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Warning: this article includes depictions of violence.
The most gruesome kill of Nick Fury‘s long career shows why even the Punisher has to bow to his status as Marvel’s deadliest man alive. The kill comes in a comic published under Marvel’s MAX Comics imprint – a brand launched in 2001 to cover adults-only comics including Jessica Jones’ Alias, the Supreme Power continuity and multiple Punisher comics.
In Get Fury #5, Frank Castle (still a US marine, prior to his days as the Punisher) rescues Nick Fury from the Hỏa Lò Prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton), where he’s being severely tortured by North Vietnamese forces for military secrets. Posing as a Russian officer, Castle uses the kidnapped General Tranh to get into the facility and rescue a traumatized Fury. Unfortunately for Tranh, Fury turns his rage on the captured general, blinding and murdering him in the back of the Punisher’s car.
The escape is made possible by Fury’s former lover Phuong Thuy Tram and the daughter he never met before, Bian. Fury’s horrifying murder of General Tranh while bellowing “Climb inside you pull your spine out” follows a long tradition of Garth Ennis’ writing for Nick Fury and the Punisher under MAX Comics, with collaborator Jacen Burrows bringing his extensive horror experience to the scene.
Ennis and Burrows previously worked together on zombie horror
Crossed
– likely the most violent comic ever published, with even
Walking Dead
creator
Robert Kirkman calling it too much
for his sensibilities.
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Frank Castle and Nick Fury’s Official Team-Up Continues Ennis’ Punisherverse
Get Fury sees Fury kidnapped by the ‘Viet Cong,’ with shadowy officials within the US Military ordering sharpshooter Frank Castle to kill him before he can divulge secrets to the enemy. Unfortunately for them, the corrupt officials misunderstood Castle and Fury’s connection, and the future-Punisher has done everything he can to recover Fury alive, albeit utterly brutalized by his captors. Punisher and Fury’s history was explored in both Ennis’ Punisher MAX and Fury: My War Gone By which exist in the same continuity, with Ennis depicting Fury as a man “in love with war” who has spent his life as a key figure in America’s modern conflicts.
This story is set between Ennis’ Punisher:The Platoon (with Goran Parlov and Jordie Bellaire) and his epic Born, at a point in Frank Castle’s career where he has been broken down by the horrors of the Vietnam War, but has not yet experienced the massacre that will take him beyond return or the murder of his family which will transform him into the Punisher. Ennis has been writing Punisher for decades, telling Frank Castle’s most brutal and explicit stories, but also those which dig deepest into his psychology and the reasoning he uses to justify his vigilante war on crime.
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However, Ennis has long depicted Fury as a more despicable figure – someone who could have helped prevent some of the great conflicts of the 20th Century but instead added fuel to the fire in order to feed his own addiction, ending up miserable and alone. Ennis depicts Punisher as an obsessed killer who places faultless planning and innocent lives above anything else, reserving cruelty for only the worst of the worst. In contrast, Fury is willing to plunge entire countries into war if it serves his interests. If a character was going to literally reach inside someone to kill them in Ennis’ Punisher-verse, it makes sense it would be Nick Fury.
Stan Lee Didn’t Approve of How MAX Treats Nick Fury
The Boys Creator Garth Ennis Didn’t Let Lee’s Disapproval Slow Him Down
One person who was never a fan of Ennis’ Nick Fury was the character’s co-creator (along with Jack Kirby), Stan Lee. Lee saw Fury as an out-and-out hero, and famously disliked stories that hinted at corruption on the character’s part. Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story shares an anecdote of Lee banning any reprinting of a story which saw Fury embezzling funds to get the life-extending Infinity Formula.
It’s therefore understandable that Stan Lee was no fan of Ennis’ take on Fury, with Ennis recently telling Comic Book Resources that, “I know that among others Stan Lee didn’t like it, but never having read any of his comics that doesn’t mean as much to me as it might to some.” Ennis’ ultra-violence will understandably be divisive for fans of Nick Furyas a dashing super-spy, but it’s hard to argue that if there’s going to be an R-rated story where Nick Fury brutally kills someone by reaching down their throat, Ennis’ Punisher MAX universe is the place to tell it.
Get Fury #5 is available from Marvel Comics now.
Source: Brian Cronin for Comic Book Resources
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