Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #3

History

Writer Bob Harras and penciler Paul Neary produced the full six-issue miniseries as a deliberate revival of the Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. franchise, which had been without a dedicated ongoing title for nearly two decades. The series was edited by Mark Gruenwald with Gregory Wright as managing editor and Tom DeFalco as editor-in-chief, and each issue was formatted as an oversized 48-page 'book' at a prestige price point — unusual for a direct-market Marvel release of the era. Harras consciously built on the Steranko-era aesthetic, and the cover artists recruited for the series — Jim Steranko himself on issues #1 and #3, Bill Sienkiewicz, Joe Jusko, Kevin Nowlan, and Tom Palmer — amounted to a deliberate statement of reverence for the spy-comics tradition. The series sold strongly enough that Marvel greenlit a new ongoing *Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.* series in 1989, which ran for 47 issues, with Harras writing the opening arc.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Bob Harras, penciled by Paul Neary, inked by Kim DeMulder; the cover for #3 is a painted piece by M. D. Bright (not Steranko, despite Steranko's association with issues #1 and the series overall).
• First appearance of Alexander Pierce (Alexander Goodwin Pierce): a sleeper S.H.I.E.L.D. agent working as an accountant in Philadelphia who Fury coerces into service as his right-hand man — the comic-book source character later reimagined by Robert Redford in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).
• First appearance of Kate Neville: S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy's top marksman, operating undercover at a Philadelphia office, who becomes a recurring team member through the 1989–92 ongoing series.
• First appearance of CIA operative Al MacKenzie (Alphonso 'Mac' MacKenzie), who saves fellow agent John Adams Allen (also debuting here) from a Deltite kill squad.
• First appearance of Madame Hydra Six and the Obadiah Stane LMD, further expanding the scope of the Deltite replacement program to include Hydra leadership and high-profile industrialists.
• The issue's climactic confirmation scene — in which a captured Eric Koenig LMD physically burns and melts in front of Fury after Tony Stark's LMD detector registers a false negative — is the first on-page proof that the advanced Deltite LMDs can defeat S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own detection technology.
• Tony Stark appears as an active participant in Fury's underground coalition, arriving with an LMD detector and establishing himself as a critical but imperfect resource in the conspiracy investigation.
• The entire miniseries — including this issue — was collected in the S.H.I.E.L.D.: Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. trade paperback, reprinted in a new Marvel printing in 2013, and was also reprinted in the Italian Nick Fury Contro S.H.I.E.L.D. series (Play Press, 1989).

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