Newsstand Classic: The Cars Of Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Sixties Supercars By Kirby And Steranko

Long before he appeared on big screens played by Samuel L. Jackson, Nick Fury was a stalwart of Marvel comic books, the cigar-smoking head of one of those acronymic spy agencies that littered popular entertainment in the Swinging Sixties. As every James Bond fan knows, any secret agent worth his salt needs at least one exotic sports car festooned with gadgets, and Fury was no exception. Let’s take a look at the cars of Nick’s ’60s heyday, as rendered by comic book superstars Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko.

“Don’t Yield — Back S.H.I.E.L.D.!”

Secret agent Nick Fury, more recently a staple of the live-action “Marvel Cinematic Universe” movies and shows, made his first comic book appearance back in 1963. One of the many, many Marvel characters created by the legendary Jack Kirby, the comic book Nick Fury (who was white until the early ’00s) was originally the pugnacious, cigar-chomping star of an over-the-top WW2 war comic with the absurd title Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, but before 1963 was out, a present-day Fury had popped up in Kirby’s Fantastic Four superhero series, now pushing 50 and a colonel with G-2 Army intelligence, working with the CIA.

 

This was of course the heyday of James Bond, Danger Man, and The Avengers (John Steed & company), so in 1965, Kirby and Marvel editor/publisher/gadfly Stan Lee decided to make Nick Fury the star of a new modern-day adventure strip, inspired by James Bond and the Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series. They were originally going to call it The Man Called D.E.A.T.H., with the acronym standing for Director of External Atomic Threat Headquarters, but it finally emerged later that year as Nick Fury, Agent of AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. (“Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division”).

 

In the first installment (whose cover is pictured above), Fury, now sporting an eye patch, but still smoking his ever-present stogies, is reassigned to lead S.H.I.E.L.D. against an evil organization called Hydra, although he protests that he’s still just a “bar room brawler” from Hell’s Kitchen, a tough-talking blue-collar lug ill at ease with high-stakes international intrigue and the endless array of super-science gadgetry. Naturally, said gadgetry included appropriately exotic cars, in particular a modified Porsche 904 that made Bond’s Aston Martin look sick.

The 1964–1965 Porsche 904, officially called Porsche Carrera GTS, was a mid-engined GT, with a fiberglass body (designed by Butzi Porsche) bonded to a steel ladder frame. It originally had the Type 587/3 DOHC flat four, making 180 hp from 1,966 cc (120 cu. in.), and was capable of up to 160 mph depending on gearing. Some late 1965 cars substituted the 1,991 cc (122 cu. in.) SOHC flat six, with about 200 hp. Although obviously intended primarily for competition, Porsche had to sell at least 100 cars for homologation purposes, so you could buy a 904 (for DM 29,700 in West Germany, $7,245 in the U.S., not including shipping) and drive it on the street if you were so inclined. Total production is apparently controversial, but Porsche puts the total at 108, not including later rebuilds or recreations.

 

For my money, the 904 remains the most attractive car Porsche has ever built, but its enviable real-world competition record pales before the lethal capabilities of the S.H.I.E.L.D. version:

 

You’ll note that Nick isn’t actually driving the 904 here — at this point, he’s just being recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

Now, there are three kinds of comics artists in this world: those who can draw cars, those who can’t, and those who resent being expected to try. Kirby could, after a fashion, but after the strip’s first installment, he was simply too overextended to contribute more than plots and layouts, which were finished by others, not always to good effect. The story in Strange Tales #149, for instance, featured a character called Count Royale, who drove around in what was supposed to be a Bugatti Type 41 Royale. Unfortunately, in the hands of artist Ogden Whitney, who drew the finished art from Kirby’s rough breakdowns, it was strictly in the “Okay, if you say so …” category:

 

For reference, here’s an actual Bugatti Royale, the first of the actual production cars, with a 12,763 cc (779 cu. in.) — yes, you read that right — SOHC 24-valve straight eight, making an estimated 300 hp. Now owned by Bugatti (which today is part of Volkswagen Group), this car was originally built with a roadster body, but it now has a Coupé de Ville body by Henri Binder, modeled on the first “Coupé Napoleon” prototype used by Ettore Bugatti himself, which Le Patron crashed in 1931.

 

While neither of the De Ville bodies had side mounts, the 1933 Park Ward limousine did, so combining the two isn’t too unreasonable. (Many Bugattis were rebodied over the years, sometimes more than once.)

