<title>Nick Fury</title>

<a href="Resume/Nick_Fury_Sh.txt">Info Sheet</a>

The son of noted World War I pilot Jack Fury and an alleged descendant of one of
the men who wore the Phantom Rider mask in the late nineteenth century, Nick Fu
ry was born in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in the late 1910s. Fo
llowing high school, Fury and his longtime friend Red Hargrove joined Finley's F
lying Circus, a traveling air show. They both became excellent pilots and stuntm
en. When Finley's Flying Circus came to England in 1940, Fury and Hargrove gave
parachuting instructions to Lt. Sam Sawyer, an American soldier attached to the
British Army. Weeks later, Sawyer was assigned to rescue a British spy in Hollan
d, and he persuaded Fury and Hargrove to accompany him. Their plane was downed i
n Holland, where they met circus strongman Timothy "Dum-Dum" Dugan, who joined t
heir rescue mission. In the end, all five safely returned to England. Inspired b
y the adventure, Dugan joined the British Army, and in early 1941 Fury and Hargr
ove returned to America to enlist in the U.S. Army.

Fury and Hargrove were soon stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, where Fury rapi
dly rose to sergeant. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japa
nese and Hargrove was slain. When America declared war on the Axis, Sawyer, now
a captain, was reassigned to the U.S. Rangers and instructed to form the First A
ttack Squad, a special squad of rangers trained in military precision but using
individually developed combat techniques. Given virtual carte blanche to handpic
k Squad members, Sawyer took pains to have Fury appointed field commander. Other
recruits included Dugan, black jazz trumpeter Gabe Jones, mechanical expert Izz
y Cohen, actor Dino Manelli, lasso-wielding Reb Ralston, and college student Jun
ior Juniper. The Squad members were made honorary commandos in the British army
and codenamed "the Howling Commandos," or "Howlers." Other units under Sawyer's
command during the war included Sgt. Bull McGiveney's Maulers, Sgt. Bob Jenkins'
s Missouri Marauders, Jim Morita's Nisei Squadron, and Combat Kelly's Deadly Doz
en.

For nearly four years Fury led the Howlers on combat and intelligence missions i
n virtually every recognized theater of war (and a few more besides). When Junip
er was slain in an early mission, he was replaced by eccentric British soldier P
inky Pinkerton; German defector Eric Koenig joined soon afterward, establishing
the core membership the Howlers would retain for the remainder of the war, altho
ugh other soldiers came and went over time. His left eye injured by an enemy gre
nade, Fury received a Purple Heart but did not leave military service, eventuall
y regaining sight in that eye. The Howlers clashed with many high-ranking German
officers, most notably Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker. The Howlers proved so succe
ssful that Strucker was ordered to form a similar unit, the Blitzkrieg Squad, bu
t the Howlers always triumphed over their counterparts. Occasional allies of the
Howlers included other Sawyer-commanded units, the Marines of Captain Simon Sav
age's Leatherneck Raiders, and the costumed adventurers Captain America and Buck
y. At some point, Fury befriended a Canadian soldier named Logan, secretly a sup
erhuman mutant.

Early in the war, separated from the Howlers during a mission in France, Fury wa
s gravely injured by a land mine. Discovered by French partisans, he was taken t
o a nearby doctor, Professor Berthold Sternberg. Unknown to Fury, Sternberg not
only treated Fury's injuries, but also surgically altered Fury so he could withs
tand inoculation with Sternberg's so-called "Infinity Formula," intended to slow
or even halt the human aging process. Fury returned to his unit a week later, s
till unaware of Sternberg's experiment; however, over the course of the war, exp
osure to Fury's blood introduced the formula into the other Howlers' bloodstream
s as well, causing them to remain unusually vital well into old age. Fury return
ed to France many times during the war, occasionally on intelligence missions fr
om the Office of Strategic Service.

