sternberg, having anticipated this, had mailed Fury a mutated version of the formula, and Fury immediately inoculated himself with it, restoring his youth. However, the effect lasted only one year, and Sternberg began extorting money from Fury in exchange for a yearly supply of the formula. Unable to locate Sternberg, Fury acquiesced and bought doses from him for the next several decades.
When the O.S.S. disbanded in 1947, Fury was reassigned to Army Intelligence and eventually saw action in the Korean War, which began in 1950; at some point, Fury re-formed the Howling Commandos, who re-enlisted for a special mission to blow up a missile base behind enemy lines. At the successful close of this mission, Fury was promoted to second lieutenant and soon afterward transferred to the Central intelligence Agency (CIA). In this capacity, he led a unit known as Team Valkyrie until the war’s end in 1953.
At some point in the late 1950s or early 1960s, Fury worked with the super-team called the First Line. In 1959 and on President Eisenhower’s orders, Fury and Dum Dum gathered the first superhumans for the Avengers Initiative, recruiting criminals in the bunch. The team consisted of Victor Creed, AKA Sabretooth, Duvid Fortunov, AKA Dominic Fortune, Aquaria Neptunia, AKA Namora, and Sergei Kravinoff, AKA Kraven the Hunter, and Ulysses Bloodstone, and Ernst Sablinov, AKA Silver Sable, and eventually Louise Mason, AKA Blonde Phantom. Together, they tracked a Red Skull impersonator and infiltrated a new Nazi group only to discover that they had made their own version of Captain America. They blew the base to smithereens and took out their Super-Soldier. They went on several other missions that took them to Wakanda and Latveria, and they confronted the Planner, Ubermadchen, Baron Blood, the Hollow Men, and ICON. When it seemed that the group helped to end the Nazi threat, Fury disbanded the team and gave everyone full pardons for their criminal misdeeds.
By 1963, Fury was a CIA colonel in charge of a program involving telepathic operatives, but the ultimate fate of Fury’s program is unrevealed. By 1967 he was active in the Vietnam War, where he again re-formed the Howling Commandos as volunteers on special assignment; a year later, he underwent training in the Green Beret Special Forces, which he followed up with Black Beret training in 1973. During this period, he frequently worked with his wartime comrade Logan, now a Canadian intelligence operative.
In the early 1980s, Fury investigated a reorganized First Line and aided them against subterranean invaders; following his report, he was recommended for “Project S.H.I.E.L.D.,” a government operation still many years from completion. Later, Fury went undercover in Macao to investigate Amber D’Alexis, who ran an espionage and weapons smuggling ring out of her casino; Fury romanced D’Alexis to win her confidence, only to learn that she was romantically involved with his brother Jake, now a biophysics researcher. Fury ultimately took D’Alexis into custody, and Jake’s resentment turned into hatred.
A few years later, Fury re-formed the Howling Commandos at least once more, for a mission with pilot Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing. During the same time frame, Fury worked with two brilliant scientists, Reed Richards and Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man; unknown to Fury, both men were involved in Project S.H.I.E.L.D., and Jake Fury soon became a Stark employee.
In recent years, not long after the debut of the Fantastic Four, Fury aided the team against the subversive Adolf Hitler clone known as Hate-Monger. Following this mission, Fury was assigned to investigate a spy at Stark International, unaware that Stark himself was involved in the new international espionage unit known as the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.), the finalized version of Project: S.H.I.E.L.D., whose director, Colonel Rick Stoner, had recently been slain by the high-tech terrorist organization, Hydra.
Fury was dismayed to discover that the spy was his brother Jake, who had defected to Hydra. Confronting his brother, Fury was shot in the left eye, exacerbating his old war injury. Though his operations were exposed, Jake escaped, and Nick, his left eye now almost totally useless, began wearing an eyepatch. Shortly afterward, a mission in Russia again teamed him with Logan, now the Canadian super-agent Wolverine.
Returning to America, Fury was, at Stark’s recommendation, recruited to head S.H.I.E.L.D., which was facing renewed attacks from Hydra. His mission was to destroy the terrorist cartel and Fury recruited former Howlers’ teammates, Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones and Eric Koenig to join S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury led S.H.I.E.L.D. against Hydra, Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), the Druid, and other terrorists; never one to risk subordinates’ lives on jobs he could do himself, Fury continued to act as a field agent. Fury’s right-hand man was Jasper Sitwell, a loyal administrator and rule follower, while much of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s developing technology was overseen by Sidney “the Gaffer” Levine, a brilliant inventor and, like Fury, a veteran of a wartime unit, in his case the high-tech Skywolves.
