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Hawks, From the Dove's-Eye
Point of View:
MARVEL COMICS' SGT.
FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS
"War comics" have been a tough sell for the industry, ever since the anti-war dissent movement of the 1960's.
Of the "Big Two" companies (DC and Marvel), it was Superman's mailing address that enjoyed the greater success in this regard, overall. Titles such as STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES; OUR FIGHTING FORCES; ALL-AMERICAN MEN OF WAR; and (in particular) OUR ARMY AT WAR all enjoyed lengthy and successful "runs," while benefiting from the storytelling presence of such industry giants as (say) artists Joe Kubert; Russ Heath; Mort Drucker; and Ross Andru. Even readers such as myself -- who (normally) had roughly as much use for a war comic as would the late Jimi Hendrix for a Debbie Gibson's Greatest Hits album -- would be forced to admit, if pressed: visually, DC's war titles were as flat-out sumptuous as anything on the spinner racks. Period.
In the late 60's/early 70's, DC Comics accorded those of an anti-war sentiment a slight, ameliorative "nod," of sorts, by tagging a teensy-tiny "Make War No More" bullet at the end of every SGT. ROCK tale in the pages of OUR ARMY AT WAR. While I can't speak for any other readers of the day, in this regard... I, for one, always found the sop an annoying one. The standard SGT. ROCK tale, after all, generally portrayed militaristic head-butting as being only slightly less noble and uplifting an affair as blood donoring, or missionary work. After twenty or so pages of watching Rock (along with his regular cast of supporting characters: "the battle-happy joes of Easy Company") exuberantly mowing down half of Rommel's Afrika Corps, or what-have-you... the codicil always seemed an... ummmmm... insincere one, to say the least. "Mixed messages," anyone...?
(Too: given that DC war comics scripter emeritus Robert Kanigher
was -- personal politics-wise -- rather farther to the right-hand side
of the spectrum than practically any other working comics professional
of the day [not passing judgment, here; simply making the observation]...
I dare say that the sincerity of the "Make War No More" sentiment was
-- in all likelihood -- probably not genuine in the altogether.
I'm just sayin', is all.) 
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee -- over on the Marvel Comics side of the street
-- took a slightly... different approach.
If the underlying message of the various DC war titles was "Make War
No More (*wink*wink*)"... then the equally subversive subtext
to the decidedly more cartoon-ish SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS
was: "KIds: Do Not Try This At Home."
The Kanigher war titles for DC always carried with them the faintest trace scent of napalm, and spent cordite; the Lee/Kirby FURY offerings, by way of comparison, had the heady aroma of Saturday matinee popcorn. They owed infinitely more (in storytelling terms) to the episodic hijinks of THE GREAT ESCAPE than, say, the flag-waving histrionics of THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA. [See page reproduction, accompanying, for an example of the series' characteristic tongue-in-cheek bent.]
[Interesting Historical Aside: the entire raison d'être behind Marvel's publishing SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS in the first place was to win a bet. As the story goes: Lee and Kirby -- after having rung up successive sales triumphs with the likes of THE FANTASTIC FOUR; the AVENGERS; CAPTAIN AMERICA; etc., etc., ad infinitum -- were challenged by then-publisher Martin Goodman, point-blank, to try and come up with an equally successful war comic, if they were so bloody smart.
[That Lee and Kirby won that particular wager -- SGT. FURY lasted for something like 160 issues (give or take), and even spawned a (quasi-) "spin-off" title in NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. -- is, of course, beyond rational dispute. Hope that li'l side bet was for something more than "pin money," so far as its ingenious creators were concerned.]
