Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)

History

World War II

Nick Fury was a U.S. Army sergeant who witnessed his battalion ambushed by German forces commanded by General Stephen Barkhorn during the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Fury is the only survivor the company and spared by Barkhorn. Fury wanders the desert alone and suffers from the heat until he is picked up by a British SOE unit led by Peter Kynaston and Billy Yeoman.

Fury, Kynaston and Yeoman spend the next year participating in classified missions during the war. The pair are given the assignment to assassinate Barkhorn in France. When Fury infiltrates Barkhorn's headquarters one of the officers Han Von Stehle reveals Barkhorn is out to assassinate Adolf Hitler and allow Germany to surrender to the Western Allies to end the war faster. The unit is amubushed by German troops led by Barkhorn and the SS. Fury reunites with Barkhorn who reveals that he is trying to protect Germany from being invaded by Soviet forces and continue to fight on the Eastern front. In a last stand against Barkhorn's forces, Fury kills Von Stehle, but Von Stehle shoots Fury's left eye.

Fury awakens months later to discover that the war is over and Barkhorn commited suicide. Fury celebrates the war's end with Kynaston.

CIA recruitment

After the war's end Fury recruited in the CIA after he saved a battalion from a Chinese ambush during the Korean War.

First Indochina War

In 1954 Fury was sent to French Indochina to assist the French in fighting the communist Viet Minh. He meets his partner George Hatherly, Shirley Defabio, the secretary to Congressman McCuskey, and McCuskey himself. While on the assignment Fury and Defabio started to have an affair. When Fury and Hatherly are sent to French outpost under the command of Major Lallement he is introduced to Sergeant Steinhoff an ex-SS soldier whom Fury takes a dislike in due to his Nazi background. The two get into a fight and are interrupted by an ambush. They manage to hold back the ambush but a second ambush massacred all French troops in the outpost except Fury and Hatherly who were spared by Letrong Giap.

Cuba

In 1961, Fury and Hatherly trained Cuban exiles to prepare the Bay of Pigs invasion. While the invasion is going on he’s given the task to assassinate Fidel Castro. However the invasion fails and Hatherly tries to shoot Castro in the field but misses. Afterwards Fury, Hatherly and a third operative Elgen are captured and tortured. Although the three manage to escape Elgen is badly injured and Fury puts him out of his misery.

Return to Vietnam

In 1970 Fury and Hatherly return to Indochina, and are given the mission of assassinating Letrong Giap, who is running an NVA training camp in Laos. Since Hatherly declines the mission, Frank Castle is assigned to be Fury's partner. The two are spotted by a boy, but choose to let him go. As a result, an NVA platoon tracks them down. Despite fighting off numerous soldiers, Fury and Castle are eventually captured, and are then confronted by Giap himself, who reveals that the real reason the CIA wants him dead is because he discovered their involvement in the heroin trade, which they use to fund their operations. Giap intended to expose the CIA, which would erode American public support for the Vietnam War and thus shorten it. Giap also intended to extract a confession from Frank and Castle about their assassination attempt. The two manage to escape, however, and Fury is able to destroy evidence. He is confronted by Giap in the act, who is disappointed with the colonel's actions and questions why Fury would want to prolong the war. Right then, Giap is shot through the neck by Castle, although he miraculously survives. Fury and Castle flee the compound right before it's bombed by the US Air Force. Fury later tracks down the three CIA agents responsible for the heroin smuggling and kills them, framing their deaths as a mugging.

Nicaragua

Fury and Hatherly are tasked with investigating allegations regarding the involvement of US Special Forces, who are training the Contra insurgents in Nicaragua, in the drug trade. There they find that while the training facility is technically under the command of captain James Costanzo, Barracuda seems to control it in practice, despite only being low-rank officer. Captain Costanzo soon dies having apparently committed suicide, but not before conveniently incriminating solely himself in the cocaine smuggling operation. Both Fury and Hatherly are suspicious of this, so Fury sends his colleague to investigate the obvious lead, while he secretly hitches a ride on one of the Special Forces helicopters and orders them to fly to where they dropped off Barracuda. There, he spies on Barracuda and his squad and learns that they're involved in the drug trade as well, and about a village they attacked recently. Fury travels to this village, only to discover that every man, woman, and child in it had been horrifically massacred, including at least one pregnant woman whose unborn child was ripped out of her womb. Fury is then confronted by Barracuda and his men, who'd captured Hatherly in the meantime. Barracuda nonchalantly admits to murdering Costanzo and framing him, but spares Fury and Hatherly. Fury presents his findings in Washington, D.C. to Senator McCuskey, only to be rebuffed when he requests permission to kill Barracuda and his men. McCuskey explains that the squad is already in the wind, and should anything fatal happen to them, damming evidence about CIA involvement in the operation would be released. Five years later, Fury tracks Barracuda down and batters him with a baseball bat, as punishment for the war crimes he committed.

Personality

In stark contrast to his mainstream 616 counterpart, this incarnation of Fury is extremely cynical and jaded. He often has doubts as to the nature of his work in clandestine military operations, feeling that much of what he does does not make the world a better place.^[1]

It is also strongly implied that he is an alcoholic, perhaps using liquor as a coping mechanism to deal with the many horrible war crimes he has witnessed in his many years as an intelligence operative. He also seems to have no interest in forming lasting romantic relationships as he usually hires prostitutes for sex instead of seeking out more meaningful intimacy.^[2][3]

He also views the military command structure as cowardly and inefficient, openly mocking/insulting a cabal of U.S. Army and Air Force generals. This enmity is not exclusive to verbal exchanges, however, as when he catches wind of a terror plot backed by said generals, he brutally beats the general trying to justify their actions involving killing civilians down with a belt. This could be construed as evidence of a faint moral code that Fury still possesses. This shows that there are still things that Fury will not do. In fact, Frank Castle suspected that Fury got in with the Generals for the purpose of saving a small child.^[4]

He also has a begrudging respect for Frank Castle, seeing him as the best soldier he ever served alongside. However, Fury is not above using Castle to take part in clandestine operations that he himself cannot participate in.^[3][5]

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

Longevity: Due to him having a bullet stuck in his brain, he seems to be unable to die of old age, having been active since World War II to the present day.^[6]

Strength level

Fury has spent decades as a soldier/intelligence operative. As such, he is an extremely skilled combatant, displaying lethal efficiency with all manners of firearms and hand to hand combat.

Weaknesses

For all of his combat prowess, Fury is susceptible to life-threatening injuries such as bullet and shrapnel wounds.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Military equipment as appropriate

Transportation

Many vehicles

Weapons

Many Weapons

Notes

• Although Fury says he's been promoted by SHIELD so high that he no longer knows how it operates^[2] he still remains a Colonel for decades.^[6][7][8]
• The 2001 Fury miniseries and Punisher: Mother Russia show that Fury worked for SHIELD from at least the 60's to the early 00's, but Fury: My War Gone By avoids referencing any of his SHIELD involvement.
• Writer-editor Stan Lee, a co-creator of Nick Fury, was critical of the extreme violence and gore of the MAX series: "I don't know why they're doing that. I don't think that I would do those kinds of stories."^[9]

Links and References

• 42 Appearances of Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)
• Minor Appearances of Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)
• Media Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111) was Mentioned in
• 38 Images featuring Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)
• 4 Quotations by or about Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)
• Character Gallery: Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)

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Footnotes