During his early clashes with Hydra, Fury fell in love with Laura Brown, daughter of the organization’s supposed leader, the Imperial Hydra; when the Imperial Hydra was slain in one clash, Fury believed Hydra was on its last legs, but its creed of “cut off one arm and another shall take its place” would soon prove itself true. When Fury’s relationship with Brown ended, he began romancing fellow agent Countess Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Mere months after joining S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury was reunited with his wartime friend Captain America, who had been revived from decades of suspended animation by the Avengers. Ironically, Fury faced a more unhappy reunion when he learned that Hydra, founded in the closing days of World War II, was secretly led by none other than Baron Strucker, who tried to blackmail the world with a so-called Death-Spore bomb; however, Fury located the bomb and sealed it in Hydra’s domed island base, where it apparently killed only Strucker and his men. On the heels of this victory, Fury was almost driven mad when he became a pawn in a game between Latverian dictator Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom, and his robot opponent, the Prime Mover. In the course of the game, S.H.I.E.L.D. clashed with a robot of the megalomaniacal Plan Tzu, AKA Yellow Claw, and when the true Claw’s nemesis, FBI agent Jimmy Woo, became involved in the proceedings, Fury recruited him for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Another foe resurfaced when Jake Fury, empowered by the mysterious Zodiac Key, attacked S.H.I.E.L.D. as Scorpio; eventually exposed, Scorpio clashed with Fury repeatedly until his apparent death, although his consciousness survived in an android body. A final bit of Fury’s past was then laid to rest when Professor Sternberg was slain by criminal Steel Harris, who attempted to up the extortion on Fury’s supply of the Infinity Formula; however, with the help of de Fontaine, Fury defeated Steel and obtained the secrets of the Infinity Formula for himself.
As S.H.I.E.L.D. director, Fury fought various superhuman foes alongside New York’s Super Heroes, many of whom he befriended. When the Thing and a handful of Avengers organized a floating poker game, Fury became a regular participant; at one such game he renewed his friendship with Wolverine, now a member of the mutant X-Men. Despite his respect for Super Heroes, Fury recognized them as potential loose cannons, and S.H.I.E.L.D. formed more than one contingency plan against them. For years, Fury balanced his duties against his friendships, not always to his own satisfaction.
As S.H.I.E.L.D.’s influence spread, Fury became concerned about internal corruption and worked with ex-agent Barbara “Bobbi” Morse, AKA Mockingbird, to expose several criminal operations. Fury became the target of the seven-section organization the Sept, who attacked S.H.I.E.L.D.’s airborne Helicarrier base, overthrew a small Latin American government, attacked Fury and his men in Egypt, and were tracked to Hong Kong, where Fury unmasked their leader, the One, as the true Yellow Claw.
A few years later, while investigating use of the Zodiac Key, Fury was stunned to meet a new Scorpio named Mikel Fury, who claimed to be Jake’s son by Amber D’Alexis. Working alongside Wolverine, Fury shut down D’Alexis’s latest criminal operation, but D’Alexis herself held Fury at gunpoint and revealed that Nick, not Jake, was Mikel’s father. D’Alexis was defeated by Wolverine shortly afterward, and Fury took Mikel into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, although he soon escaped.
Soon afterward, Fury learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by Hydra’s Life Model Decoy (LMD), an artificial life-form called the Deltite, who deceived most of Fury’s agents, including de Fontaine, into turning against him. Many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were also replaced by LMDs programmed by the Deltite. Fury and a handful of loyal agents eventually defeated the LMDs, but not before almost all remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were seemingly slain; unknown to Fury, the LMDs had been directed by Baron Strucker of Hydra, alive after all, who kept the supposedly dead agents in stasis. S.H.I.E.L.D. was formally disbanded, and Fury traveled the world to close S.H.I.E.L.D.’s bases and destroy its most dangerous technology. Physically and emotionally exhausted, Fury briefly retired in the company of agent Kate Neville, who became his lover.
