For the past two months, Marvel has been releasing a series of digital short comics entitled “Fury’s Big Week.” Written by Eric Pearson and Chris Yost and illustrated by Luke Ross, Daniel HDR, Mark Pennington, Agustin Padilla, Don Ho, Wellinton Alves and Rick Ketchum, the book serves as a prelude to the upcoming Avengers film, syncing up the timeline between the various movies that have already been released and explaining where characters like Hawkeye and Black Widow fit into it, as they have only been ancillary characters up until now.
However, the rub to these kinds of comics (like those Green Lantern prequels or the Star Trek prequels, etc) is that while they tie in to the movies, they’re often hit or miss books. Sometimes they’re helpful in expanding on what happened, and other times they’re… well.
With that in mind, we sat down with our iPads, bought all the comics, and have come up with a list of what is relevant to the movie-verse. In a roundabout way, these are all technically spoilers, but I can’t imagine they will ruin anything about the Avengers for you:
- The crashed HYDRA drones from Captain America: The First Avenger were found in Greenland by SHIELD a year before Captain America himself was found, and a week before the events of Iron Man 2, Thor and the Incredible Hulk.
- The Cosmic Cube, referred to by SHIELD and others as the Tesseract, is SHIELD’s #1 priority, and is currently contained in the movieverse version of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.
- Turns out that the character portrayed by Max Hernandez who appears with Coulson in Thor and “The Consultant” is Jasper Sitwell (which may have been confirmed in the movies, but I truthfully missed that one myself), who has been tracking Banner in secret (although he leaves to appear in Thor).
- Fury knew about the events that brought Thor and his hammer to Earth in advance and shrugged them off, with Coulson taking the initiative for that operation (Fury was obsessed with finding Steve Rogers and getting Tony Stark). In turn, this is the reason why Coulson is reassigned in Iron Man 2 and leaves Stark to go deal with the Thor situation (which leads directly to “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor’s Hammer”).
- Hawkeye is responsible for convincing Coulson to let Thor go from captivity, because he spies Foster running away from the SHIELD outpost (since their credentials were oh-so-phoney).
- Loki attempts to steal Thor’s hammer before talking to him.
- Natasha Romanoff is at Culver University keeping eyes on Hulk when he Hulks out and fights Blonsky for the first time having wrapped up her work tracking/helping Tony Stark, and alerts Fury to what Ross is doing.
- The Destroyer, after being defeated by Thor, is now in SHIELD custody and is being experimented on to be turned into a weapon — specifically, they’re trying to convert its energy beams into something that can be loaded into a gun.
- Samuel Sterns, after being radiated and turned into the early version of the Leader in the Incredible Hulk, is shot in the leg by the Black Widow and arrested.
- General Ross is in possession of the Abomination.
- The events of Iron Man 2, Thor and Incredible Hulk happen within the span of a week, in this order: when Fury hires Stark as a consultant, Hulk has just finished raging out at Culver University and the Destroyer has just been unleashed in New Mexico by Loki (and is defeated later that day). The day after that, the Hulk fights the Abomination and disappears. Steve Rogers is found a year after that.
- SHIELD is in possession of Whiplash’s armor, is analyzing the other realm that Asgard is located in based on Foster’s studies in an attempt to open a new portal to Asgard, and is experimenting on Sam Sterns under Project: Mr. Blue (which was his alias in the film, as well as a reference to Bruce Jones’ run on “the Incredible Hulk”). Continued below
- Natasha Romanoff is in “deep cover in Asia” (not sure what that could be referencing, truthfully), and Hawkeye is watching over Dr. Selvig, who is possessed by Loki and is working on unlocking the power of the Tesseract.
- The element that Stark invents in Iron Man 2 is possibly going to be named Badassinm (Stark has apparently filed the appropriate patents) and is being used on the Tesseract to help unlock its powers, although Fury believes that Captain America will be able to unlock it’s true potential as he was in contact with it before.
So there you have it. The nice thing about “Fury’s Big Week” is that it does cover up a few loose ends from the various movies (like where Sam Sterns and the Destroyer ends up) as well as setting up a firm chronology.
Of course, there are some things that happen in “Fury’s Big Week” that happen that isn’t discussed in this article, so feel free to give it a look over yourself. All of it is available in the Marvel App, with the first chapter free of charge and the following seven $0.99 a pop.
