The Twelve

[style]

Read the first issue nuff said!!!

[zuludelta]

Heard about this series when the artist was previewing his character designs on Newsarama. Looks good, might pick up the eventual (and inevitable) trade. One very very minor nit-pick though. For a book that features old Marvel/Timely/Atlas characters, they sure goofed on Nick Fury's appearance... Nick didn't start wearing an eyepatch until after the Second World War (IIRC, he lost his vision in his eye in a fight with Scorpio, after he became a SHIELD agent in the 1960s). Of course, that's something only a closet comic geek like me would probably pick up on, so no harm no foul.

[bredon7777]

It was a very good first issue.  And JMS can usually get out around a dozen issues befoer things start to go seriously downhill, so I have high hopes for this.

[GhostMachine]

Heard about this series when the artist was previewing his character designs on Newsarama. Looks good, might pick up the eventual (and inevitable) trade. One very very minor nit-pick though. For a book that features old Marvel/Timely/Atlas characters, they sure goofed on Nick Fury's appearance... Nick didn't start wearing an eyepatch until after the Second World War (IIRC, he lost his vision in his eye in a fight with Scorpio, after he became a SHIELD agent in the 1960s). Of course, that's something only a closet comic geek like me would probably pick up on, so no harm no foul.

Fury's eye was actually damaged by shrapnel from a grenade during WW2, but he didn't lose his vision until later on - the fight with his brother; maybe the scenes of him wearing an eyepatch in WW2 take place around the time it was originally injured?

(I'm guessing the re-injury thing is a retcon to explain the eyepatch, because I seem to remember him wearing an eyepatch in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s first appearance, and his brother (Scorpio) didn't show up until later on after he was already wearing the eyepatch....)

[zuludelta]

Ah, I mis-remembered... Fury didn't lose his left eye in a battle against Scorpio when he was already in SHIELD, he started using the eyepatch after WWII in the 1950s during his time with the CIA (the explanation was that he had injured the eye in the war, and the injury got progressively worse so as to need an eyepatch later... why they simply didn't go with the simpler story that Fury injured his eye between WWII and the 1960s, I can't say).

I think the eyepatch confusion comes from the Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos comics that ran alongside the Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD comics in the 1960s. The Sgt. Fury book was supposed to be a showcase for flashback stories of Fury's WWII exploits (where he was drawn by Jack Kirby without an eyepatch) while the Agent of SHIELD comic was supposed to be his present-day adventures with SHIELD (where he was drawn by Jim Steranko with an eyepatch). I don't think they ever actually told the "eye getting injured in the war" story in the Sgt. Fury book, or maybe they did, but not too many people read it.

[GhostMachine]

Ah, I mis-remembered... Fury didn't lose his left eye in a battle against Scorpio when he was already in SHIELD, he started using the eyepatch after WWII in the 1950s during his time with the CIA (the explanation was that he had injured the eye in the war, and the injury got progressively worse so as to need an eyepatch later... why they simply didn't go with the simpler story that Fury injured his eye between WWII and the 1960s, I can't say).

I think the eyepatch confusion comes from the Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos comics that ran alongside the Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD comics in the 1960s. The Sgt. Fury book was supposed to be a showcase for flashback stories of Fury's WWII exploits (where he was drawn by Jack Kirby without an eyepatch) while the Agent of SHIELD comic was supposed to be his present-day adventures with SHIELD (where he was drawn by Jim Steranko with an eyepatch). I don't think they ever actually told the "eye getting injured in the war" story in the Sgt. Fury book, or maybe they did, but not too many people read it.

Actually, they did cover it in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #27.

The vision in his eye was fine for a while, but at some point after WW2, his vision in the eye got progressively worse, so he had to wear the eyepatch. I have no idea why there's any explanation about his vision going bad after being shot by his brother Scorpio, because just saying that he eventually lost his vision in that eye from the WW2 injury is good enough. Especially considering Scorpio didn't even appear in the comics until well after Nick was wearing the eyepatch. Fury was in S.H.I.E.L.D. stories in Strange Tales - with the eyepatch - before getting his own series, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Scorpio didn't show up until that series.

He didn't actually lose his eye, so there's no point in him wearing an eyepatch before his vision went bad, and that happened well after WW2 (there's a story set in the Korean War in one of the Sgt. Fury Annuals, if I remember right, and I don't think he had the eyepatch in it, either).

So if Fury is shown with an eyepatch during WW2, its a screw up. I could buy it being a bandage if it took place around the time of the initial injury, because I seem to remember him having one on the cover of the issue where the injury happened or the one after it. (Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the cover online - I'm going by memory from a book I read a few years ago that had various comics covers in it)

[zuludelta]

Your knowledge of Nick Fury's eyepatch history is impressive  :thumbup:

I've only read some of the few early issues of the Sgt. Fury book, particularly the ones reprinted in the Marvel Visionaries and the Jack Kirby Collector books so I easily missed issue #27.

But more to the point, you'd think the editor would have caught the goof, since The Twelve is so much about Marvel's early history. But as I said in my initial post in this thread, it's a minor quibble that only a person with some knowledge of the early comics would notice. Hooray for obscure knowledge!  :D