Months later, Fury left retirement to join de Fontaine, Neville, and others against the Death’s Head Guard, Gnobians altered by former Nazi geneticist Arnim Zola and driven by Strucker’s hatred of Fury. The Guard slew hundreds of American agents before Fury managed to break through their programming, after which they committed mass suicide; Strucker later implied that the aliens were in fact creations of Hydra, but this claim seems dubious given the Gnobians’ wartime activities.
Soon afterward, a new S.H.I.E.L.D., Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, designed to be less vulnerable to corruption, was formed, and Fury became its director. Under Fury, the new S.H.I.E.L.D. renewed ties with the superhuman community and faced enemies both new and old, including Algernon Crowe, one of the leaders of Mys-Tech. Fury was slain by Crowe, only to be resurrected when American and British Super Heroes reversed time to defeat Mys-Tech.
Reunited with his longtime agents and friends, Fury set about expanding S.H.I.E.L.D., which eventually neared the size and complexity of its predecessor. Fury even made peace with his son Mikel, whom he recruited as an agent to help him against Hydra’s subversive activity in his home neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen.
Later, Fury received an apparent distress message from Rick Stoner, aka “Fallen Angel,” long believed dead. Fury left a specialized android duplicate in his place and traced the signal to Project: Backslide, an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. experiment, only to be pulled into a pocket dimension with Fallen Angel, who, whoever he truly was, died shortly afterward, leaving Fury stranded. Meanwhile, his LMD captured and tried to rehabilitate the vigilante Frank Castle, AKA Punisher, but the Spook, Fury’s longtime rival, brainwashed Punisher into assassinating the LMD, believed by all to be Fury.
Meanwhile, Fury’s subconscious had remade the pocket dimension into a duplicate of wartime Europe, where he relived past Howlers missions. Sharon Carter, an agent of the prior S.H.I.E.L.D., long thought dead, located him while seeking vengeance and helped him return to Earth. Fury briefly stepped down from S.H.I.E.L.D. directorship, leaving Carter to succeed him, but he soon returned, driving himself harder than ever.
When he learned that Lucia von Bardas, prime minister of Latveria, was providing advanced technology to U.S. Super Villains for terrorist activities, Fury reported his findings but was ordered against acting due to U.S. government ties with von Bardas. Without any formal S.H.I.E.L.D. support, Fury recruited Captain America, Wolverine, and others in a covert mission against von Bardas, who was seemingly slain during their assault.
When the heroes rebelled against Fury, he felt forced to use S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to remove their memories of the mission, enabling him to continue working with them during various crises, including unrest in the nation Khamiskan, the U.S. Weapon X Program’s mind-control of Wolverine, and the hijacking of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier itself by the Red Skull and the Hate-Monger.
S.H.I.E.L.D. was briefly wrested from Fury, who was demoted to a desk job but he regained his position following a clash with former Hydra agent Rudy Gargarin. He faced crises caused by the mind-altered Defenders, Akhenaten, and others. When S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Shannon Lawrence was mutated by the chemicals of madman Jeriah Halidon, Fury worked with Lawrence and other mutates—firefighter James MacDonald, police officer Frank Gunzer, and paramedic Jennifer Montez—to prevent Halidon from destroying the Statue of Liberty, costing the lives of Lawrence and Gunzer. As such superhuman incidents grew more widespread and devastating, Fury, despite efforts to steer government attention away from such allies as Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, and Matthew Murdock, AKA Daredevil, found himself at odds with the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and even his old friends Captain America and Wolverine, forcing him to further manipulate his friends for a greater good.
Shortly after the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier was destroyed by over 200 Super Villains brainwashed into the services of Hydra and the Hand, Lucia von Bardas, having survived as a cyborg, unleashed another army of villains upon New York’s heroes in retaliation for Fury’s Latverian strike months earlier. Although the FF and others defeated the villains and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Daisy Johnson, AKA Quake, overcame von Bardas, the heroes involved in Fury’s plan regained their memories of the incident following the battle. Feeling he had manipulated his friends too extensively to be forgiven, Fury, via an LMD that was in his place, informed the gathered heroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that he was leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. Leaving the U.S. in secret, he relocated to Mexico, planning to spend the rest of his life in disguised obscurity. Though the heroes eventually discovered his LMD replacement after Logan killed it.
