Board Thread:Site-Related Tasks/@comment-61022-20160927205025/@comment-26066818-20170213200638

The contradiction goes away, I think, if you remove the assumption that Strange Tales #159 takes place in the Modern Age.

For a while now, I've been leaning towards assuming the Nick Fury stories from Strange Tales no longer take place in the Modern Age. These stories depicting the "early days of Nick Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D." take place in the 1960s of the Marvel Timeline, not the publication date 1960s, i.e. ~13 years ago.

The SHIELD timeline in general is difficult to reconcile now, with multiple examples of the group being around since the 60s. I think the "story" of Nick Fury taking over S.H.I.E.L.D. and recruited his old Army buddies Gabe and Dum-Dum needs to take place back then as well, setting up for the Original Sins revelation of Dum-Dum dying in 1966. The Contessa was independently reported by Amanda Armstrong (Stark's mother) as being her handler with SHIELD prior to Tony's birth. The Contessa's recruitment into SHIELD during the Cold War of the 1960s makes more sense, especially with the Leviathan connection, rather than "15 years ago", which is now more than a decade after the fall of the USSR.

If the origins of S.H.I.E.L.D. are getting moved into the past, it makes sense that prominent agents like the Contessa joined earlier than the Modern Age, too.