Biography of Nick Fury, 1965-1966

The following is a biography of Nick Fury from 1965 to 1966, in which Col. Fury became the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and fended off threats from Hydra and other villains.

Biography

Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

In 1965, Col. Nick Fury was mysteriously called to the Pentagon by the U.S. government. There, he was hastily and covertly transported to a secret location by a man who said he was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., a secretive international defense organization. The two were attacked by assassins from Hydra, an equally secretive organization from whom S.H.I.E.L.D. fights to protect the planet. The agent took Fury aboard S.H.I.E.L.D.'s airborne helicarrier, where he met Tony Stark, head of the group's special weapons division. Fury also noticed a number of well-known international dignitaries and leaders present. Stark told Fury that S.H.I.E.L.D. had chosen him to be their new Director. Fury initially scoffed, seeing himself as a simple soldier who couldn't compare with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s high-tech, espionage approach. At that moment, Fury noticed a bomb hidden nearby and managed to throw it out the window before it produced a massive explosion. A Hydra technician on the helicarrier was found and held captive. Realizing the dire importance of his task, Fury accepted the role of Director, entering a new chapter of his life.

Hydra and the betatron bomb

One day, after he had become fully acclimated to his job as director, Fury was walking to a S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in New York, concealed in a barber shop. On the way, he detected a number of Hydra agents tailing him. Upon arriving at the barber shop, he notified the undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agents working there that a couple of Hydra spies were coming in immediately after him. They used the tip to quickly restrain the spies, and Fury used a hypno-beam to plant false memories in their minds: namely, that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s HQ was in an abandoned warehouse nearby. Fury went through a secret entrance into an underground control center below the barber shop and waited to spring his trap. A large Hydra force broke into the warehouse, where Fury surrounded them with hydraulic steel walls and flooded them with a sticky goo, trapping them perfectly and leaving them easy to take into custody. Fury also attended the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, acting as head of security along with a number of other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and helping deflect attacks from Hydra and myriad other villains.

Some time later, a Hydra agent defecting to S.H.I.E.L.D. attempted to bring a roll of microfilm containing the launch site of a giant betatron bomb belonging to Hydra. Though he made the handoff as planned, he and three other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were killed, and Hydra recovered the microfilm. Fury, Gabriel Jones, and Dum Dum Dugan decided to travel to the Balkans, where S.H.I.E.L.D. intel had estimated the bomb's launch site to be, and find it for themselves. As the three traveled to Europe in a S.H.I.E.L.D. intercontinental ballistic plane (I.B.P.), they witnessed the launch of the bomb. They bombed the launch site anyway to destroy anything or anyone that might be left over. Later, Fury and the others traveled to Tony Stark's factory in New York to observe an image of the bomb in orbit via a S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite. Hydra planned to leave the bomb in orbit for the time being, using it as leverage with which to extort the nations of the world. Fury spoke with Tony Stark, who told him that destroying the bomb would result in a fallout that would harm millions of people on Earth. Stark led Fury to a room containing a major weapon he was working on called a "braino-saur," but they were tailed by stealthy Hydra assassins, who captured and apprehended Fury despite his valiant efforts to resist. Stark sealed himself inside a bulletproof container, blocking any Hydra attempts to get to him. A huge Hydra tank soon arrived and shot Fury in a rocket-propelled transportation device to Hydra's base.

Hydra subjected Fury to psychological torment via their image-inducer machine, attempting to extract information about the braino-saur. He resisted their interrogation, and they placed him in confinement. He was visited by a young woman in Hydra garb known as Agent G, who was apparently the estranged daughter of the organization's supreme leader. She helped him escape, and the two began to fight their way out through defending Hydra forces. They met up with a S.H.I.E.L.D. rescue team led by Dugan and Jones on their way out. Meanwhile, in space, Stark piloted the braino-saur—a highly sophisticated craft capable of carefully disarming a bomb—and removed the betatron bomb's atomic charge, eliminating Hydra's threat to the planet.