Weeks after the unit's formation, the Howlers were assigned to destroy a death r
ay created by Baron Heinrich Zemo, who destroyed it himself rather than risk its
falling into enemy hands; Zemo later became a notorious enemy of Captain Americ
a. In mid-1942, while stationed in London, Fury fell in love with Lady Pamela Ha
wley, a British noblewoman serving in a London ambulance unit. In July of that s
ame year, the Howlers ventured into Romania and met the infamous vampire Dracula
, who proved as averse to Nazis as they were. However, the vampiric Nazi agent B
aron Blood would later capture the Howlers, though his plans fell apart when an
American soldier that he vampirized turned against him. In late 1942, the Howler
s were assigned to North Africa, where they saw action alongside nomad leader De
sert Hawk and his daughter Sheila, Captain Starr and the Marines of Item Company
, and infantryman Combat Casey, among others.

In 1943, Fury and Dugan rescued Pam Hawley from the German sorcerer Viscount Kro
wler, unwittingly intervening in a time-transcending clash between the demonic D
ormammu and future Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange, who removed the soldiers' me
mories of the proceedings. The Howlers faced more magic weeks later when they te
amed with adventurous thief Jean Luc LeBeau to keep Baron Strucker from obtainin
g the time-traveling gem called the Momentary Princess. On a more prosaic note,
Fury at last decided to propose marriage to Hawley, but she perished tragically
during a London air raid, killed by the raid's final bomb as she was helping the
wounded. Months later, when Fury was home on leave, his brother Jake, jealous o
f Nick's fame, was abducted by the Nazi Colonel Klaue. Nick freed Jake but was c
aptured himself, and Jake helped the Howlers rescue Nick. Following these events
, Jake enlisted in the army; he soon regretted his choice, and his resentment of
Nick grew.

At some point the Nazi mastermind Red Skull infiltrated Fury's base in disguise,
though circumstances foiled his mission. In April 1944, the Howlers fought the
Skull directly alongside Captain America and Bucky, rescuing an American industr
ialist. Weeks later, the Howlers pursued Baron Strucker to the German village of
Gruenstadt, where they saw him lead a Nazi S.S. Squad in massacring Gruenstadt'
s entire population. Outraged, the Howlers gunned down Strucker's soldiers to th
e last man, although Strucker himself escaped. Fury did not know it at the time,
but Strucker destroyed Gruenstadt to conceal the nearby discovery of a party of
Gnobians, extraterrestrials with vastly advanced technology. After the massacre
, Strucker mindlinked with the Gnobian leader, gaining extensive alien knowledge
--though he later disputed this--while the Gnobians were infected with his own t
wisted personality.

On June 6, 1944, a.k.a. D-Day, the Howlers were part of the Allied invasion of N
azi-held France. In October they teamed with Captain America and Bucky to face a
far different invasion, helping the contemporary Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient
One, against an alliance between Dormammu and the Red Skull; once more, sorcery
removed memories of Dormammu from Fury and company. Returning to more convention
al warfare, Fury and Cap destroyed one of the Red Skull's biochemical warfare ca
mps weeks later, freeing airman Michael Kramer and other prisoners. The Howlers
were also among the Allied forces who halted German advances in the Battle of th
e Bulge in the last days of 1944. In 1945, the Howlers had yet another brush wit
h the unworldly in Berlin, where centuries-old sorcerer Algernon Crowe was creat
ing zombie soldiers for the Nazis. The Howlers incapacitated the zombies and tor
ched Crowe's facility, believing Crowe to be dead.

When the war finally ended in August 1945, Fury led the Howlers on European "mop
-up" missions against remaining Axis operatives. It was during this period that
the Howlers shut down the death camp laboratories of Nathaniel Essex, a.k.a. Mis
ter Sinister. Fury was then reassigned to Okinawa, Japan to shut down remnants t
here, while the other Howlers returned to civilian life.

Fury was soon recruited by the O.S.S. full-time. Working with agents of the Brit
ish MI-5, he was sent after Colonel Ishii, a renegade Japanese scientist with a
cache of bio-weapons; Fury captured Ishii, but was the mission's only survivor.
In 1946, Fury aged sixty years in minutes due to long-term effects of Sternberg'
s Infinity Formula; Sternberg, having anticipated this, had mailed Fury a mutate
d version of the formula, and Fury immediately inoculated himself with it, resto
ring his youth. However, the effect lasted only one year, and Sternberg began ex
torting money from Fury in exchange for a yearly supply of the formula. Unable t
o locate Sternberg, Fury acquiesced and bought doses from him for the next sever
al decades.

