My God Has A Hammer

agentfury:

jukeboxantihero:

sidekick-zack:

“ONE MAN CAN CHANGE THE WORLD”

Not that I dislike Tony Stark in any way, but I often feel as though fandom hypes up his relationship with Steve to the point where any other friendships the two guys have are taken for granted. And the thing is, what first got me interested in Nick Fury as a character was the relationship he has with Steve. It’s just as complex as his relationship with Tony, in my opinion, maybe even more because they were friends before Tony was even a thought. In Secret Warriors, the idea of this “one man” is discussed very often as an ongoing motif and concept, and something that Nick and Steve share the idea of is that both see the other one as that lone, world-changing figure. Fury has seen and understands the effects of the Captain America iconography over many decades, and Steve is in a minority of characters who fully understand and appreciate just how much Nick sacrifices, just so that he can protect a population he knows to be ungrateful, but with all the potential to be better.

There was a very wonderful essay that carpevivere (a woman truly the Tony to my Steve, I might add) once wrote that I had the pleasure of peer-editing about the way in which familial structure effects superhero communities, which argued that a major cause of Marvel’s Civil War was the absence of a patriarch (Fury’s resignation from SHIELD and becoming a fugitive) - so, on a sort of comical level, the image of a large family fighting among themselves over the privilege of sitting in their father’s armchair is a metaphor that can sum up Civil War. This idea is backed up pretty firmly in Civil War: The Confession with Tony’s first observation of the SHIELD agents he encounters being that “they want their daddy back”. (The essay also very cleverly compared this to the effects that Jim Gordon’s retirement had on Gotham City in The Dark Knight Returns, but that is another kettle of fish.) I think, part of why Secret Warriors was so loved by its readers and fans (all twelve of us) is because it touches so much on the softer sides of Fury’s personality. He’s more of a trolldad father than a patriarch in the series, and a little more reactive, part of which is fueled by the significance of his friendship with Steve Rogers. The first time you ever see him in the series is him reminiscing about World War II and all of the badass things he and Cap did. And looking beyond the fact that we root for Nick through out the whole series because he is the iconic badass of Marvel, a lot of his actions are very questionable. As the series progresses, you see the other characters who were once his teammates and loved ones questioning the legitimacy and true effect of his actions as helpful or heroic- generally to the point where the ones who aren’t Dum Dum and whom don’t question or defy him end up dead- the irony being, one of the two people that betrayed Fury the most dramatically got killed horribly. Such is the effect of his authority, that unquestioned loyalty and arbitrary defiance are equally fatal. Upon Cap’s return to being-alive, he himself even expresses a lot of frustration and disapproval with Nick’s attempts at wiping out HYDRA and Leviathan. Much as Civil War showed us the kind of crap that Tony and Steve et al can and would do without Fury around to keep an eye on things, Secret Warriors shows up the crap Nick can pull and have pulled on him without a moral buffer as clear as Steve.

The appeal of Tony and Steve’s relationship is that it reflects, I think, people’s general desire for peace and acceptance: opposing beliefs and actions combined to bring out the best in both; the idea of forces that should resent one another climbing over the mountain of tension to achieve something greater. Or to put it simply, the two balance out each other’s personalities. It’s the sort of universal icon that everyone can get behind despite being on different ‘sides’. But I think why Steve and Fury’s relationship intrigues me is that at the core of it, it seems to address both the really crappy and questionable things people are capable of (which, since/starting at around Secret War and Civil War, they seem to have mostly done when independent of each other), but also the most wonderful and empowering as well. It’s more than just the two balancing each other out, it’s like they act as each other’s compasses: their long history together tends to inspire action and ideas in each other that other characters can’t seem to get them to consider, for better or for worse.

Reblogging for the great comment here.

Nick + Steve = best.