When people talk about the formal and creative innovation at Marvel in the 1960’s, they will generally focus on Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and rightly so, their work was incredible and important. But there are a few names that feel inadvertently left out in the focus that Ditko and Kirby, one those names is Jim Steranko. Steranko took the Kirby-inspired Marvel house style and experimented with different artistic approaches and techniques. This can really been seen in his S.H.E.I.L.D. comics, which started as a feature in “Strange Tales,” which Steranko initially drew over Kirby layouts, before taking over as both writer and artist, and finally getting a full-sized solo book in 1968, for which Steranko would only write and draw four issues.
Cover by Jim SterankoWritten, Penciled & Colored by Jim Steranko
Inked by Joe Sinnot, Frank Giacoia, Dan Adkins & John Tartag
Lettered by Sam RosenNick Fury is the greatest spy the Marvel Universe has ever seen. With the world peace-keeping organization S.H.I.E.L.D. at his back, he can turn back any threat, domestic or planetary.
Steranko’s Marvel work is notable in its contrast to Kirby. While he started drawing over the King’s layouts, his instinctive style tended towards the quieter moment just before impact, where Kirby would go for the big, loud bombast. Steranko proved himself as a great Kirby mimic in those first “Strange Tales” issues, and that style and influence can always be seen throughout all of Steranko’s S.H.I.E.L.D. comics. But once he gets free reign, there is a noticeable change. The shots take a wider angle, the characters become gain a bit more realism in their body shapes and movements, the line gets thinner, and the gaps in time between the panels gets much smaller. So, by the time “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” gets expanded into its own book, outside the pages of “Strange Tales,” Steranko has found a voice that, while still distinctly 60’s Marvel, is unique and innovative.
That first full-length “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” comic opens with a famous subversion of the approach of superhero comics, a silent sequence. For the first 3 pages there is no speech, thought balloons or captions. Steranko is trusting his reader to follow the story just through the sequence of images. This is in stark contrast to most books of the time (and most of this book), where wordy captions and thought balloons abound, just to make sure the action is clear. The legend with this sequence (which is probably exaggerated in its retelling) goes that when Steranko turned these pages in, Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky said that he couldn’t pay Steranko as a writer, because there were no words on the page, in response Steranko allegedly grabbed Brodsky by the collar and threated to ‘throw [him] out a fucking window.’
Steranko definitely had balls. Before he become known for his innovative comics work, he had worked as an illusionist and escape artist (supposedly forming some of the inspiration for Kirby’s “Mister Miracle”), as well as in the advertising industry. He’d lived and worked outside of comics; his influences weren’t just Kirby and that can be seen in these issues. There’s contemporaneous references to music and fashion and culture. There’s artistic ques taken from pop art, surrealism, expressionism, all remixed into a fun, very Marvel comic. American comics of this time weren’t thought of as drawing on high art influences, they were, ostensibly, for children. But then, on the other hand, there were some 1960’s that famously became cult hits with college students and stoners, comics the pushed the edge of the medium and brought in psychedelia. Comics like Ditko’s “Doctor Strange” (which was also found in “Strange Tales,” although Ditko had stopped working on “Doctor Strange” by the time Steranko started on “Fury”). Comics like this.
Steranko’s pushing the edge in the 1960’s did mean some run-ins with the comics code authority. In an almost wordless page (there’s one caption to avoid a repeat that Brodsky argument), Fury and his love interest, the Countess, are getting hot and heavy. The page has a series of panels aspects of the room and the couple as begin to do what couples do. In the back of my collection it shows how the comics code required Steranko to deemphasize the Countess’ cleavage, change a panel of a phone off the hook, and a panel featuring a wide shot of them embracing was changed to an image of Fury’s gun. While Steranko’s kind of experimental approach is very tangibly a product of the 60’s, that era also has its downsides, one of those being the comics code’s stringent rules, but also the now dated approach to representation in these issues. While there are non-white and non-male characters in this run, there are not many, and they are barely developed. It is only Fury, our eponymous hero, who really has a constant feeling voice and characterisation across the issues.
The stories Steranko tells across his four full-length “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D.” comics do give a wide variety of plots. The first issue shows a few desperate stories that fold together in the end. In #2 Fury and Jimmy Woo defeat a mad scientist who plans to reset evolution in favour of his designs. #3 features gothic horror on a Scottish moor with a Nazi twist. Steranko’s final issue shows the return of Scorpio, a villain from #1, who swaps places with Fury and infiltrates S.H.I.E.L.D. (#4 was a origin recap by a different creative team). None of these stories do anything particularly compelling in terms of character or theme, but that isn’t why Steranko wanted to do them. They were facilitators for Steranko to try things out, the variety of plot, meant he could vary his style and technique.
Across these comics, we see Steranko take the tropes and style of Marvel comics and 60’s spy stories and throw in techniques from advertising and from other artistic disciplines. By doing this, Steranko pushed the genre and medium in new directions, the effects of which can still be seen in comics today. With “Nick Fury,” Steranko proves himself worthy of a place amongst the legends of American comics.