When the O.S.S. disbanded in 1947, Fury was reassigned to Army Intelligence and
eventually saw action in the Korean War, which began in 1950; at some point, Fur
y re-formed the Howling Commandos, who re-enlisted for a special mission to blow
up a missile base behind enemy lines. At the successful close of this mission,
Fury was promoted to second lieutenant and soon afterward transferred to the Cen
tral Intelligence Agency. In this capacity, he led a unit known as Team Valkyrie
until the war's end in 1953. At some point in the late 1950s or early 1960s, Fu
ry worked with the super-team called the First Line and was particularly impress
ed by their leader, Yankee Clipper. By 1963, Fury was a C.I.A. colonel in charge
of a program involving telepathic operatives, one of whom, Theresa Bellwether,
was murdered as part of a defense operation called Project: About Face. The ulti
mate fate of Fury's program is unrevealed, but by 1967 he was active in the Viet
nam War, where he again re-formed the Howling Commandos as volunteers on special
assignment; a year later, he underwent training in the Green Beret Special Forc
es, which he followed up with Black Beret training in 1973. Little else is known
of Fury's C.I.A. activities, although during this period he frequently worked w
ith his wartime comrade Logan, now a Canadian intelligence operative. Fury's tac
tics and talents earned him many rivals, including a deadly intelligence operati
ve known only as the Spook.

In the early 1980s, Fury investigated a reorganized First Line and aided them ag
ainst subterranean invaders; following his report, he was recommended for "Proje
ct S.H.I.E.L.D.," a government operation still many years from completion. Later
, Fury went undercover in Macao to investigate Amber D'Alexis, who ran an espion
age and weapons smuggling ring out of her casino; Fury romanced D'Alexis to win
her confidence, only to learn that she was romantically involved with his brothe
r Jake, now a biophysics researcher. Fury ultimately took D'Alexis into custody,
and Jake's resentment turned into hatred. A few years later, Fury re-formed the
Howling Commandos at least once more, for a mission with pilot Ben Grimm. Durin
g the same time frame, Fury worked with two brilliant scientists, Reed Richards
and Tony Stark; unknown to Fury, both men were involved in Project S.H.I.E.L.D.,
and Jake Fury soon became a Stark employee.

In recent years, not long after the debut of the Fantastic Four, Nick Fury aided
the team against the subversive Hate-Monger. Following this mission, Fury was a
ssigned to investigate a spy at Stark International, unaware that Stark himself
was involved in the new international espionage unit known as S.H.I.E.L.D. (Supr
eme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division), the finalize
d version of Project: S.H.I.E.L.D., whose director, Colonel Rick Stoner, had rec
ently been slain by the high-tech terrorists Hydra. Fury was dismayed to discove
r that the spy was his brother Jake, who had defected to Hydra. Confronting his
brother, Fury was shot in the left eye, exacerbating his old war injury. Though
his operations were exposed, Jake escaped, and Nick, his left eye now almost tot
ally useless, began wearing an eyepatch. Shortly afterward, a mission in Russia
again teamed him with Logan, now the Canadian super-agent Wolverine.

