Top of the Pile - 1/2/2013

Fury MAX #8
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Goran Parlov
Marvel

Fury MAX #8 was the first thing I wanted to read from this weeks comic buy. This book, by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov beat out a couple Image books and New Avengers #1. Why? Because I love the story Ennis is telling.


This series tells the tale of Nick Fury during the Cold War. This isn’t the Samuel Jackson, Avengers Nick Fury. This is a hybrid old school Nick Fury – Howlin’ Commando and Nick Fury agent of SHIELD. Nick is in all the good Cold War hot spots. Fighting with the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, riding along with exiled Cuban nationals into the Bay of Pigs, and in the current story we find Nick back in Vietnam teamed up with Frank Castle in an assassination attempt on a NVA general.

It is obvious that Ennis loves his history. He crafts a compelling story concerning the realpolitik of the Cold War where the United States wasn’t necessarily doing good things around the world. He’s telling a tale where dirty work was done in secret to further American interests abroad. And what the coolest thing about this book is that Nick Fury is the guy doing most of this work. With this issue, we’re up into the Nixon administration, so Vietnam is close to being complete. I hope he has another story arc or two in him to continue. Perhaps Ennis can let Nick help take out Salvador Allende or perhaps have him work with Oliver North on the Iran-Contra fiasco.

And the art work by Parlov looks like the great old school European comic book artists, it made me look up his bio to learn more about him. It turns out he isn’t one of the old timers like Jacques Tardi, Jean Giraud. His work could even be compared to Milton Caniff, it’s that retro/cool.

However, this book is definitely mature. There are several F-bombs and Nick gets it on once or twice with the senators secretary. So I would not add this series in the teen area. But it is a great bit of storytelling that libraries should consider buying.