One month later, Countess Valentina de Fontaine seemingly visited Fury in Mexico, prepared to renew their romantic relationship. However, Fury discovered that she was actually a disguised Skrull and harbinger of a larger plan to infiltrate Earth, particularly the superhuman community. He killed her and returned to the U.S., stealing data from the current S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Weeks later, he recruited Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman, already a S.H.I.E.L.D. double agent within Hydra, to report directly to him on suspicious activity within S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, or elsewhere.
While M-Day, the Super Hero Civil War, and other crises divided Super Hero solidarity, Fury, operating from long-abandoned safehouses, remained active underground, studying the activities of all known heroes and villains. Occasionally working with outside operatives, such as the Winter Soldier, to deal with immediate threats, he revealed his true agenda to no one, no matter how seemingly trustworthy; not even the apparent assassination of Captain America brought him out of his self-imposed exile.
When the Skrulls finally launched an overt invasion, Fury led a newly recruited team of superhuman Howling Commandos against them, rescuing several Super Heroes from death at the aliens’ hands. Fury, the FF, the Avengers, and others ultimately drove the Skrulls from Earth, but not without heavy casualties among humans and Skrulls alike. The culmination of the defeat came when Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, convinced the world he killed the Skrull Queen Veranke, and was given carte blanche over the Superhuman Registration Act and the Avengers Initiative.
For failing to prevent the Skrull invasion, S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded and replaced with Osborn’s new alternative agency H.A.M.M.E.R. Though 1200 agents refused to transfer to it. Fury was disavowed and went underground, but he wasn’t alone. Distrustful of the command structure led by Osborn, he gathered a group of young superhumans, the Secret Warriors, to combat evil and collect information in a clandestine fashion. The Secret Warriors were divided into three teams, White, Black and Grey, with the White team led by Daisy Johnson, and included J.T. James, AKA Hellfire, Elena Rodriguex, AKA Yo-Yo, Sebastian Druid, AKA The Druid, Jerry Sledge, AKA Stonewall, and Alexander Aaron, AKA Phobos. Team Black was led by Alexander Pierce and Fury’s son Mikel led the Grey team. Meanwhile, Fury was contacted by his old flame de Fontaine who expressed interest in dinner.
Not trusting the often corrupt Osborn and the politics of the time, Fury broke into a S.H.I.E.L.D. data core facility, and discovered nine hidden S.H.I.E.L.D. bases that were completely off the books. His team soon recovered data in one of these bases and uncovered the truth: that Hydra had their hands in the government, corporations and S.H.I.E.L.D. the whole time to conceal their illicit activities. The Howling Commandos Private Military Company with Dum Dum Dugan in charge joined Fury’s seemingly lost cause to expose the truth, counter Hydra and take H.A.M.M.E.R. down. Fury was able to convince 3000 H.A.M.M.E.R. agents to his cause, but soon discovered that another covert group existed, Leviathan. This secret force was backed by superhuman soldiers and co-led by none other than de Fontaine who intended to take over Hydra. Fury’s operatives, including his brother Jake, who was previously thought dead, worked within Hydra to dismantle it. Mikel led his team to destroy a Hydra base but they all perished in doing so. After losing his son, Fury killed Hydra’s head Baron Strucker, leaving the heads of Leviathan left, Viktor Uvarov, AKA Orion, and de Fontaine, but their organization crippled. His agents soon defeated Leviathan and de Fontaine turned herself in. When Fury confronted her, she admitted that despite being a triple agent, she truly loved him and when he killed the thing she had built her entire identity around, she no longer cared for it. However, Orion evaded capture but held a grudge against Fury for taking out his brother and his super soldiers.
After the defeat of Leviathan, Avengers Commander Steve Rogers gave his team free rein to protect the world. Fury continued his best work underground, keeping a watchful eye on Earth’s Super Heroes and threats to the planet. Osborn’s defunct organization H.A.M.M.E.R. started back up again, but the New Avengers stopped them and their new leader Deidre Wentworth, AKA Superia, before they could get far, but the ensuing battle left Mockingbird with near-fatal injuries. Fury then shared the truth about how he possessed longevity, revealing the existence of the Infinity Formula to his team, and used a dose to save Mockingbird’s life. He soon shared the last of the formula with Buky Barnes when as Captain America he had suffered catastrophic injuries against the Serpent and its unstoppable force.