Returning to America, Fury was, at Stark's recommendation, recruited to head S.H

.I.E.L.D., which was facing renewed attacks from Hydra. Fury was dubious of his
own qualifications but accepted the role, soon recruiting Dum-Dum Dugan, who bec
ame his second-in-command, as well as Gabe Jones and Eric Koenig. Fury led S.H.I
.E.L.D. against Hydra, A.I.M., the Druid, and other terrorists; never one to ris
k subordinates' lives on jobs he could do himself, Fury continued to act as a fi
eld agent. His right-hand man was Jasper Sitwell, a loyal administrator whose de
dication to the rules irked Fury almost as much as it grounded him, while much o
f S.H.I.E.L.D.'s developing technology was overseen by Sidney "the Gaffer" Levin
e, a brilliant inventor and, like Fury, a veteran of a wartime unit, in his case
the high-tech Skywolves. During his early clashes with Hydra, Fury fell in love
with Laura Brown, daughter of the organization's supposed leader, the Imperial
Hydra; when the Imperial Hydra was slain in one clash, Fury believed Hydra was o
n its last legs, but its creed of "cut off one arm and another shall take its pl
ace" would soon prove itself true. When Fury's relationship with Brown ended, he
began romancing fellow agent Contessa Valentina de Fontaine.
Mere months after joining S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury was reunited with his wartime frien
d Captain America, who had been revived from decades of suspended animation by t
he Avengers. Ironically, Fury faced a more unhappy reunion when he learned that
Hydra, founded in the closing days of World War II, was secretly led by none oth
er than Baron Strucker, who tried to blackmail the world with a so-called Death-
Spore bomb; however, Fury located the bomb and sealed it in Hydra's domed island
base, where it apparently killed only Strucker and his men. On the heels of thi
s victory, Fury was almost driven mad when he became a pawn in a game between La
tverian dictator Doctor Doom and his robot opponent, the Prime Mover. In the cou
rse of the game, S.H.I.E.L.D. clashed with a robot of the megalomaniacal Yellow
Claw, and when the true Claw's nemesis, FBI agent Jimmy Woo, became involved in
the proceedings, Fury recruited him for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Another foe resurfaced when Jake Fury, empowered by the mysterious Zodiac Key, a
ttacked S.H.I.E.L.D. as Scorpio; eventually exposed, Scorpio clashed with Fury r
epeatedly until his apparent death, although his consciousness survived in an an
droid body. A final bit of Fury's past was laid to rest when Professor Sternberg
was slain by criminal Steel Harris, who attempted to up the extortion on Fury's
supply of the Infinity Formula; however, with the help of de la Fontaine, Fury
defeated Steel and obtained the secrets of the Infinity Formula for himself.

As S.H.I.E.L.D. director, Fury fought various superhuman foes alongside New York
's super heroes, many of whom he befriended. When the Thing and a handful of Ave
ngers organized a floating poker game, Fury became a regular participant; at one
such game he renewed his friendship with Wolverine, now a member of the mutant
X-Men. Despite his respect for super heroes, Fury recognized them as potential l
oose cannons, and S.H.I.E.L.D. formed more than one contingency plan against the
m. For years, Fury balanced his duties against his friendships, not always to hi
s own satisfaction. As S.H.I.E.L.D.'s influence spread, Fury became concerned ab
out internal corruption and worked with ex-agent Mockingbird to expose several c
riminal operations. Fury became the target of the seven-section organization the
Sept, who attacked S.H.I.E.L.D.'s airborne Helicarrier base, overthrew a small
Latin American government, attacked Fury and his men in Egypt, and were tracked
to Hong Kong, where Fury unmasked their leader, the One, as the true Yellow Claw
. A few years later, while investigating use of the Zodiac Key, Fury was stunned
to meet a new Scorpio named Mikel Fury, who claimed to be Jake Fury's son by Am
ber D'Alexis. Working alongside Wolverine, Fury shut down D'Alexis's latest crim
inal operation, but D'Alexis herself held Fury at gunpoint and revealed that Nic
k, not Jake, was Mikel's father. D'Alexis was defeated by Wolverine shortly afte
rward, and Fury took Mikel into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, although he soon escaped.