The Coming of … STERANKO

With its inconsistent art and lack of creative focus, the S.H.I.E.L.D. strip struggled through its first year and a half without much impact. In the fall of 1966, however, a new creative force arrived on the scene: Jim Steranko, commercial artist, stage magician, and man of a thousand talents (including a flair for self-promotion that makes separating fact from fabulism a little challenging). He took over the S.H.I.E.L.D. strip with Strange Tales #151.

 

If we’re being honest, Steranko’s comic book art was sometimes a little shaky on basic anatomy and perspective — he had no formal art training — but he recaptured the dizzy energy of Kirby’s first issue while injecting a hefty dose of ’60s Pop Art style. The scope of the S.H.I.E.L.D. stories already offered a glimpse of what famed production designer Ken Adam might have accomplished if you’d given him the entire Pentagon budget to play with; Steranko added an array of half-tone effects, photo collage, Op Art, and flashes of brain-melting psychedelia. Crammed into 10- and 12-page installments, it was seldom very coherent, but it was a trip, and it’s been enormously influential for almost six decades now.

 

But we’re concerned here with cars, and in this area, Steranko’s major contribution was to write off Fury’s Porsche 904 in favor of an even wilder new ride: a Ferrari 330 P4 Berlinetta.

 

The 330 P4 was Ferrari’s entry for the 1967 International Championship for Sports-Prototypes, a development of the previous year’s P3 (one P4 was a rebuilt P3) with a new body and a short-wheelbase, wide-track chassis. The V-12 engine, still mounted longitudinally amidships (the “P” stood for “Posterior”), had dual overhead cams and 36 valves, making 450 hp with Lucas fuel injection, enough for a top speed of about 200 mph (320 km/h). In February, the factory team’s 330 P4 cars had made a dramatic 1-2-3 finish at the 24 Hours of Daytona, avenging Ferrari’s stinging defeat at Le Mans the previous year. Ferrari didn’t win at Le Mans in 1967, but they did eventually take the manufacturer’s cup on points.

 

Driver Chris Amon, who switched to Ferrari in 1967, called the 330 P4 “a very pleasant car to drive … a great deal more nimble than the Fords I was used to.” As a sports-prototype, though, it was in no way a street car, even to the extent of a Porsche 904 or the “road” version of the Ford GT40, and Ferrari only ever built four examples. However, none of that was any impediment to the talented gadgeteers working for superspy Nick Fury:

 

A transparent fiberglass Ferrari 330 engine sounds like something esteemed CC contributor Peter Wilding might build, rather than something that would ever run, but any semblance of realism has long since left the building by this point:

 

Color-changing rheostats! Infrared headlights! Miniature vortex beams for flight capability (rather than mere “Mach pressure fans” in the wheel hubs)! The “usual arsenal”! The mind boggles. As Gaffer says in the last panel, “Wait’ll that guy Bond gets a load’a THAT baby!”

I should note that the actual displacement of a Ferrari 330 engine was 3,969 cc (242 cu. in.) — the “330” name was the nominal swept volume of one cylinder — although some cars were later converted to 350 Can-Am spec, bringing displacement to 4,176 cc (255 cu. in.) and power to 480 hp. I think that Steranko might have gotten its specifications a bit mixed up with the SOHC Colombo V-12 in the 365GT, which was 4.4 liters (4,390 cc, 268 cu. in.), but the 330 P4 engine did have twin distributors (presumably Marelli, as on Ferrari street cars), it was linked to a five-speed gearbox, and it really did have a top speed of 200 mph. It was not armed, however, for which I’m sure Ford drivers were grateful.

Departing with a Bang

Steranko didn’t stick around at Marvel for very long — he also had a full-time job as an advertising art director — and he left the series soon after NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. was promoted to its own title. Before he departed, however, Steranko gave Fury’s flying Ferrari 330 P4 a suitably dramatic send-off:

 

If you’re wondering, the figure responsible for the Op Art effects is the villain Scorpio, who later turned out — not in this particular story — to be Fury’s long-lost brother. (Who knew?) In the later, non-Steranko issues, S.H.I.E.L.D. got Fury another Ferrari 330 P4, but since the art in those issues is mostly of the “can’t draw cars and resents being expected to try” variety, I’ll spare your eyes.

Without Steranko or Kirby, the Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series ran out of steam and expired in the mid-’70s, although it’s been revived many times since then. The current comic book version of Nick Fury (who, like the onscreen version played by Sam Jackson, is Black) is the son of the original, whom Marvel eventually put out to pasture. The younger Nick doesn’t seem to be much of a car guy, though, while his screen counterpart went from a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice (in the flashback sequences of 2019’s Captain Marvel) to a GMT921 Chevrolet Tahoe and later an Infiniti QX50 SUV — the devil works hard, but product placement works harder.