1994-2001
The 'Death' and Return of Nick Fury
Following the demise of the second S.H.I.E.L.D. comic, Nick Fury was in dire need of some recharging as a character. As promised in the final letter pages of the defunct S.H.I.E.L.D. title, Nick Fury returned for a one-shot in 1994 which tried to at last to bury the Delitite Affair and give Fury a fresh start with a poor re-tooling of his origin as S.H.I.E.L.D. director. This one shot signaled a final end to the continuity and material of a storyline which began six years ago in the Nick Fury Vs S.H.I.E.L.D. miniseries.
That same year, Howard Chaykin returned with Scorpio Rising and in effect laid down a new arc for Fury to follow in the next three busy years. Reintroducing Mikel, aka Scorpio added a new dimension to Fury as he tried to establish a relationship with his grown son through most of Chaykin's work on Fury in this period; and many of the stories feature Fury's re-examination of his life, job, and his relationship with others. His supporting cast fell to the ever reliable Dum Dum and Val, in addition to Scorpio. In keeping with the reconciliation with Tony Stark in the 1994 one shot, Nick comes to better terms with Scorpio (Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and the Contessa (Double Edge). All this leads up to his "death" in 1995, thereby finally purging the last of the old angst that dogged him in previous years. With his return in 1996, Nick Fury was a new man.
With
the business of Fury's death and return squared away, the character
was at last experiencing a healthy return to the comic pages. Inspired
by the paranoia entertainment of programs like X-Files and The Pretender,
Marvel writers were now stripping S.H.I.E.L.D. of its all-powerful "save
the world" ethic from the 60's and early 70's and shearing it with
a darker vision of conspiracies and background manipulations.
Reinvigorated, Nick Fury was free from the self-doubts
that beset him in the 80's and was now a man hell-bent to restore order,
and more importantly humanity into the world of espionage. After nearly
a decade of bordering on being an anti-hero, Fury was returning to his
heroic roots. Lacking his own solo title, Fury returned to familiar territory
in the pages of the hot-selling Captain America, under the pen of Dan Jurgens,
and the offbeat third attempt at a new Deathlok. After nearly four decades,
the character was breaking new ground with his first adventures in paperback
(the novel Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. : Empyre), television (the
FOX tv movie Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. starring David Hasselhoff) and
the internet(the cybercomic Jungle Warfare).
For more on this era of Nick Fury check out the links below