Soon afterward, Fury learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by artificia
l life-forms called Deltites, who deceived most of Fury's agents, including de l
a Fontaine, into turning against him. Fury and a handful of loyal agents eventua
lly defeated the Deltites, but not before almost all remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agen
ts were seemingly slain; unknown to Fury, the Deltites had been directed by Baro
n Strucker, alive after all, who kept the supposedly dead agents in stasis. S.H.
I.E.L.D. was formally disbanded, and Fury traveled the world to close S.H.I.E.L.
D.'s bases and destroy its most dangerous technology. Physically and emotionally
exhausted, Fury briefly retired in the company of agent Kate Neville, who becam
e his lover.
Months later, Fury left retirement to join de la Fontaine, Neville, and others a
gainst the Death's Head Guard, Gnobians altered by former Nazi geneticist Arnim
Zola and driven by Strucker's hatred of Fury. The Guard slew hundreds of America
n agents before Fury managed to break through their programming, after which the
y committed mass suicide; Strucker later implied that the aliens were in fact cr
eations of Hydra, but this claim seems dubious given the Gnobians' wartime activ
ities. Soon afterward, a new S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Hazard Intervention Espiona
ge Logistics Directorate), designed to be less vulnerable to corruption, was for
med, and Fury became its director. Under Fury, the new S.H.I.E.L.D. renewed ties
with the superhuman community and faced enemies both new and old, including Alg
ernon Crowe, one of the leaders of Mys-Tech, which combined science and magic in
pursuit of conquest. Investigating Mys-Tech's greatest threat, the reality-alte
ring Un-Earth, Fury was slain by Crowe, only to be resurrected when American and
British super heroes reversed time to defeat Mys-Tech. Fury later teamed with t
he United Kingdom's Super-Soldiers against Hydra's Warlord Huang Zhu in the Sava
ge Land.

Despite the new S.H.I.E.L.D.'s early successes, tragedy again struck when Hydra
massacred hundreds of new S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but Hydra inadvertently provided
replacements when Fury discovered the comatose agents believed slain by the Delt
ites. Learning of Strucker's survival, Fury again confronted his nemesis and def
eated him, although Strucker eluded capture. Reunited with his longtime agents a
nd friends, Fury set about expanding S.H.I.E.L.D., which eventually neared the s
ize and complexity of its predecessor. Fury even made peace with his son Mikel,
whom he recruited as an agent to help him when internal strife in Hydra fueled s
ubversive activity in his home neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen.
Sometime later, Fury received a coded distress message from someone called Falle
n Angel, who claimed to be Rick Stoner, long believed dead. Commissioning a spec
ialized LMD (Life Model Decoy) android duplicate from Tony Stark, Fury left the
duplicate in his place and traced the signal to Project: Backslide, an abandoned
S.H.I.E.L.D. experiment, only to be pulled into a pocket dimension with Fallen
Angel, who, regardless of his true identity, died shortly afterward, leaving Fur
y stranded for months. Unknown to Fury, his LMD duplicate captured and tried to
rehabilitate the killer vigilante Punisher; however, the Spook, Fury's longtime
rival, brainwashed the Punisher into assassinating the LMD, believed by all to b
e Fury. Meanwhile, Fury's subconscious had remade the pocket dimension into a du
plicate of wartime Europe, where he relived past Howlers missions. He regained h
is senses through the arrival of Sharon Carter, an agent of the prior S.H.I.E.L.
D., long thought dead; although Carter had come seeking vengeance on Fury, she u
ltimately helped him return to Earth. Fury briefly stepped down from S.H.I.E.L.D
. directorship, leaving Carter to succeed him, but he soon returned, driving him
self harder than ever. One of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most serious setbacks came when the
Helicarrier was hijacked by the Red Skull, who joined forces with the Hate-Mong
er in an effort to spread hatred across the world, but the villains were defeate
d by Fury, Captain America, and their fellow wartime veteran, Namor the Sub-Mari
ner.
Ultimately, despite Fury's best efforts, the second incarnation of S.H.I.E.L.D.
has proven no more immune to corruption than the first, and Fury has grown dubio
us of some of the agency's more inhumane operations, such as the so-called Death
lok project. Fury even briefly lost command of S.H.I.E.L.D., being demoted to a
desk job. Despite ending the threat of former Hydra agent Rudy Gargarin on Napol
eon Island, Fury had to struggle to regain his position. Moreover, as superhuman
incidents become more widespread and devastating, Fury, despite his efforts to
steer government attention away from such allies as Spider-Man and Daredevil, ha
s found himself at odds with the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and even his old fri
ends Captain America and Wolverine, whom he has been reduced to manipulating on
more than one mission, including a recent foray into Latveria that left hard fee
lings all around and resulted in Fury losing directorship of S.H.I.E.L.D. and go
ing into hiding. Fury is now working underground. It remains to be seen how long
Fury can tread the line between conflicting loyalties.