Fury and the others went through the base rounding up the defeated Hydra agents. They emerged in a mundane building above the secret base and found the woman's father, the supreme Imperial Hydra, dead on the floor, sans his Hydra garb. The man was Arnold Brown, Laura's father, and a secretary at Imperial Industries International. Laura was inconsolable at her father's death, and Fury let her run free, disregarding his allies' protests. Returning to S.H.I.E.L.D. H.Q., Fury was summoned to the organization's extrasensory-perception (ESP) wing, where he was subject to an unexpected assault of telepathy "alarm waves." Nearby agents equipped him with a scramble helmet that guarded him from the waves and explained that it was part of an experiment. A scientist further explained that a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent known as Mentallo was capable of telepathy, and that this equipment would allow S.H.I.E.L.D. to repel any potential attacks from him.

Mentallo and the Fixer

S.H.I.E.L.D. quickly began to devote resources to finding Mentallo. They attached a number of ESP-sensitive subjects to a screen, allowing them to broadcast their thoughts visually. The psychics located Mentallo, and witnessed him meeting with an engineer-criminal known as the Fixer in an undersea base. Unfortunately, they had no way to know the location of this base, and so Fury and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. were forced to wait for Mentallo and Fixer to make the first move. This first move happened soon enough, as the villainous duo used Fixer's supreme technological capacity to force their way into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters from underground. Fury and a group of agents went to meet them, but they were quickly overwhelmed by Fixer's weaponry and Mentallo's telepathy. The duo used special shells that contained "element Z," which knocked its victims stiff and unconscious. They took Fury captive and equipped him with an electronic mask that allowed them to control his actions.

Fixer and Mentallo took Fury to the S.H.I.E.L.D. command center, where they attached him to a hydrogen bomb that would detonate if he tried to detach himself from it. They removed his mask, allowing him to send covert mental signals to S.H.I.E.L.D. Two snipers soon arrived and used melting rounds to destroy their mental scramble helmets, then S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ESP division began to assault the room. They couldn't narrow their focus any further, so Fury took the attacks as well as the enemies, though Mentallo took a great deal more damage due to his heightened sensitivity. Tony Stark led a number of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents into the room, where Stark used a huge "neutralizer" weapon to essentially melt the bomb to ash. Mentallo and Fixer were taken into custody, and Mentallo was found to have lost his mental abilities in the attack.

The Druid's egg-scruciating endeavor

Shortly after Mentallo and Fixer were taken into custody, a S.H.I.E.L.D. atomic jet taking off from the Helicarrier was hit and taken down by a large, egg-like object. Fury quickly came onto the scene and entered the plane in an attempt to shut off the nuclear reactor inside, as S.H.I.E.L.D. rescue forces tried to put out the fire consuming the surrounding area. Fury successfully disarmed the reactor with seconds to spare, preventing a massive explosion. Later, as Fury and Dugan were driving down a suburban road, Fury found that they were being chased by what looked to be another flying egg. The egg employed a number of sophisticated weapons against the agents, but they were able to shoot it down. They returned to the barbershop base in New York, where they met a new graduate of S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy named Jasper Sitwell, who was all too eager to prove himself as an agent.

Fury ordered a set of LMDs of himself to be created to act as bait for the next egg attack. His plan was for the egg to perhaps take the decoy back somewhere, but in fact it would simply destroy the decoy and leave. Five such LMDs wound up destroyed, and Fury decided to ask the Fixer, still in custody, for any assistance he could offer. Fixer discussed the fact that his own technology—and ominous orders—largely came from an unidentified "them," but denied that they were responsible for the eggs. Later, Fury and others investigated the crash site of another egg, which he quickly deduced was intended as bait. Indeed, the culprit soon revealed himself to be a man called the Druid. Strangely, the ostensibly mystical Druid possessed a great deal of engineering knowledge, hence the eggs. He declared his intent to "destroy every law-enforcement agency in the land." Fury fought the Druid head-to-head, while a small army of the Druid's henchmen attacked the other S.H.I.E.L.D. forces. S.H.I.E.L.D. won the day, with Sitwell in particular applying himself impressively, and the Druid was taken into custody.