Nick Fury

Nick Fury started as a cigar-chewing sergeant leading the Howling Commandos through occupied Europe, and he has never really stopped fighting that war. The Infinity Formula, administered after a near-fatal wound in France, slowed his ageing to a crawl and gave him seven decades of continuous service. He came out of the Army into the CIA, and out of the CIA into the chair at the top of S.H.I.E.L.D., where he has spent most of his life deciding which secrets the world is allowed to survive.

Fury is the character Marvel uses to ask whether the ends justify the means, and his answer is usually yes. He recruited the Avengers, then compiled contingency files on how to kill each of them. He ran an unsanctioned invasion of Latveria in Secret War and lied to the heroes he used to do it. He went underground for years during Secret Invasion because he trusted a handful of teenage Secret Warriors more than the agency he built. Every version of Fury has the same operating principle: the wall has to hold, and somebody has to be the one who stands on it.

Original Sin turned that metaphor literal. Fury was revealed to be the Man on the Wall, Earth's unilateral first line of defence, quietly killing cosmic threats before anyone knew they existed. The cost was his own humanity and his own name; he handed the job on and became the Unseen, bound to the Moon, watching. Even sidelined, he remains the most dangerous man in the Marvel Universe, because he is the one who knows everything.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos in 1963 as a war comic, then folded Fury into the modern Marvel Universe the same year in Fantastic Four #21 as a CIA colonel. Strange Tales #135 in 1965 made him Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and handed Jim Steranko the psychedelic espionage playground that produced some of the most influential art of the era.

Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. in 1988 blew the organisation up from the inside, revealing Life Model Decoy infiltration at every level and establishing the pattern every later S.H.I.E.L.D. story follows: the agency is always already compromised.

Bendis' Secret War in 2004 exposed Fury's willingness to run black operations using superheroes as unwitting assets, and got him removed from command. During Secret Invasion he ran the resistance from underground with the Secret Warriors, having predicted the Skrull infiltration years earlier.

Original Sin in 2014 delivered the biggest reveal of his career, unmasking him as the Man on the Wall, and ended with Fury becoming the Unseen, permanently stationed on the Moon. Nick Fury Jr., his son Marcus Johnson, took over the S.H.I.E.L.D. role, deliberately designed to resemble Samuel L. Jackson.

The 2002 Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch had already recast Fury in Jackson's image with the actor's blessing, a piece of casting-before-casting that shaped the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.