Fury’s enemy Orion, now sickly, soon enacted revenge by killing his former love Nia Johnson. Orion sent Taskmaster after Nia’s son and Fury’s lost son, Army ranger and Staff Sergeant Marcus Johnson, who had inherited his father’s Infinity Formula. Fury intervened with Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D., but both Fury and Marcus were captured. Orion removed Marcus’ left eye so that he could match his father while he confirmed the formula lived inside Marcus’ DNA. Together, Fury and Marcus escaped their restraints, allowing Marcus to get away. Orion then drained Fury of his Infinity Formula, restoring himself with it. Marcus returned with agent Phil Coulson and the Avengers, and Marcus detonated a bomb that took out Orion and left Marcus injured. In the hospital, Fury told Marcus about his brother Mikel, and how he died because of him and that’s why he never reached out to Marcus and his mother. Fury invited him to make a choice, to get back to his life and hope no one else comes after him, or get in the game. He chose the latter and joined S.H.I.E.L.D. under Daisy Johnson and working with Coulson. He started going by his given name, Nick Fury, Jr.
With the formula depleted in his system, Fury realized his life was coming to an end. As such, he wanted to find a replacement for his position, so he coordinated an investigation into the murder of Uatu the Watcher. He contacted Super Heroes Scott Lang, AKA Ant-Man, T’Challa, AKA Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Emma Frost, Gamora, the Punisher, and Bucky, now the Winter Soldier once more, and directed them to find Uatu’s killer. Though Bucky realized he had been lying and beheaded Fury, an LMD.
Black Panther, Emma Frost, Doctor Strange, and the Punisher pursued Bucky but found a space station with the real Fury on it, aged from the depletion of his Infinity Formula. Fury confessed how his defense of Earth knew no bounds, how he committed atrocities against aliens to protect his home world, and how he was looking for his replacement. Though denies Black Panther’s questions about Uatu which leads to a battle between the heroes, Fury and the LMDs. Fury activates one of Uatu’s eyes and regroups it with the other eye, which he had in his possession the whole time, and fought off the attacking heroes.
Fury escaped and went to the Watcher’s citadel, where Doctor Midas tried to amass more power from Uatu’s corpse. While Fury fought off Midas’ Mindless Ones, he was nearly defeated until the heroes caught up to him. He admitted to them that he killed Uatu and in using one of the eyes against Midas, who was becoming extremely powerful, he overloaded Midas, killing him and himself. Considering his sins, the Watchers turned Fury into the Unseen: a silent observer, chained on the moon as Uatu’s replacement.
As the Unseen, he oversaw the Time-Eater eat timelines, and seeing it as a problem, he used the Tallus, a device that allows reality jumping, to bring former Exiles member Clarice Ferguson, AKA Blink, to the moon. Upon her arrival, he encouraged Blink to re-start the Exiles, and report back after she had done so. Though his actions caught the attention of the Watchers who punished the Unseen and in the process, the Tallus was destroyed, sending the Exiles’ members into the timestream.
When the Unseen investigated weapons left behind on the moon by the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, who had taken them from the plant-like aliens, the Cotati, Uatu emerged from his eye and restored him to his old self. Uatu saw the technology as Watcher in origin and knew there was a war ahead, and retained Fury as his spy.
Fury soon discovered that a group of alien warlords called the Reckoning armed the Cotati and other hostile groups, inciting war throughout the cosmos. Fury reported back to Uatu but the Brotherhood of Badoon blew up the moon to prevent them from revealing their information to anyone else. Fury escaped the destruction thanks to the Fantastic Four.
Fury worked with the FF to find the Watchers’ on their home world, Planet T-37X. There, Uatu had been taken and tortured. The Watcher Emnu attacked Fury but he was saved by the FF’s Susan Storm-Richards, AKA Invisible Woman, who had secretly joined him on the mission. Meanwhile, the Reckoning possessed the shattered remnants of the M’kraan Crystal and using it, assaulted their ancient enemies, the Watchers on their planet, where they sought to access the Apex of Reality to destroy the Multiverse. Mister Fantastic eventually defeated the Reckoning and their leader Wrath with the Ultimate Nullifier but it left the Watchers’ home world in shambles. As Uatu absorbed the knowledge of the Apex, he came to understand that the Watchers were responsible for so much death and destruction, and rectified it by creating the Borderlands, where new gods and new possibilities could grow. Uatu restored the moon as well and when Fury returned there, Uatu charged him with the protection of the Ultimate Nullifier, and made him again The Man on the Wall, the Unseen and humanity’s shield.
