I finally saw an episode of that Wolverine and the X-Men show on Friday night. It was OK, I guess. Nick Fury made Wolverine track down the Hulk and try and stop him, except it turned out the real problem was a pack of Wendigos that had been created by SHIELD that were run amok.
The thing that annoyed me was that Fury blackmailed Wolverine into taking the mission. Since mutants are having to stay low-profile in that universe, the shool has to stay hidden, and Fury basically threatened to leak the location of the school, and the identity of the mutants therein to certain bigoted, fear-mongering senators if Logan didn't take the job. And when Logan (and Dr. Banner) confronted Fury about making Wendigos and not telling them what they were up against, Fury trotted out the same "you're assets" line Carl Weathers was spouting in Predator. Sigh.
Fury is constantly a manipualtive jackass these days, never actually playing it fair with whomever he's dealing with. He always has to do things by preying on people's weaknesses, or calling in debts*, or making threats. Has Agent of SHIELD Nick Fury always been like this? I know he has been in the Ultimate Universe, but what about the Marvel Unvierse? I know he and Captain America didn't always see eye to eye, but did he pull this sort of junk on Cap back in the '60s?
I don't have any of those comics, though I've read a few Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos from that time period. In those, Fury accepts the orders he's given, whether he likes them or not, and does display a pragmatic attitude at times, such as in one issue where he refuses to try and go to Berlin and rescue the captured Gabe Jones, opting instead to focus on getting the remaining Howlers out of Germany**, much to the cosnternation of Reb Ralston.
So maybe Fury has always been willing to sacrifice people and ideals for the larger mission. Still, it seems like the sort of characterization that would come about as people have grown more cynical about these sorts of things. "The world is less black and white, so even the people who are supposed to be protecting us, fight dirty", that kind of thing. Where people who operate in the shadows, doing shadowy things, can not - or will not - do things honorably, even when dealing with people who do. Where Nick Fury sees Spider-Man's overdeveloped sense of responsibility/guilt complex, and just sees how easy it will be to get Parker to do what he wants***.
Maybe Fury just needs a good swat upside the head.
* And really, I wouldn't be surprised if Fury was responsible for the eprson being in the situation where the debt was incurred. I've read Fury say he frequently says he's saved Wolverine's life several times over, but how many of those times were the result of something Fury dumped him in?
** To be fair, it's generally a poor idea to travel deeper into Germany when pursued by the army. Unless, of course, you need to get a diary that contains information on traps barring your path to the Holy Grail. Then there's really no other choice, is there?
*** That was actually in some secret file thing that was part of the lead-in to Bendis' Secret War mini-series.
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3 comments:
Jim Steranko's Fury generally took care of business himself ... no black-mail necessary.
Over in Cap's mag, he was usually tellin' Steve not to go off half-cocked to save Sharon or something like that ... so the pragmatic side showed up there.
He was pragmatic, and he had little hesitation about violence, but he not the vicious schemer that Bendis and co have transformed him into, at least in the stuff I read. I can't see even Steranko's Fury savagely torturing a teenager as part of his recruiting.
It's yet another example of the neocon Nu-Marvel, I'd say. Middle-aged desk jockeys getting off on how they think a manly man acts.
Modern Fury is modelled more after the secret agent characters you see in shows like 24 than he is after his "original" source material of James Bond.
To be fair to Fury in the comics, he has been discovering a number of fairly high level conspiracies that might have sent him a bit over the edge.
By the way, I hadn't seen any of the new X-men cartoon until there was a recent marathon on Niktoons, but I'd seen the promo material in the back of the comics.
Knowing the roster, I had just assumed they were doing the classic case of ignoring other existing characters. Then I watched them kill half of the team in the first 30 seconds of the show. It's not quite a cartoon for kids, which is weird for Nickelodeon.
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