Thursday, October 26, 2006

Laundry day at S.H.I.E.L.D.? Or Nick Fury's hunting weekend?

Jesus, Nick, just because you're fighting werewolves doesn't mean you have to make a shirt out of the ones you kill. Hopefully, they don't use every part of the werewolf. Ick. I'm also hard-pressed to explain the background agents in the green-and-orange.



From Captain America #164, "Queen of the Werewolves!" Written by Steve Englehart, art by Alan Lee Weiss. The 'Queen' in question is Nightshade, sometimes referred to as Deadly Nightshade, making her first appearance here. She's an underage mad scientist who apparently wants to become a Blaxsploitation style super villainess, and I have to admit, creating a formula to build an army of werewolves might be the way to go on that one. She's not quite ready for the big time, yet, though: Cap thinks of her as "a little girl posing, playing grown up," and then when a transformed Falcon fails to kill Cap, Nightshade breaks down crying. The Yellow Claw then pulls her funding, while scratching an "amusing" werewolf behind the ears.

Although she appears to die in the end, leading a lemming-like pack of werewolves in jumping off a tower, Nightshade would return here and there, and I know she was in the infamous (yet still entertaining) Cap-Wolf story years later. Still, Cap, what do you think of her 'Deadly' monicker?



Well, Cap deserves a good laugh, anyway.

I'm still just at a loss on Nick's outfit, and that he and his agents arrive in helicopters, when I'm conditioned to expect from S.H.I.E.L.D. cool flying cars and dark blue jumpsuits and psuedo-scientific guns. Perhaps hunting werewolves is just like hunting deer or elk, and they have to wear hunter's orange. That almost explains the fur shirt, all the knives, and the revolver. Sure it does.

4 comments:

SallyP said...

Maybe they were on a Snipe hunt, and JUST HAPPENED to run into the Werewolves? Hey, it could happen. And everyone knows that you always wear orange when Snipe hunting. My guess is that Fury is an "autumn" and the orange goes better with his skin tone. Must get bored with wearing black all the time. Hehe.

Anonymous said...

Nick was in the middle of his solo in the SHIELD production of Conan: The Barbarian: The Musical, when the werewolf call came in.

Anonymous said...

SHIELD's wardrobe department was never the same after Steranko left.

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Ha ha. Cap's comments pretty much say it all. Goddamn, those colors are FUGLY! Looks like Hasbro's missing out on not making those version of Nick an action figure though. He should come with his own SHIELD-approved deer stand, 30 odd-6 rifle, and container of deer piss and a can of skoal.