Not that I'm making any great claims on behalf of the series in terms of Genuine Artistic Distinction, mind, now. The "HowlingCommandos" themselves were (by and large) character stereotypes so blatant and unblushing, they could have been cobbled up by the original cast of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Particularly ludicrous, in this regard, was the foppish British commando "Percival Pinkerton": a bespectacled, bumbershoot-toting "I say; a bit of a rum go, eh wot?"-style caricature so unrelievedly silly, one wouldn't have been at all surprised if the House of Parliament had decided to declare retaliatory war on the colonies anew, just on general principles. [See pictures, above]
Too: Lee's insistence upon dragging the standard, Marvel-style "super-heroics"
into the storytelling proceedings at any and every given opportunity --
within the first year of the title's run, alone, the Howling Commandos
met such (then) modern Marvel mainstays as Captain America; a pre-FANTASTIC
FOUR Reed Richards; Helmut Zemo (complete with obligatory "death ray");
and the insufferable Baron Strucker [see picture, accompanying] -- served
to render the entire wartime affair sufficiently like unto an issue of,
say, TALES OF SUSPENSE to con just enough of the
readership into forking over twelve cents American month in and month
out, without their having to otherwise rationalize having added an (ugh)
"war comic" to their list of regular purchases. If Stan Lee was
as shameless and self-promoting a sideshow huckster and snake-oil salesman
as the comics medium has ever seen (and he was)... grant him this much,
at the very least: the man knew how to close a sale.
Still: it would be an almost criminal misreading of the FURY canon to state, baldly, that the series was devoid of any serious orworthwhile content whatsoever. Unlike the (seemingly) all-but-immortal members of Sgt. Rock's "Easy Company," the Commandos (and their supporting cast) lost more than one round to The Guy With the Scythe. As early as their fourth issue, one of Fury's men -- the baby-faced soldier known as "Junior" Juniper -- managed to amble his way directly into the path of a particularly indiscriminate Nazi bullet .
In an era where Real, Honest, No Foolin' D-E-A-T-H was still a comparative rarity, within the comics medium: the moment served as a sort of clarion "wake-up" call to the thunderstruck readership. Other than (obviously) the series' perpetually beard-stubbled title protagonist... no one within the pages of the SGT. FURY comic could be counted "safe," push come to shove.
The single finest issue of the title's run, in fact -- and (in the opinion of Your Humble Narrator) one of the most well-written and affecting of all the 60's Marvel Comics tales -- drove precisely this point home with a sickening (albeit unforgettable) sort of finality.
The Jack Kirby/Stan Lee duo may well have collaborated on tales the equal of issue #18's "Killed In Action"... but, I guarantee you this: in the entirety of their long and fruitful association... they never came up with anything to surpass it. [See cover reproduction, accompanying]
A bit of preamble, however, before diving into the tale outright: Nick Fury had earlier met the aristocratic and dove-gentle "Lady Pamela Hawley" in the midst of a Luftwaffe-orchestrated bombing raid inthe very heart of London.
Said introduction was anything but an auspicious one, even given the rather strained circumstances thereof: Lady Pamela thought the brusque, no-nonsense American sergeant "a great, uncultured ape," and Fury -- for his part -- opined that the lady was "a professional sob-sister."
Not to put too fine a point on things, then: nobody was thinking "wedding
invitations," at this point in the narrative.
In the very best "B"-war movie tradition, however: the He and the She continue to occupy one another's thoughts, long after the passage of the initial crisis has seen them return to their respective (and wildly disparate) milieus. A second chance encounter, a little later on, forces each to endure the other's company, once again; and...
... I know; I know. You can already see it coming, of course.
You know it; I know it. God forbid that the Lee/Kirby axis
actually allow any of their characters, within any of their numerous
60's offerings, to actually be happy for more than fifteen minutes
at a time... max. If there has ever been any more nakedly
sadistic a storytelling "formula" than that employed with such relentlessly
gruesome syncopation by these two
gents, it probably involved the application of hypodermic needles and
piano wire. I'm just sayin', is all.
Approximately one and a half years ("real world" time) anent that fateful fledgling encounter, Nicholas Fury finally worked up the requisite gumption to shudder his way to the front door of the Hawley family's ancestral estate, an engagement ring death-gripped in one massive, white- knuckled paw... and... and...
... well: I certainly can't tell the tale any more gut-wrenchingly than did Stan Lee and Jack "King" Kirby, for pity's sake.
For all of its cheery commingling of bare-chested machismo and jingoistic platitudinizing... SGT, FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS -- in rubbing its readership's collective skin raw with the sandpaper awareness that Man Is Mortal, and Thus Must Perish -- was, ironically, more studiedly "anti-war" in its storytelling stance than all of the (comparatively) empty "Make War No More" epistles of DC's highly-touted war comics line, altogether.
Robert Kanigher may have talked a good game, in that regard...
but: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were the ones hitting all the three-point
shots all the way down from center court.
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